maria-discuss team mailing list archive

[Timour Katchaounov <timour@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark,

> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:07 AM, Michael Widenius <monty@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > > > > > > "Joshua" == Joshua Partogi <jpartogi@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > Joshua> All,
> > Joshua> Many people were feeling uncertain whether to use MySQL when Sun was bought
> > Joshua> by Oracle. I was one of those people and that is why I chose MariaDB for my
> > Joshua> product now. But I need to know what is the plan for MariaDB in the future?
> > Joshua> Would there be any chance that MariaDB will be sold to another company just
> > Joshua> like MySQL got sold to Sun? Or would MariaDB always be a community owned?
> >
> > Monty Program Ab, who is driving MariaDB is setup as an employee owned
> > company.  You can easily verify it from here:
> > http://askmonty.org/wiki/The_hacking_business_model
> >
> > This is reflected in everyones employee contract and in how we work
> > every day.
> >
> > This means, in practice, is that Monty Program Ab is not setup as a
> > company that is to be sold as there is no big profit any owner can get
> > by selling it.  Instead our plan for the future is to get enough
> > income so that we can all afford to spend all our time on working on
> > MariaDB development.
>
> The content in that URL states that MPAB employees have shared
> copyright on their contributions. I assume that MPAB has shared
> copyright on all contributions. Couldn't someone buy MPAB to get shard
> copyright to all contributions and the MariaDB trademarks?

This is my independent view as one of Monty Program AB employees.

Almost anything can be sold. Based on my simplistic understanding of
copyright and intellectual property, then, sure, if someone buys
Monty Program, they will own the shared part of the IP of the company.

> I don't question your intent but I don't see how MPAB cannot be sold
> or would not have value.

Above Monty wrote "no big value", not "no value at all". To me this means
that this company will hardly have such a huge value to make much sense to
be sold (as opposed to MySQL AB). If the company is successful, its value
for the employees would be that it will be a way for them to have a decent
life and do the work they like.

This is my simple logic as one of the employees. If selling the company
will leave me on the street looking for another less attractive job, then I
will strongly oppose that the company is being sold. If the company could
be sold with a huge profit, so that I don't need to work in the next, let's
say 10 years, or more, then I might want it to be sold. But I may not, based
on emotions. I know that at least few others at Monty Program think similar
to me.

As I understand Monty's point, there is no danger that this company can
become so incredibly interesting for investors, that someone would like
to pay a big pile of money for it. Ergo, hardly anyone of the employees
would be willing to sell the company. If most of us are against a sale,
then the only thing that could be sold would be the IP. In this case
I believe there will be nothing to sell, because code without the people
who know it is dead code.

So this is not only about Monty's intent, it is about the collective
intent of all Monty Program employees.

As I said above, this is my understanding of things, Monty or others
may see things differently.


Timour