2009/04/25

3 UK attacks churn with disruptive free Skype offer - Rethink Wireless

3 UK attacks churn with disruptive free Skype offer - Rethink Wireless

Skype is offering any of its customers free Skype to Skype calls (and instant messaging), this works for pay as you go and contract phones.

Currently phones must be bought from Skype, but in summer they'll also allow any unlocked phones with a 3 SIM.

This may not make 3 any money, but it's likely to attract new customers who 3 can then hopefully sell more services to later.

2009/04/20

Oracle and MySQL further thoughts

Oracle produce a high-end database, they already have an open source database Berkeley DB which they obtained by purchasing Sleepycat Software.

Oracle also owns Innobase Oy who develop InnoDB which is the transactional database used by MySQL.

It's unlikely Oracle would kill MySQL which is the main user of Innobase's products, therefore it's more likely that Innobase and MySQL will be combined in some way and both sit under the Oracle banner.

Sun are already optimising MySQL for Solaris, Oracle are likely to promote efforts in these areas so Solaris is THE OS for databases.

This can only be a good tbing for MySQL.

Oracle to Buy Sun - Yahoo! Finance

Oracle to Buy Sun - Yahoo! Finance

Sun and Oracle have entered into a definative agreement for Oracle to purchase Sun.

Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. This values Sun at about $7.4bn.

Oracle can utilise Sun's Solaris and Java platforms (and may even keep the hardware business going so they have an optimised hardware base which will allow Oracle appliances etc.). However the future of MySQL has not been mentioned and may not be so rosy.

Oracle may well drop MySQL and leave it to the community to keep going.