There are 12 million reasons why MySQL chief Marten Mickos isn't afraid his rivals in the database software industry will overtake him.
MySQL AB is the world's fastest growing database vendor—one that committed itself to "open-source" innovation in 1995. Mickos has been building the company since 2001, and the results have been so successful that in 2008, Sun Microsystems Inc. acquired the business for $1 billion. MySQL shares its source code for free, giving programmers everywhere permission to debug, add features or modify the product before redistributing it. Its high-profile customers include Facebook and Google, and it makes money by selling commercial licenses and offering support and services. MySQL's collaborative community now consists of 12 million coders, who typically work for no money at all. Mickos, now a senior vice president at Sun, spoke with us about the open-source movement.
Is there a limit to what outside innovation is good for? Is it safe to assume that people contributing that way are usually adapting existing products—rather than submitting plans for entirely new offerings?
The depth of the contributions varies by product and situation. The deeper you go into the core of the database engine, the more difficult it is for somebody to contribute because it takes five years to learn. If you build something on the outskirts of the kernel—some tool or function that you add on top of it—then that is much easier because there's less risk that you will mess up the whole product. But something great can emerge out of many tiny-looking contributions. It's analogous to how, in economic development, microloans can have such a huge impact—each entry is minimal, but when you multiply it by the number of people who are involved, it grows massive. It starts getting a momentum of its own.
What role can MySQL play in focusing all those efforts? If you put a specific problem out there, would the community solve it for you?
If we go out and pose a problem, chances are somebody will react favorably to it. Statistically, it's likely we'll find someone who has a genuine interest.
And just what drives those contributors, as far as you can tell? Why do they do it?
Those who contribute to us are as selfish as anybody else. There's rarely any charitable aspect of this. Their No. 1 reason is that they are contributing so that they will get, in return, a better functioning product. They are looking after their own business interests. No. 2, and almost equally important, is their desire to build a reputation for themselves. We will publicly announce what they have done. So they get great recognition for being smart engineers and brilliant programmers. That gives them better job offers, and it gives them a feeling of usefulness in the world. They get a lot of emotional and practical benefits. And they have an incentive to make contributions of high quality because they know that others will be examining it; it's a Darwinian system and only the best innovations survive.
What about the in-house innovation you do? Have you found the secret for building that function into the structure of a business?
We don't have an innovation team or a group or a chief innovation officer. Innovation is so central to us that everybody does it. Our innovations are not meeting-centric. We prefer trial and error, getting scrutiny and commentary from everyone. We do have five people whose only role is to engage with the community and activate them, listen to them and get them going. This team has put up Web sites where they congregate and share their code with each other.
Aren't you worried that one of those anonymous people will piggyback on your code and start a business that is aimed at crushing you?
Let them try. I'm so confident in our agility, our speed of action and the strength of our culture that even if someone studied us in tiny detail, I don't think they could really match us. They wouldn't really get it. Even if I showed you my DNA, you wouldn't know how to become me. We've shown them our code, and nobody has been able to measure up against what we have. Why is that?
Why is it that a growing number of companies are enamored with building their own DNA out in the open?
Some people believe that open sourcing is a panacea. They say, "We'll open-source this and something will magically happen on its own." That's just completely wrong. The only way to get engagement from a community is to engage in that community yourself.