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Sun Microsystems

Can Sun Make MySQL Pay? 273

AlexGr submitted a nice followup to last weeks billion dollar Sun buyout of MySQL. He notes that "Jeff Gould presents an interesting analysis in Interop News: How can an open source software company with $70 million or so in revenue and no profits to speak of be worth $1 billion? That's the question Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has been trying to answer since he bought MySQL last week. Like most commercial open source companies, MySQL makes money by enticing well-heeled customers to pay for an enterprise version of its product that comes with more bells and whistles than the community version it gives away for free. It appears though that the additional features of the Enterprise version are not enough to compensate for the revenue-destroying effects of the free Community alternative. What else could explain the surprising fact that MySQL has quietly filled out its open source portfolio with a closed source proprietary management software tool known as Enterprise Software Monitor?"

Comment Re:Moo (Score 1) 676

You raise an interesting question. How does one go about proving that something hasn't been proven? If there are a known, small number of arguments for a proposition, then one need only to refute each of them, and his task is completed. However, if there are a sufficiently large number of arguments for a proposition such that to refute each of them or even to look at each of them in detail is so unwieldy as to be impractical, then the question becomes more difficult.

There is a second method which one might use, which is to simply prove the proposition false. But in this case that too would be impractical for an individual to accomplish.

So how does one go about doing disproving the existence of the proof? This is a question that has puzzled me for quite some time. If you could help I'd really be grateful.

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