Sun's layoff will cut some MySQL employees

After Oracle acquired Sun, everyone was most worried about the fate of MySQL. In the end, MySQL should not be damn. Oracle seems to say it will not. However, Sun's massive downsizing seems to be in conflict with Oracle's commitment.

At the end of November, thousands of Sun Microsystems employees realized that their services would no longer be needed since January 4. Although downsizing is expected by employees, the magnitude of downsizing far exceeds expectations. In addition to the departments where accounting, personnel, sales, and marketing are usually laid off after mergers and acquisitions, Sun will also cut off many employees engaged in open-source projects, including those directly involved in MySQL development. Although oracle also needs a certain number of such employees to continue developing MySQL to keep its commitment to the European Commission, some employees who develop MySQL will still be cut off.

"They made a five-year commitment to the European Commission, but cut off their employees directly related to MySQL," said one person who did not want to reveal his identity, therefore, I suspect that they cannot guarantee their commitments. "

From support engineers to marketing, from sales to R & D, Sun has employees in all departments involved in open-source projects. People familiar with the matter estimate that the number of employees involved in open-source projects alone is more than 3000.

People familiar with the matter said that although this does not bring direct benefits to the company, many organizations, especially those outside the United States, regard open source as a requirement.

Oracle is not the first open-source company, but it does have some open-source products, including the InnoDB database and its unbreakable Linux software.

So what do you leave behind?

Sun employees and Java founder James Gosling are still confused about this. James Gosling's identity is unclear, but it is said that Oracle does not want to retain him. The fate of the annual Java developer conference JavaOne is also unclear. Although there are rumors that the meeting will be retained, there is no indication of the future of the meeting.

As oracle said, it enjoys the Solaris system very much, but it is ready to cut down the OpenSolaris project at any time. The details are not clear yet, But Oracle may bring the development of the Solaris system back to the closed-source State when former CEO Jonathan Schwarz was in power and will not use it as a test ground for new technologies.

Oracle's plan for Java is not clear yet, but most of its employees, marketing and technical personnel engaged in the OpenJDK project, have been cut off.

Sun's GlassFish is Oracle's preferred product, so the entire GlassFish team remains intact. The iSCSI processor will also be retained, as Oracle promised to advertise on the Wall Street newspaper a few months ago, if not surprisingly, oracle also keeps Sun's storage services intact.

People familiar with the matter said that the rumor that Rock will be abandoned is true. The New York Times reported a few months ago that Sun had completely abandoned the code for Rock's next-generation processor development plan.

Rock is really abandoned, but Sun will continue to develop the UltraSparc chip. At last week's earnings analyst conference call, Accenture said that Oracle will focus on the high-end server market through both the world's top-end servers and the middle-end and low-end markets through both the world's names.

Martin Renault, vice president of research at Gartner, was not surprised. He said: "When you look at Sun's financial report, you will find that many spending items have not received the corresponding benefits. Before the M & A transaction is completed, you usually try to remove some things, so this is a good phenomenon. Sun believes everything will have a result. "

As a part of M & A transactions, Sun must clean up itself before the transaction ends. During this period, Oracle will not interfere with Sun's business. Renault suspected Sun would make things messy.

He said: "What Sun does now makes it difficult for Oracle to fulfill its promise, which is strange. Therefore, I do not believe that Oracle will keep its promise. "

However, Renault was not surprised by Sun's downsizing. Sun has many investment projects that do not make any money, and its open-source projects do not have any bright spots. For example, although OpenSolaris is well received, it has not contributed much to finance. Renault added that he would not be surprised if later versions of Solaris and Java were no longer released in open source mode.