Sun's CTO, Greg Papadopoulos is quoted in a very nice article in the New York Times that is called "Thinking Outside The Company's Box"
"How to resolve the tension between make and buy varies from one organization to the next. Sun, for instance, has created many important technologies in-house, including a family of microprocessors based on an original design and the Java language, popular with programmers.
Yet even companies that maintain their own powerhouse research-and-development units are increasingly aware that valuable ideas can sprout anywhere. For instance, Sun broke with its home-grown tradition this month, when it paid $1 billion for MySQL, which makes the most popular open-source database program.
Sun needs a database program to support its line of powerful server computers, which can be optimized to work with MySQL. To create a viable database from scratch might take Sun 10 years, Mr. Papadopoulos figures. Instead, Sun gets a vibrant product overnight — and immediate contributions from scores of
database engineers around the globe.
Having spent some time with the MySQL folks at a Sun off-site, I am extremely impressed with the MySQL team. These are very interesting times at Sun and in the computer industry. Thanks to npg for sending me this article.
