Yesterday, the Swedish open source database provider MySQL got bought by Sun Microsystems for 1billion USD. (Amazing what being the database provider for Facebook can do).
Seeing this on the news last night brought back a rather painful memory of when Emanuel and I were studying Business Opportunities in a joint class between KTH, Stanford and the National Uni of Singapore in 2005. We had read a case study on the business strategy of MySQL and had to deliver our findings via video tele-link to a couple of hundred people both in Stockholm and in California.
Anyway, we got up and said what we thought and then waited to get some feedback. Unfortunately, the next face to appear on the video link from the U.S was Mårten Mickos, the CEO of MySQL (we didn’t know he was there).
He then spent the next ten minutes ripping me and Emanuel to shreds in a incredibly vicious way because we had suggested an alternative strategy to the one he had chosen. Me and Emanuel sat frozen while we endured this torrent of verbal abuse and then crawled off to claim that we were happy to have received “constructive criticism”.
I think that was the first time we had really been on the receiving end of such a “hard” business manner, but it certainly wasn’t the last!
Have to say that in our current business we use a database called SQLite instead of MySQL as a form or retribution. (Bet you Mårten is really worried about that as he counts his billion…)
And what? You just sat there and took it ? You should have stood up and said ‘I’m the William Wallace of databases you female dog, now piss and go sellout some more.’
To be honest, I doubt it would do any good but hey it would make one hell of an impression!
p.s. looks like you are getting soft in your old days Gary!