OpenSource Skunkworks

April 13th, 2008

Jonathan Schwartz:

The CIO responded categorically with “we don’t run MySQL, we run [name withheld to protect the proprietary].” The CISO said, “We can’t just let developers download software off the net, you know, we’ve got regulation and security to worry about.” The CTO smiled. Everyone else appeared to be sitting on their hands. I was going to leave it at that. Thanks for the business.

Until a (diplomatically) assertive Sun sales rep piped up, “Um… no, I connected with a buddy of mine over at MySQL, and had him check - you’ve downloaded MySQL more than 1,300 times in the last twelve months.”

One of the great open source business questions seems to be - how do you turn these downloads which nobody but the developers know about and convert them into sales?

P.S. Does anyone think of this clip ever when hearing Jonathan’s name?

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