The MySQL buy just looks worse for Sun all the time. The uproar over closed source has apparently ended; they now say that all of the high end features will remain open. So much for the idea of making MySQL a profitable business for Sun; maybe Jonathan Schwartz can start rummaging through the couch cushions for spare change to make back that $1B ?

Spotted in CNET News.com:

Sun's business model does not work and it hasn't worked for a long time. Moreover, open source, MySQL, StorageTek, and SaaS (software as a service) will not fix it.

CNet follows with a few more details, but not a lot of ideas. Here are a couple that might work:

• Fire Schwartz. The kind of CEO who spends $1B on a $60M, revenue-neutral business is the kind of CEO that Sun can't afford. Who knows what shiny piece of non-profitable open source software will catch his fancy next? Whatever it is, Sun can't afford it
• Start charging money for things that cost money to make. Being free can make you popular, but it can also lead to simple questions, like: "how do we make payroll?"

Will that happen? Nah, the pain isn't severe enough yet. Sun will have a layoff here, a layoff there - eventually, someone will notice that Schwartz brings negative value and hire a cleaner to sort through Sun's mess. In the meantime? Expect lots of wasted motion

Technorati Tags: Sun, stupidity

Spotted in Cafe au Lait Java News and Resources

Sun announced financial results for the third quarter of their fiscal year that ended in March, and they weren't pretty. Sun lost $34 million, 4 cents per share. Total revenue was $3.266 billion, down down half a percentage point from the same quarter last year.

I think Sun shareholders ought to start asking questions. Like, say - "WTF were you thinking, spending $1B on a database company with $60M in annual revenues and no profits?"

Questions like that might force Schwartz to stop yelling "open source" and start pondering an actual business model. I won't hold my breath though...

Technorati Tags: sun, stupidity

Wired tries to handicap winners and losers in the Microsoft/Yahoo game, but they miss the bottom line: if Microsoft ends up buying Yahoo, it's a lose-lose for everyone:

• MS will be out of a ton of money
• Yahoo, like a car off the lot, will start losing value the instant it's acquired
• The culture war between the MS and Yahoo employees will be horrid, and damaging
• The software that dies in the "my way or the highway" fights that are inevitable after an acquisition will dilute the value of both companies over time

Take this to the bank: if the deal goes through, MS will be wishing it hadn't within months - and former Yahooligans will be lamenting the loss.

Spotted in Wired Top Stories

With 1Q earnings from both companies out and nobody blinking as a key deadline passed over the weekend, Microsoft appears to be no closer to buying Yahoo than when it made its $44.6 billion bid nearly three months ago.

If Microsoft is very lucky, their management will be spared the consequences of this extraordinarily stupid idea. The two companies would not mesh at all - either from a technology or a culture standpoint. It would be a large scale version of what happened with ParcPlace-Digitalk, and let me tell you - that went very, very badly.

Jarvis puts his finger on the root of the problem the airlines have - and it's the same one the record labels have, and Microsoft - sheer inertia. They like running things "the way they've always been", and when change enters the business picture, they go straight to denial, rather than to any attempt to fix things. Digital music a threat? Try to sue it out of business. Web based applications a problem? Try to build more walls around Windows. This quote from Umair Haque sums up the problem nicely:

The dynamics of old boy's clubs are almost deterministically predictable: they fight tooth and nail against risk, against the radical, against any kind of change to the status quo. They're great at "monetization" - cutting deals - but the last thing old boy's clubs are good at, unfortunately, is sticking up, come hell or high water, for innovation. From music, to publishing, to food, to autos, the outcome of locked-down boardrooms has been innovation stifled and suffocated

When the business environment changes, you need to be able to adapt. Those who aren't, die.

Technorati Tags: inertia, stupidity

Who knew Yahoo would go this far to avoid Microsoft - it looks like an AOL/Yahoo merger is in the works. I'm not at all sure that it's a good idea; both companies are foundering, and it's rare that two bricking companies do more than sink faster.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is talking to News Corp. to create a joint MS/News Corp/Yahoo monstrosity? Sheesh, Microsoft can't focus now; can you imagine them after that took place?

If Google has any sense at all, they'll sit back, order some popcorn, and watch their competition commit suicide.

Technorati Tags: yahoo, aol, microsoft, google

The subject line is something that Comcast, at least, needs to ask itself. I've had my troubles with them - day long outages, and - over the last month - constant micro-outages (just long enough to knock my IM clients and/or IRC channels over).

It seems that I'm not the only one with Comcast troubles - see this Twitter scan that radiates out from an annoyed tweet by Mike Arrington. Comcast doesn't realize it yet, but this could be the same kind of PR problem for them that "Dell Hell" became for Dell. This little comment in the Twitter scan pretty much says it all:

I don't get it. Why can't these companies make money simply selling "dumb pipes" to the Internet? I'll pay for that

Indeed. Instead, they have various kinds of filters to defeat BitTorrent, and their customer service is a mostly sorry joke. I think Comcast needs to read the subject line of this post, and then read the quoted comment above. Their theories for what counts as "internet service" are way, way more complex than they need to be.

Technorati Tags: PR, customer service