Now with MySQL AB having been scooped up (as noted by 99% of the blogosphere including myself), what about SAP and open source? IIRC SAP was one of the investors into MySQL AB (not sure how large a chunk they held). SAP really put a lot of weight behind MySQL when they handed over SAP DB (renamed to MaxDB) to MySQL and made it clear that they expect MySQL to be SAP certified any day now (has this happened?).
At the same time SAP has been sending "mixed messages" at best in regards to OSS. And they are squarely on the "other side" on some critical topics like software patents. Not that I particularly care for SAP software, but it would be nice for such a large software company to expand rather than shrink their foothold into OSS.
Now SUN and SAP are not exactly competing and SAP has made it clear by open sourcing SAP DB that they do not think that this is where the money is (licensing-wise) and I also doubt that they are very interested in the support revenue around RDBMS either (they did move the support service around MaxDB back into SAP). So anyone have some information on this?
Hi Lucas,
Fairly recent, there has been a message to the press that the SAP/MySQL partnership entered a new phase. Most important changes are that the MaxDB developments at MySQL have been discontinued and transferred back to SAP. At the same time, MySQL has committed to optimizing MySQL enterprise for SAP Netweaver.
see:
http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/press-release/release_2007_40.html
As far as I know, the partnership with SAP is thus far unaffected by Sun acquiring MySQL, and personally, I think it would make sense for both SAP and MySQL to keep investing in the partnership.
I have had many interactions with SAP over the years. SAP just doesn't get open-source. No matter what they may say publicly, as an organization they are still far too conservative and heavy to do anything aggressive in the realm.
For example, while they have been leveraging Eclipse for years in their products it has only been recently where they actually allowed some of their developers to become committers. So kuddos for allowing their developers to consume open-source but that's about as far as they are able to go.
I wouldn't expect SAP to take any serious open-source role in the coming years....
Andi
SAP will die under its weight and because they have a database from the last century (SAP DB, that still needs to be cross-compiled-translated from Pascal). They are mostly run on Windows with MS SQL or Oracle, thus every time SAP wins a customer, the very same customer is won also by Oracle or Microsoft. Microsoft is not such a threat, they do their OS sales well but....we see them what they do for example on the Entertainment front. OTOH Oracle is ready to smash SAP.
Which is why Robert has some very valid points on putting PostgreSQL on the SAP map.
