Once More unto the Breach

Sun Quietly Continues to Support Drizzle

It seems Sun Microsystems is continuing to support Drizzle. Drizzle is the MySQL fork that was announced at OSCON this past Summer. That said, Sun has been continuing to move developers to work on it internally (Jay Pipes, Monty Taylor). This is all good news. Based on the strength of the MySQL brand and history, drizzle stands to evolve into the next interesting database and Sun has a front row seat to best capture the upside.

Drizzle can be found on LaunchPad and has an active discussion community.

[Update 11:20, 22 Oct 2008: Brian Aker just posted his assumptions on possible directions for Drizzle.]

Mac Django MySQLdb Problems and Bitnami Love

I have an idea for a web property and wanted to explore Django as a way to create a prototype. I grabbed the two basic Django books and they each take you through the "how to install Django" bit. They start the discussion about setting up MySQL (assuming of course that you remember how that works), and then they each get to an innocent line that effectively says: You'll need the Python MySQL package (MySQLdb).

Now the fun begins. There's sometimes a wee bit of a problem building it on a Mac due to a confusion between 32-bit and 64-bit and PPC and Intel and which MySQL and which Python you might be using or have installed. I learned this much by poking about for awhile on Google. It took me a bit to realize I hadn't updated my developer Xtools world when I upgraded to Mac OS Leopard so that I was at least seeing the errors that others have reported. [The best summary is here if you want to do this the hard way.] A friend cautioned me around messing with the stock MySQL and Python worlds on the Mac, as it's a good way to make the shipped tools unusable if you don't get the builds right. I'm now a couple or three hours into the problem.

Then I have a brilliant idea. I'm an adviser to Bitrock, and on Bitnami they support a large collection of open source technology packages for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX (and Solaris). The packages are single-click installers that deliver the open source technology and all of its dependencies. The technology is installed in separate trees such that they do not interfere with the stock installed Mac packages. (There are easy ways to combine the packaged technologies if you don't want multiple instantiations of MySQL, Apache, etc.)

Sure enough, there's a Django stack for Mac OSX. A few minutes of download, a few minutes of install (and the autoconfiguration prompts for MySQL user setup before the install), and it's time for the big test. But wait: there's even an executable file in the install root called use_djangostack that seems to set my environment correctly. NOW it's time for the big test:

/Users/xxx> /Applications/djangostack-1.0-6/use_djangostack 
bash-3.2$ which python
/Applications/djangostack-1.0-6/python/bin/python
bash-3.2$ python
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Sep 11 2008, 12:40:30) 
[GCC 4.0.0 20041026 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 4061)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import MySQLdb
>>> 
bash-3.2$ python /Applications/djangostack-1.0-6/apps/django/bin/django-admin.py startproject testproject 
bash-3.2$ cd testproject
bash-3.2$ ls
__init__.py     manage.py       settings.py     urls.py
bash-3.2$ 

That was a lot less painful than any of the alternatives. Now I can get back to exploring Django. If you want to explore open source software technology in a sand box or easily set up an application like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or MediaWiki, I would encourage you to take a look at Bitnami. There's lots of goodness hiding there.

Caution: There was one other small configuration issue I needed to make in the next steps of configuring and synchronizing MySQL not covered in the books or [yet] in the README.txt file, and that was to ensure your Django project settings.py file contains:

DATABASE_HOST=[Django stack install root]/mysql/tmp/mysql.sock

Microsoft Partnerships, Open Source Software ISVs, and Culture and History

Last week, Mary Jo Foley offered commentary on Microsoft's open source software strategy with respect to independent software vendors based on an interview with Microsoft's Sam Ramji. Matt Asay provides good colour commentary on his blog. Each post focuses on the trustworthiness and competitive history of the company. Let's look at things from a different perspective.

First, if you sell software solutions, and one of the platforms you support is Windows, you're not alone. There is a lot of free and open source software that has company support that is deployed on Windows as one of its platforms. The "big" free and open source software names include:

JBoss: Claimed 50% deployment on Windows when they signed a partnership deal with Microsoft that included technical collaboration in September 2005.

SugarCRM: Claimed 35% deployment on Windows when they signed their technical collaboration deal with Microsoft in February 2006.

Eclipse: Several studies have been done over the past few years show Windows adoption for development and deployment (Dev/Dep):

(80%/60%) [Evans Data Corp., September 2006]
(62%/37%) [Evans Data Corp., September 2007]
(74%/47%) [IDC, Summer 2007]

While Eclipse itself isn't a company, many ISVs build businesses around the Eclipse project.

Alfresco: Claims 30% deployment on Windows according to their internal study published June 2007.

MySQL: Claims 40% download MySQL for Windows.

If Windows is one of the platforms you support, there should be nothing stopping you from considering joining a Microsoft ISV partner program. They provide lots of material and information to make it easier to develop, market, and sell on Windows than doing it all on your own. It absolutely benefits their growth. It benefits yours as well.

To provide the best possible experience for your customers, if the Windows version of your applications needs to use Active Directory, Microsoft Operations Manager, or any other Microsoft specific technology, then I'm going to assume you'll best serve your customers and architect the application accordingly for multi-platform development, deployment and support. We have been architecting applications to support multiple platforms for decades, and it's easier today with common tools and languages (most of them open source), and standards support across platforms. Again, better to join a Microsoft ISV program and cheaply get access to the best technical information possible for the platform to support your customers.

Some consider "doing business with Microsoft" tainted. There is no excuse for the behaviour we all saw from Microsoft with Netscape, or Sun with Java. If not for the high profile of the last U.S. Department of Justice investigation, the preponderance of email, and the ease with which one can search it, we wouldn't have such wonderfully embarrassing email examples that demonstrate how some people inside Microsoft think. (It makes you wonder what embarrassing gems are sitting in the email queues of other companies that haven't had this level of public legal scrutiny.) But most companies aren't in a position to demand their customers shift platforms. Even MySQL AB supported the SCO Openserver platform better to support customers.

[Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft didn't eat all its original ISV chain out of a rapacious need for growth. Customers demanded Microsoft provide a lot of tool support directly to simplify their development and procurement needs as the platform became ubiquitous.]

There are several things to understand about partnering with Microsoft that have a lot to do with the history and culture of the company. Microsoft was the PC software company, i.e. Microsoft customers had enormous deployments of small footprint inexpensive machines, versus the big server company (1990s) with far fewer big-iron multi-processor machines, versus the mini-computer company (1980s) with fewer less powerful systems, versus the mainframe company (1970s) with fewer still very large machines. While today a company will rack out thousands of blade servers in their back-room big-iron environment, in the 1980s and 1990s they didn't.

Microsoft developed programs throughout their channel sales and marketing organizations to enable them to scale their growth. Their margins were completely different from the other large software companies (e.g. SAP, Oracle) or UNIX OEMs. So a VMS or UNIX ISV may have seen OEM staff arrive on site to help migrate or tune an application to the platform because of the margins involved in that business, but Microsoft had to create a program to enable their DOS then early Windows ISVs to get access to expertise differently. Starting an ISV that developed PC-related software required a far smaller capital outlay and so there were a lot of such companies. Programs like MSDN were created. The ISV programs were by definition information-intense but engagement-soft. It was the smartest way to correctly serve both their ISV partners and their business model.

Hardware, software, and the Internet evolved. Windows became Windows NT has become Windows Vista and Server growing into the data centre. The big iron UNIX server world is evolving into scaled arrays of Linux servers. While these worlds collide in the data centre, the financial success of Microsoft remains tied to a culture of scaled programs. If you're an ISV that is used to the way IBM, Sun, or HP treat you, you may be surprised by a Microsoft program's lack of personal engagement.

There's another cultural practice that contributed to Microsoft's growth and success through the 1990s and that effects partner programs (and customers alike). Employees were allowed, indeed encouraged, to regularly shift positions within the company. In the early days it kept smart people that might be prone to boredom fresh and ensured culture wasn't lost through the employee leaving the company. That practice is still considered a strength today. Scale-out programs (not tied to specific people or relationships) supported this model.

But it means that any relationships built with the Microsoft by an ISV will likely change regularly. You're going to need patience and regular contact to follow-up with the program people you do meet, and [hopefully] get quick early warning when that person is about to change. You're also going to need determination to be the squeaky persistent wheel. You may be one US$10M/year company clamouring for attention from a Microsoft employee drowning on 150+ emails a day who is responsible for a program with 100 companies like you. Managing the relationship to continue to get attention requires perseverance. If you can grow your business better through a technical partnership similar to the Zend PHP relationship, you will need to be prepared for a very focused meeting because you'll likely get one shot to get the point across. (Hint: Start with the punchline then keep things short and direct.)

In the end, do what makes sense for your customers. Join the Microsoft ISV program if it makes business sense. Use the materials that help your business grow and ignore the rest. Do it with your eyes wide open and your expectations set. Best of luck!

Open Source Business Practices and Conversion Rate Myths

[Update: 3 March 2009, 12:13] Added some more ideas here.

With the Sun Microsystem recent move to acquire MySQL AB, open source business models will be a topic of much discussion again. MySQL AB, like Red Hat, has always been one of the examples everyone points to for how an open source business should be run. One of the oft quoted statistics of the MySQL business is "one customer for every thousand users". This number is then quickly put into context as "probably too big" because MySQL is available in so many places that trying to count downloads and users becomes impossible. When JBoss was acquired by Red Hat, the publicly acknowledged conversion rates were 3% (JBoss) and 10% (Red Hat). People start making assumptions about business models based on driving downloads and user community size. And that's where the problem starts.

That's an order of magnitude difference. In a bricks-and-mortar world, business differences measured in a few percentage points are spectacular when comparing company ratios. In a digital world, where the cost of goods sold and marginal cost differences change, it doesn't seem right that we would be seeing orders of magnitude differences between companies for this type of ratio.

I participated in a recent informal (qualitative) survey around purchased support for Linux systems. [It was definitely NOT quantitatively or statistically significant. But anecdotal evidence can be interesting.] In operations of 100 servers or fewer, no one even considered buying support from their vendor for ANY of the servers. In operations of greater than 1000 servers, no one questioned buying support for ALL of their servers. Even "small" operations of 100 servers were still mission critical.

Somewhere in the order of magnitude difference in the server farm size, buying priorities change IT budget allocations. Maybe it has something to do with relative percentages of the budget spent on hardware/software/support versus headcount/expertise. Or with the cost of downtime to the business for a particular application environment. (A friend with a "small" server farm of ~100 servers told me recently they didn't hesitate to pay for JBoss support while migrating a critical application from a BEA Weblogic environment, but didn't consider paying support on the Linux servers themselves.) Or maybe it has something to do with the relative margins of the business. But I'm pretty sure the change in buying habit has more to do with the customers' business needs than the vendors' distribution practices.

Regular readers of this blog have heard me rail against the idea that open source is some sort of different business model. (Again, I'm not talking about collaborative software development in community here, but rather businesses that use such software.) It's definitely an area we need to go think about some more, figuring which software business ratios are significant and which practices to encourage.

MySQL and Sun

Sun Microsystems wants to acquire MySQL AB for US$1Billion. Stephen O'Grady (Redmonk) posted his always excellent deal analysis on his blog. I would urge you to have a read. (It also is a great collection of the relevant URLs.) I'll fit a few extra observations around it. Jonathan's blog post sets the tone for Sun, while Zack's post sets the MySQL perspective straight. But first, congratulations to Monty Widenius and David Axmark for their original vision, and to Mårten Mickos, Zack Urlocker, and Brian Aker and the rest of the team that has built so much value into MySQL AB. Congratulations also to Sun for having the vision to acquire MySQL.

Christensen is the first to point out in his presentations that what he originally called “disruptive technology” in The Innovator’s Dilemma was later observed to be a “disruptive business model” by Andy Grove during a presentation at Intel. (The book had already gone to print, and so we now have loads of technology companies running around thinking their technology is more important than their business models.)

Christensen models demonstrate that a disruptive business model generally begins with an inexpensive “inferior” technology offered at a lower price in a different margin business model that enables customers either to do something they’ve never been able to do or to avoid the expensive control point. The “inferior” technology matures as the business grows and eventually the business grows into mature markets (i.e. the business model is disruptive). Think Linux from undergraduate project in 1991 to the IBM and Red Hat/MSDW Wall Street keynotes at LinuxWorld in 2002. So too with MySQL.

Oracle hammered away at the message that MySQL was missing key features high-end relational databases needed to support mission critical applications. But MySQL is the Web’s database. It was created with a different vision and goal in mind, and enabled an entirely new group of customers to make it the “M” in LAMP. It is gaining the features needed to eventually allow it to be an Oracle replacement, but that isn’t the goal today, nor has it been the business model. This means that any way Oracle executives try to measure the database (transactions, scale out, etc.) or the company (units, revenue, etc.) will leave them scratching their heads. To Oracle’s credit, they quickly understood that it isn’t that MySQL is free or open source software that’s their [future] problem but the business models around it that are disquieting, and so adjust their rhetoric accordingly.

I raised questions about cultural mixing when Red Hat acquired JBoss, but I think it is less critical this time or rather my questions about the processes and values with respect to customers will be less of an issue. MySQL should be a separate enough line of business for the foreseeable future.

I think Stephen’s analysis from the Sun angle is perfect. Sun continues to evolve its solution to customers to enable it to be the heart of the Web. Owning a word in the customer’s mind is the pinnacle of marketing excellence. But complex network computing solutions aren’t quite as simple as “Kleenex”, “Xerox” or “Escalator”.

IBM evolved to be a company that offered their customers all the technology choice AND the expertise to knit it together into a coherent unique customized solution. It doesn’t matter how imperfectly true that statement may or may not be -- but rather what customers perceive it to be. That doesn’t mean IBM isn’t happy to push an IBM-centric technology agenda, but it’s the customer relationship that’s important (since they’re the people with the money and the choice) and IBM focuses on ensuring they have the breadth of product offering to best map their customers’ self-selected heterogeneous needs. They are no longer the “Selectric” company and have even evolved with the networked IT world to be more than the “mainframe” company. IBM continues to build their message around open systems, standards, and open source, which suits their customer’s heterogeneous decisions. IBM is the “data center” company.

Sun is also evolving its message and its offerings to suit their customers heterogeneous web-based applications needs. They’re building relationships with IBM, Microsoft, the Linux community, and now they’re acquiring MySQL. Sun is in a position to deliver a heterogeneous technology base to their customers’ heterogeneous needs and to shape a marketing message that began as technology slogans around “the network is the computer” and “the dot in Dot Com” into a customer centric idea like the “Web” company. That doesn’t mean they won’t meet severe competition from IBM for which idea word is more important in customers’ minds, but they’re still in the game after being counted out too many times in the past.

Open Source Business Innovation and the Subscription Model

Stephen O'Grady has a great post (as always) on how companies using free and open source software in their customer solutions can make more money for their investors.  Companies like MySQL, JBoss, and Red Hat, and now Canonical have all developed subscription offerings based on value added networks.  There's good commentary from Javier Soltero (Hyperic CEO) and Zack Urlocker (Product VP at MySQL) as well — companies that are exactly engaged in this business.  One of the business model innovations from the FOSS world that often goes unsung is exactly this subscription network model. 

Traditional software companies have dreamed of "subscription revenues" for at least the last 7-8 years.  These packaged proprietary software companies all claimed to want the smoothing of their revenue curves and its attendant predictability.  They all speak in terms of "regular utility payments like your cable or phone or water", as if they actually want to be treated like commodity regulated utilities.  Of course they don't want to be REGULATED like essential services.  Of course they also don't want their pricing structures to reflect commodity pricing because of the unique value their technology represents.   ("Commodity software?  That's what open source is!")  So they're left innovating small variations on maintenance and support agreements marketed as "Enterprise Agreements".  And in large enterprises, these often end in Faustian deals negotiated with the friendly Draconian procurement departments.

Companies using FOSS in their solutions are delivering on a real subscription for value model.  In each case they make it easier to use their solution (convenience = value) and easier to derive more value out of the solution (better ROI and better enabled new business opportunities), not simply easier to pay for it.  Their networks each provide unique product related service beyond "support and maintenance". 

These network subscription models also have another side that perfectly fits the "conversion problem" faced by so many open source software providers.  [Insert classic Marten Mickos time/money trade-off quote about the early/late community here.]  Subscription services are something that might scale well in the DOWNWARDS direction to enable more community users to become company customers.   

Traditional packaged proprietary companies invariably end up caught when trying to reach new "low end" markets.  (And that's when they even perceive they're missing a market opportunity that will evolve into their technology space or profitability profiles over time.)  Their only perceived option is to hobble existing functional products, but there's no easy way to do this from an engineering perspective (most of the time), and there's invariably an internecine war fought in product marketing over market cannibalization and lost profits.  See any of the struggles Microsoft has gone through in emerging markets or in the Vista menu of price/function options for examples of this. 

By designing the network offering with a little forethought to this problem, a branded scaled set of offerings can be put into place that may well serve the low end user today to gain a small value add revenue stream scaled across the thousands of users that are not yet customers, will scale as these new customers evolve, but can also serve the existing larger enterprise customer base.

It's not that traditional packaged/proprietary companies couldn't think about such businesses, but their existing margins and profit profiles don't typically allow them to work this way.  New companies with open source software focused solutions have the advantage here, necessity being the Mother of invention and all. 

Open Source Business 3 + 3

Mikko Puhakka began a challenge on his blog yesterday to list three success factors and three things to avoid when building businesses using free and open source software.  He then tagged five of us to jump on. (Mårten Mickos has already responded.)  So, here goes based on what I've seen and done: 

Three ways open source software can benefit your business:

• Open source software is a great way to enable innovation on your platform.  We all know there are shrinking orders of magnitude differences between the number of people that use your software, to the number that report bugs, down to the number that deeply contribute BUT those contributions can be golden in keeping the creativity and ideas flowing, as well as just plain brilliant direct additions to your product space.  There is no predictability as to when such contributions arrive, but they won't arrive if you don't make the software available. 
• Your community of users is an incredible asset to spread the word.  It's not just about people using your software for free and telling other people about it, but rather the fact that developers will start taking it to work and it will sneak in under the floorboards.  This is how the PC revolution started.  It's why Visual Basic is still huge.  It's how the Linux revolution happened.  So too with MySQL.  And then the CIO discovers it and they need to treat it as a proper product asset just like any other asset on which the business depends.
• Use open source software to rapidly develop new product complements for your solution.  It helps amortize the cost of development/support/maintenance across the community of developers/users/customers/partners/competitors.  You must, however, be a good community player. 
  

And three "ideas" to avoid when thinking about open source software and your business:

• Just because you published the source code does not make your product any more remarkable to your customers.  At the end of the day, you have a business to run, and that means customers need solutions to their problems.  A mediocre solution won't become "better", or the wrong solution won't suddenly fit the situation, because the source code is now available.
• Understand your value proposition and your core competency, and choose your license wisely: if your entire core competency that enables your core value proposition to your customers is embodied in the software, DON'T publish it in such a way that you give away the company.  I have seen a situation in the security world where the software solution was everything.  If they had made the software available under the wrong license, they would have essentially given away their future growth.
• Just because you published the source code does not mean the world is going to work for you for free.  It's been a while since we saw this level of naivety with the original Mozilla launch from Netscape, but I'm betting there are still a lot of business people that don't understand open source software economics that still have old ignorant opinions. 
  

So whom to tag next?  I'll reach for:

• Michael Tiemann (an early and original player),
• Manel Sarasa, OpenBravo CEO (keeping with growing interesting companies in other parts of the planet meme),   
• Jonathan Schwartz (because a big company opinion is always good to have, and Jonathan is nothing if not original in his thinking and his willingness to push the envelop),
• Stephen O'Grady (to get the analyst opinion in early), and
• David Skok (to get an interesting investor opinion)

Okay.  I can't stop here.  Three more opinions I think would be important to have:

• Javier Soltero, Hyperic CEO (because like Manel he too is in the throws of carefully building a company),
• Taiwen Jiang "D.J." (because China is coming)
• Amy Jiang (because China is coming, and Ubuntu is just plain important)

And Christopher Kuhn at OTRS jumped on board as well. 

OSBC 2007: Mårten Mickos Keynote

Mårten Mickos invariable gives great keynotes.  This year's keynote at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, "Why Freedom Makes a Better Business Model" (PDF 220K), was no different.

The joy of a Mickos keynote is that he actually wants to educate the audience, sharing his experience, and realizes that the audience didn't come to hear a sponsoring company product pitch.  (There is exactly one slide in the deck where he talks directly about a new offering from MySQL, BUT he does it in the context of how the company is exploring the business model.)  Mårten shares his experiences and observations from MySQL around freedom as a business enabler, innovation, the network effects enabled by using free software as part of the business model, as well as the challenges.   All in 22 short slides that mostly stand on their own.  Enjoy!

[If someone knows of a recording of the talk online, please send the link along.]

Unshakeable MySQL

Matt Aslett interviewed Mårten Mickos (MySQL CEO) and during the interview, Mårten admitted that Oracle is hinting that they will release "Unbreakable MySQL" and essentially offer support for MySQL more cheaply.  If Oracle is actually considering this, then they still really really don't get it: 

• As bad an idea as "Unbreakable Linux" might be, it is at least a product complement to Oracle's own product.  "Unbreakable MySQL" is a competing product, and not even Oracle's applications business would benefit from a "less expensive database" unless Oracle actually wants to move all its applications to MySQL and completely destroy their Oracle database business.
• The actual MySQL Network offering is much more than mere support, so Oracle would be offering an inferior product, instead of a competing product.  This is not about offering an Oracle-tuned Red Hat Linux.  If I had to choose between Oracle and MySQL, I know which set of engineers I would want supporting my MySQL Cluster high-availability environment. 
• With today's announcement they are even more price competitive than they've ever been.

MySQL actually made two announcements today.  MySQL has recorded their best year ever in their 11 year history:

• They've seen record growth in enterprise subscriptions and incredible marque customers. 
• They've released new technology around high-availability clusters and their pluggable architecture.
• Their community of users continues to grow as strongly, feeding their customer base. 

Zack Urlocker (MySQL VP Marketing) started the week with a post on disruptive business models in general, and followed up today with a post on MySQL's own business model and its inventiveness.  MySQL AB is a company that deeply understands that open source software is an excellent business tool, and how to best apply it.  They understand that the software and its source code are a great customer engagement mechanism, and that the product they sell to solve customer problems is much more than just the database software. 

Congratulations, Mårten, Zack, and the rest of the great team at MySQL AB.  Well done!

Microsoft and MySQL: A Thought Experiment

[Update (18-Jan-2007, 15:47 PDT): This article was translated into Hebrew.  I also continue the thought experiment here.]

I was interviewed by Scott Mace for Open Source Conversations on Monday morning.  In one part of the conversation, I created a thought experiment on some of the more creative things Microsoft could be doing with open source software to customer and business benefit.  This idea is way outside the box, but then that's exactly where they need to be at this point in history.  (As I said earlier: culture comes from the top, and if you expect your employees to get outside the box then you need to be their first.) 

I thought I would explain the experiment more carefully here, as I sometimes get going in conversation and I have no idea how coherent it may come across "live".  I can also better fill in some of the details.

Microsoft needs to start to explore open source software business processes better than the minor experiments they have done to date.  Steve Ballmer also wants to license the company's intellectual property.  So here's a way to do that using free software as the hook. 

1. Start by releasing the source code for SQL Server.  This is an opportunity to use an important but not critical product revenue stream.  [Yes, I do understand the revenue growth SQL Server 2005 represented — Microsoft readers need to keep reading and stop the knee jerk response.] 
2. Repackage the present product licensing into a subscription for SQL Server Network^TM, similar to the subscription-based support, maintenance, tuning offerings from Red Hat Network and MySQL Network. 
3. The key understanding here is that today the value of SQL Server to the customer ISN'T the source code, but rather the solution it provides. The value Microsoft provides isn't the source code, but all the testing, packaging, support and maintenance.  You don't NEED to drop the price of SQL Server Network below the existing price for the shrink wrap binaries.  Experiment.  Explore the conversation with key customers. 
   
4. Use the GPLv2 as the license.  GPLv3 is unproven (although I have confidence it will be great if still a bit controversial when it's delivered).  This is business conservative.  You can bet IBM DB2 engineers and Oracle engineers won't be looking at the code any time soon for [stark-raving shrieking] fear of product taint.
5. Construct a patent grant that allows any patents in the space to be used royalty free for database related work released under the GPLv2.  This enables the software to flow within the database community under the GPL appropriately.  The GPL actually becomes the brake on the technology slipping outside of the database arena.  Microsoft is still able to license this technology anyway it chooses in other arenas, or to people trying to "close" the source. 
6. Someone in a developing economy is going to promise Blue Hat SQL Server the next day.  There are several responses to this.  First, if you were betting your business data on SQL Server, would you buy support from Blue Hat or Microsoft — the people that actually develop and test it?  Second, understand that MySQL AB (the company) doesn't seem to be worried to much about "clones" — ask yourself why.  Third, Microsoft still controls the trademark.  Fourth, understand that the developing economy wasn't interested in shipping a lot of hard currency out of the economy for the privilege of using SQL Server anyway.  They were going to use Postgres or MySQL.  At least you're back in the game here, preparing for a future developed economy. 
7. It's an awesome way to find new SQL Server developers.  You will see changes and bug fixes.  Yes, the ratios of brilliance to cruft involve orders of magnitude, but there is no time-line for when good things arrive.  We've seen brilliance arrive in the first 24 hours on other projects.  This is a much better way to find future talent than interviewing.  It's certainly how MySQL has grown its development team. Managing the inbound contribution flow is easier than you think legally. 

Now this is where it gets interesting.  At some point, in the next 24 months, someone is going to try a "mashup" of MySQL and SQL Server.  There will be some SQL Server algorithm or function that's just plain too interesting to NOT try to use in MySQL.  Depending upon what it is, MySQL has a pluggable architecture that encourages such experimentation.   A large part of the MySQL install base lives on Windows. 

The licenses for such an experiment are compatible. 

But MySQL has an interesting portion of its business that depends upon its ability to license MySQL using something other than the GPL.  For this DB mashup to be anything other than an interesting unsupported experiment, MySQL would need to be able to license that code from Microsoft. 

MySQL has an excellent history and track record of licensing technology.  This situation would be no different.  If anything, it's Microsoft that would be under the gun to demonstrate it has the ability to boldly license where it has never licensed before now.  But intellectual property licensing it is, and it's enabled by free and open source software.

Of course, the reverse could also happen.  And Microsoft too licenses in all manner of intellectual property.  Again, the mashup is highly uninteresting unless Microsoft had sufficient rights to the MySQL bits to package as a product.  Makes you think.  There are lots of opportunities here.  It's good for customers.  It's good for shareholders. 

Based on current open source culture at Microsoft, I see at least six show stoppers in the seven items listed above.  That's why it's just a thought experiment.  But you have to admit, it's a great thought experiment.