Giuseppe Maxia (stress on the “i”, MaxIa, not MAxia) is now the new Community Team Leader. On Friday, our Data Charmer from Sardinia in Italy agreed to assume the responsibility of leading our Community Team, as I’m busy with my new appointment to Ambassador to Sun.

This means that Giuseppe now has a team of three Community Managers for each time zone, Jay Pipes in North America (NAM), Lenz Grimmer in Europe (EMEA), and Colin Charles in Asia Pacific (APAC). For the time being, Giuseppe reports to me.

Jay Pipes is the Program Chair for the upcoming MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, the main MySQL community event of the year.

One issue remains. “Community Team Leader” seems like a boring title. What title should we pick for Giuseppe? Given Giuseppe’s character and name of his blog (http://datacharmer.blogspot.com/), why not “Chief Community Charmer“? Or if not Charmer, then what about “Catalyst?” If you have ideas, email him and/or me!

This is a week full of changes. It’s been a wonderful week for me, meeting with so many MySQLers, telling the rest of the departments about our Community, having productive meetings, being acquired by Sun, and singing Karaoke with my colleagues from the Legal Team as well as performing drinking songs that get posted on YouTube.

The latest change came today. I’ll put my duties as VP Community Services on a spare flame, and focus on the integration of MySQL into Sun. Title unknown (as we’re still just planning the integration, not executing it), but something like “MySQL Ambassador to Sun”.

We want to take Sun by storm. My task will be to get out the message to Sun. “It’s not that I want you to filter the emails, but …”, said my boss Mårten. And as usual with sentences that start with “It’s not that I want you to”, the exact opposite is meant. So I’ll try to distinguish the requests for “super-important trade events in Muchasransk” from those truly worthy of attention, which I’ll promote within MySQL.

I’ll learn about Sun. I’ll teach MySQL about Sun. I’ll teach Sun about MySQL. As part of that, I’ll visit as many Sun facilities as possible, with a special emphasis on those outside the US (as we’ve got plenty of other MySQL executives and VPs on US soil).

It’s going to be great fun!

Part of what makes me very happy about our Sun deal is the interest Sun has expressed in learning from us. That has been evident in all the various meetings here in Orlando — be it with the founders, with the individual departments, or in front of the entire audience.

So as a way to teach Sun a first lesson, I had prepared a gig for the end of the presentations during the morning. We have a tradition of singing songs in our company, stemming from our Scandinavian heritage. “We take this very seriously”, I had heard Rich Green comment. And I’m happy he meant it in a very respectful manner: Corporate culture is important. Drinking songs themselves are meant to be purely fun, and not taken seriously, although they are surrounded by plenty of fairly rigid tradition.

In order to make it light for our future colleagues from Sun, as well as our own recent recruits as well as others unfortunate enough not to know the simplest of all drinking songs by rote, we prepared a phonetic translation for Helan går and put it up as a slide:

Helan går: Phonetic version (sing this!)

Hell and gore
Shung Hop father Allan Allan ley.
Hell and gore
Shung Hop father Allan ley.

Oh handsome in the hell and tar
hand hell are in the half and four.
Hell and gore <drink now>
Shung Hop father Allan ley

A few of us probably sang that without understanding what the underlying Swedish words actually mean. So this brings me to:

Helan går: Translated version (think this!)

The first drink (”whole glass”) goes,
sing <long expression of joy>!
The first drink goes,
sing <short expression of joy>!

And anyone who doesn’t take the first drink,
will be disallowed the second drink.
The first drink goes!
<drink here and now>
Sing <short expression of joy>

The original version, which is both phonetically correct, and carries the right meaning, goes like this:

Helan går: Original version (learn this!)

Helan går
sjung hopp faderallan lallan lej.
Helan går,
sjung hoppfaderallan lej.

Och den som inte helan tar,
han ej heller halvan får.
Helan går,
sjung hopp faderallan lej.

Links:

• Helan går video & audio on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyZpCs3i71s

An important question for MySQLers and MySQL users alike is: “What do the MySQL Founders think of the acquisition of MySQL by Sun?”

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to explore that question further, in my first personal encounter with Sun. Already before that encounter, I had asked Monty a couple of questions.

Kaj: Monty, in the 1990s, you developed MySQL on Solaris. Why was that?

Monty: In the early years when I worked with Sun products, I was always
impressed with the stability and reliability of both hardware and
operating system. That was the reason why we used Sun Microsystems technology to develop MySQL.

Kaj: You did that development ages ago. What do you think about the Sun Microsystems of 2008?

Monty: In recent times, I have been very happy with Sun’s contributions to the Open Source world, for example Open Solaris, Java and Open Office. Also, I am impressed by their understanding of Open Source, as witnessed by the Open Office contributor license.

Kaj: I know you haven’t had too much personal interaction with Sun so far, relating to the acquisition agreement. What do you expect to happen between the two companies?

Monty: I know that MySQL AB has a lot to learn from Sun when it comes to Open Source, and hope Sun desires and will be able to learn from us. Through this agreement, we can contribute our knowledge to each other, so that we together can create something even bigger.

Based on the interaction between Monty, David and the senior Sun representatives we met, I think it’s safe to say that there was a lot of excitement both sides. Founder expectations are high regarding what Sun can mean for MySQL. And I’m happy to note that the feeling is mutual — it was my firm impression that the Sun guys we met have high expectations regarding what the MySQL founders can continue to contribute to the future of Sun.

Finally: Today during the presentations by Mårten Mickos, Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green, one particular person has been very active, and very supportive of the agreement. That’s Monty.

We’re living in exciting times!

This morning, Sun Microsystems announced plans to acquire MySQL AB.

After all the industry speculation about MySQL being a “hot 2008 IPO”, this probably takes most of us by surprise — users, community members, customers, partners, and employees. And for all of these stakeholders, it may take some time to digest what this means. Depending on one’s relationship to MySQL, the immediate reaction upon hearing the news may be a mixture of various feelings, including excitement, pride, disbelief and satisfaction, but also anxiety.

Being part of the group planning this announcement for the last few weeks, I have had the fortune to contemplate the consequences during several partially sleepless nights (I usually sleep like a log). And over the coming days and weeks, I’ll provide a series of blogs with various viewpoints of the deal.

First of all, let’s point out a couple of facts about Sun Microsystems — since all MySQL stakeholders may not be fully up to speed about Sun.

Facts on Sun Microsystems

• Founded 1982 by Andreas von Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy and Scott McNealy
• 34.200 employees worldwide, 13.9 billion dollars (9.4 billion euros) in revenues FY 2007, market cap (total value of all Sun shares) about the same as yearly revenues
• Grew astronomically with the Web, suffered from the Web bubble, now profitable over the last four quarters
• Lead by Scott McNealy until 2006, now by Jonathan Schwartz (a prolific blogger)
• The world’s biggest contributor to Open Source: Open Office, Java (now under GPL), GlassFish, NetBeans — and soon MySQL
• Environmentally friendly; large numbers of distributed employees working at least partially from home
• Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, just south of Cupertino (MySQL’s North American headquarters)
• Counts some of the worlds most brilliant innovators amongst its current and past employees

For me personally, I’m excited to get the opportunity to actively contribute to the successful integration of MySQL into Sun. I want to make an impact in merging our corporate cultures, and I look forward to making that a bi-directional process. Since I am based outside the US, I am particularly excited about meeting the many Sun engineers located in Hamburg (Germany), Grenoble (France), Prague (Czech Republic), St Petersburg (Russia), Beijing (China) and Bangalore (India).

But let me now turn to the more general planned implications of Sun’s acquisition of MySQL AB.

What does the acquisition of MySQL by Sun mean for MySQL users?

Given Sun’s proven track record as the largest contributor to Open Source, I think MySQL users have plenty of reason to feel happy about the acquisition. There are many companies that attempt to ride the wave of positive attention towards Open Source, but in my judgement, Sun gets it right. Sun gets Open Source. Java has been released under the GPL. There’s the OpenSolaris operating system. There’s Open Office / Star Office. There’s the GlassFish application server. There’s the NetBeans IDE tool. And more.

Sun’s track record is embodied by individuals with a solid set of FOSS values, such as Simon Phipps (Sun’s Chief Open Source Officer), Ian Murdock (Debian founder, now Sun’s Chief OS Strategist), and Josh Berkus (PostgreSQL lead). I’ve met all three in various FOSS arenas, I respect their work, and I am looking forward to be working closely with them.

Anxiety on the part of MySQL users may stem from Sun’s success with Java and Solaris. Will MySQL’s support for other programming languages and operating systems now be given less attention?

Absolutely not. MySQL is still being managed by the same people, and the charter is still the same. There is no need for reducing the set of platforms or languages. It only makes sense for us to continue to support defacto Web development standards like LAMP, as well as emerging ones like Ruby and Eclipse. This deal is about addition, not subtraction.

But let’s dwell on the topic of Solaris a bit. Solaris has a special position in the heart of MySQL, as it was the first platform under which MySQL was developed. Linux came second. Internally, code coverage tests were long performed just on Sun. And with the DTrace probes planned as part of 6.0, some types of optimisation of MySQL applications are the easiest on Solaris.

I would expect that having access to the topmost Solaris and Java experts within the same company will accelerate our development for the benefit of MySQL users on the Solaris platform, and in the Java environment, respectively.

But I don’t expect that in any way to be at the cost of other popular operating systems (Linux, Windows, Mac OS/X, other Unixes etc.) or development environments (PHP, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, ODBC, C++, C#, VB etc.). MySQL grew with LAMP and MySQL without LAMP at its core is simply unimaginable. It was MySQLs part of LAMP that interested Sun in the first place. Hence I don’t see Sun having a platform migration strategy, but to continue to be an integral part of the dot in .com.

So while the news may be especially good for MySQL users on Solaris and/or Java, the news is definitely good irrespective of environment: As part of Sun, the MySQL database will have immediate access to technical, marketing, OSS developer relations and sales rescources that would have taken us years to build as an independent company.

What does the acquisition of MySQL by Sun mean for the core MySQL community?

I’d like to think that the acquisition of MySQL by Sun will be seen as good news also by the core group of users who form the active MySQL community. This is because Sun is a safe haven for MySQL. Sun knows Open Source, and to the extent things change, I expect Sun to add value to our community. I don’t expect huge change, though. We continue to work with our quality contributors, we continue to provide our MySQL Forums, the Planet MySQL blog aggregator, we remain on the #mysql-dev and #mysql channels on Freenode, we provide MySQL University lessons, we meet at the MySQL Users Conference. We’ll put effort into connecting the many FOSS enthusiasts and experts at Sun — whom we will now learn to know better — with our active user community.

What does the acquisition of MySQL by Sun mean for the MySQL employees?

Admittedly, this blog is not directed at MySQL employees. We have a different, internal blog called “Village MySQL” for that purpose (as opposed to “Planet MySQL”). But many of our users, community members, customers, and partners have close relationships with MySQL employees — and you may be interested in what Sun’s acquisition of MySQL means for the employees.

For employees, Sun’s acquisition means continuity. Mårten Mickos will continue to lead us, and our executives and key engineering leads plan to join Sun. In addition, our existing engineering staff will be invited to come over as well. Sun executives have made us feel very welcomed and valued.

Very important for our employees is the fact that we can continue to work on Free and Open Source software. We can continue to work from home (as most of us do, including myself). Titles, reporting structures, and long-term goals may change, but as acquisition goes, the Sun culture as I’ve experienced it so far seems fairly similar to ours.

And — whether it’s destiny, divinity or just good luck — we get the opportunity to digest all of this together, during the MySQL All-Company Meeting here in Orlando. It goes on this week until Saturday 19 Jan.

Being acquired by Sun is unique for all of us MySQLers. But for two very special employees, it’s something even more. I’m thinking of our founders, Michael “Monty” Widenius and David Axmark. I’m very happy for them. Sure, the transaction has a financial impact on them, and it’s positive. But we’re humble Scandinavians, so we don’t flash money, nor even talk about it. More importantly, I can see their heritage being in good hands at Sun. They didn’t develop MySQL in order to Get Rich Quick; in fact, they rejected offers that would have accomplished that goal during the Bubble. They developed MySQL in order to have a positive impact on the world of computing. And as a step in that direction, they took in venture financing.

VCs are more motivated by money than our founders, and obviously look for a return on their investment. That involves either an IPO or a trade sale. Of all candidates to acquire MySQL, I cannot imagine a more ideal buyer from a founder perspective than Sun Microsystems. If I know our founders right (and I’ve known Monty since the late 1970s and David since the 1980s), they will use this deal as an opportunity to accomplish even more within the space of Open Source and Sun Microsystems.

Congratulations, Monty and David! And congratulations, MySQL users, community members, customers, partners and employees!

P.S. I promise more later!

Giuseppe Maxia had a stop-over yesterday on his way to the MySQL Staff Meeting. We met for community discussions, and rounded off with Weißbier and dinner in Munich’s famous Hofbräuhaus.

What a fantastic feeling! The Bavarian spirit of joy and happiness has been decoupled from tobacco stench! I’ve always liked the first and hated the second.

So the German non-smoker protection legislation of 1 January 2008 is good news for anyone considering arranging meetings in Germany. You will no longer be “welcomed” at the airport by an offensive smell. Headaches in German restaurants will now correlate mostly with the amount of alcohol you drink.

Germany just became an even better place to work and live.

For some reason, Germany and Open Source go very well together. That’s one of the reasons I moved to Germany a good year ago.

Now, I note a new Open Source marketing consultancy popping up in southern Germany. Not that such companies are very tied to geography. It’s Sandro Groganz, of Mindquarry and eZ Systems fame, who has set up shop.

Sandro will help companies and organisations, both in their capacities as creators, contributors, and investors. Read more about this on his well-organised blog. Good luck, Sandro!

One week to go! Then we’ll have MySQL AB’s biggest internal meeting ever, with some 400 MySQLers being shipped to Orlando, Florida.

Almost four years ago in 2004, the company met in Cancún, Mexico. A year before that in 2003, we met in Budapest, Hungary. In 2002, we met in St Petersburg, Russia. In 2001, we met in Helsinki, Finland. In 2000, they (I wasn’t on board at that time) met in Monterey, USA. As we met last time in Cancún, we were fewer people in the whole company than last September at the Developer Mtg in Heidelberg, Germany.

I’m looking forward to meeting with all my fellow MySQLers. Besides all the working and catching-up, I expect to do some running with fellow MySQLers, share some photographs, and just enjoy spending face-to-face time.

Right now, I’m preparing for this by looking through and setting the agendas for various meetings with other teams, as well as 1on1 mtgs with my team. And I even plan to create a check-list for random beer encounters and store it in my phone. Few things would disturb me more than sitting on my flight back across the Atlantic, only to realise that I forgot to talk to somebody special, and will need to wait forever to get the next opportunity.

MySQLers share many hobbies. One of them is running. After the holiday season, I allowed myself to do some statistics on last year’s running, and add some personal reflections, only marginally related to work and MySQL.

Running is often a social event at MySQL, where a sizable portion of my 108 runs last year were with other MySQLers: Six times with Zack Urlocker (EVP Products), six times with Patrik Backman (Dir SW Eng), twice each with Larry Stefonic (SVP APAC) and Clint Smith (Legal Counsel), and once each with Kristofer Pettersson (SW Eng), Saskia Schweitzer (Training coordinator), Mikael Ronstršm (Principal Engineer/Senior MySQL Architect), and Nicolas Pujol (Sr Director, Alliances & Channels). Running can even be social time spent with non-runners (not just on the phone), as three of my runs were with MySQLers on bike: Once with Michael “Monty” Widenius (Co-founder), once with Lenz Grimmer (Community Team) and half a time with Matthew Montgomery (Support Eng) who suffered a flat tyre.

For me, statistics can be one of many good motivators for running.

I’m proud to note a new record of 1259 km for last year, which is a lot more than the earlier years (the time series for 2001 to 2006 goes 523 km, 477 km, 424 km, 501 km, 809 km, 673 km). Also the pace is faster. My average speed is up from around 9 km/h in the early years of the century to nearly 11 km/h last year.

In fact, I spent nearly 120 hours (4.9 days, to be exact) running during 2007:

    Month       km 	            Time  km/h	     min/km  Ct
 1  Januari     61 km     61 km	 6:04:05  10,1 km/h  5:55,6   6
 2  Februari    47 km    108 km	 4:32:11  10,3 km/h  5:49,3   4
 3  Mars        92 km    200 km	 8:55:22  10,3 km/h  5:48,0   8
 4  April      145 km    346 km	13:58:56  10,4 km/h  5:46,2  13
 5  Maj	       119 km    465 km	11:06:24  10,7 km/h  5:35,7  10
 6  Juni       154 km    619 km	14:03:05  10,9 km/h  5:29,1  13
 7  Juli        71 km    690 km	 6:35:17  10,8 km/h  5:31,8   7
 8  Augusti     82 km    772 km	 7:31:26  10,9 km/h  5:29,7   7
 9  September  128 km    901 km	11:42:47  11,0 km/h  5:28,4  11
10  Oktober    131 km  1 032 km	11:27:24  11,4 km/h  5:15,1  11
11  November   130 km  1 161 km	11:45:28  11,0 km/h  5:26,4  10
12  December	97 km  1 259 km	 8:59:28  10,8 km/h  5:33,2   8

2007	     1 259 km	1258,51	4,9 d     10,8 km/h  5:33,8 108

(If km/h and min/km tells you as little as miles/h and min/miles tell me, you may benefit from my computation in Neo Office that the slowest month of January had an average speed of 6,3 miles/hour and a pace of 9:32 minutes per mile, whereas the fastest month of October had an average speed of 7,1 miles/hour and a pace of 8:27 minutes per mile).

Some MySQLers of course grow tired of all these runners boasting their training, and would prefer us to all play poker instead. Personally, I’m glad to note that an ex couch potato like myself can make steady progress over the years. At school, I always belonged to the last quarter of boys being picked out for any team sports.

Benefits from running are many. Besides being social and healthy, it increases stamina. Stamina is good not just for work, but also for other sports activities: Running helped me climb the Großvenediger mountain (3674 m) in July without belonging to the most tired quarter of climbers in our group. And I enjoy winter sports (last year snowboarding in Wolkenstein in Italy) even more, when tiredness seldom if ever hits my legs.

Finally, running is a great way to follow the seasons in the most beautiful areas close to where you live or travel. I have a set of regular runs that I prefer over others, and where I do my seasonal observations. Of the 108 runs during 2007, 71 were 11,79 km runs around Isarwehr (in Munich), 20 were 11,6 km runs around Sellmo (near my country house in Nagu, Finland — an extended Mšviken Runt by Nagu IF), 3 were 12,99 km runs around Ikea (in Grankulla, Finland) and 14 elsewhere: Orlando, Rancho San Antonio, Palo Alto, Portland, Hamburg (Sports Day with Lenz), Heidelberg, and a few non-Isarwehr runs in Munich. BTW, thanks Garmin Forerunner for measuring the distances.

For 2008, I look out to run more and faster than 2007, and to be able to support more mountaineering, more snowboarding, and perhaps a “trans Alp” on a mountain bike. Whether I’ll go for my fifth marathon somewhere remains to be seen.