Sun buys MySQL

Sun announced the purchase of MySQL from the Swedish company that started it. They are paying $800 million in cash and assuming $200 million in options. I would guess that is a pretty good deal for MySQL equity holders.

In an article by the nytimes.com, the CEO of Sun, Jonathan I. Schwartz, said that the future of the software business is in services. I'd have to somewhat agree with that statement, though I think the selling of software licenses will still be around for sometime.

My feeling is that as the software business grows, the amount of money companies spend on software will go down and what they spend on services will go up. My guess is the total cost to a company will grow about the same rate as if services cost (or software costs) were nothing.

My point in all this is, software will never be free. Companies will continue to pay for it either in the form of licenses or services. Either or, using technology is expensive and will continue to be.

As for Sun's purchase of MySQL, while I'm not sure if they had to pay $1 billion for it, I think adding an enterprise SQL database platform to their portfolio is a good idea.