For a split second, I thought Jonathan said he thought of Sun’s acquisition of MySQL as “hypocritical”. Of course, what he said was “Hippocratical”, in the sense of the old Greek with the oath for doctors: “Do no harm.”

Jonathan appeared in front of the integration team with MySQL and Sun employees here in Menlo Park. What he said was very comfortable to hear for MySQLers old and new:

• Jonathan sees a great strategic fit between MySQL and Sun, and that’s the prime precondition for any good acquisition.
• The strategic fit thinking is seconded by financial analysts and technical observers alike.
• “Honour the community“: Jonathan sees the community of MySQL users as the starting point for all decisions related to the integration.
• “Honour the employees“: Jonathan respects the group of MySQL employees who has taken MySQL to where it is today.
• “No cost synergy“: The deal was not struck to take cost out, but to enable new opportunities for both deep technical innovation all the way to the microelectronics level, and business deals with MySQL users not yet turned into customers.

Jonathan is absolutely very familiar with MySQL, and he wants us to win. I have a hard time imagining how anybody but Jonathan could better combine being humble and down-to-earth with an attitude for winning. If I had merely read his concluding statement, I wouldn’t have been nearly as thrilled as I am having experienced it:

“I don’t want to be shy about winning. If you don’t win with a smile on your face, why bother?“

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 16:09 and is filed under MySQL, Sun, Sun visits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.