451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
Has MySQL founder and CTO resigned from Sun?
Matthew Aslett, September 5, 2008 @ 9:23 am ETValleywag reports that Monty Widenius has quit Sun. The Pythian Group reckons its true. Kaj Arno’s non-denial denial would appear to confirm it despite his protestations otherwise.
“Technically there is no resignation letter. However, I spoke to Monty yesterday, and yes, resignation is an option he considers,” writes Kaj before expanding on some of the reasons that Monty might consider leaving Sun and how the MySQL project would continue without him (or without him as an employee at any rate).
He concludes: “In summary, I can neither confirm nor deny the rumour. But I hope my posting has shed some light on the situation.”
If the rumour is true then as Kaj says it would be a big loss the MySQL development team, but it would seem likely that Monty would continue to be involved in the project.
It would probably be a bigger loss for Sun, and highlights one of the problems that arises when big vendors pay big money for open source smaller vendors and much of that cash goes into the pockets of the founders/key developers of the target (see also Red Hat/JBoss).
We’ll wait for confirmation before commenting further on the potential implications.
Comments (6) Categories: M&A,Software
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Matt: That’s unfair to label this “problems that arises when big vendors pay big money for open source vendors and much of that cash goes into the pockets of the founders/key developers” – it has nothing to do with open source.
That’s very true. Post edited accordingly.
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