> Actually, this is simplistic. MySQL AB is a commercial vendor.
> MySQL AB had money before it started generating money. Pots and
> pots of money, from dotcom speculators. We don't really know
> whether they are generating money at all. They've just sucked in a
> whole lot more financier money.

Actually, we do, if we assume news reports can be believed.

If I'm not mistaken, MySQL AB finds its roots as T.c.X, and was
founded in 1995. It was profitable from 1996 to 2000, receiving small
funding from 'angels'. (Note that Monty copied mSQL as late as 1997,
so in the first years T.c.X. did something else.) In November 2001 it
receives a few million series A funding; typically a company has
already reached about $1 million in revenues by that time.

The investment is used to further build up a sales force and the
total workforce reaches some 100 people soon after the series A
funding. Probably the company dips into losses as a result.

Revenues double each year after that: $2 million in 2001, $4 millon
in 2002, $10 million in 2003, $20 million in 2004 and $40 million in
2005. Additional funding series B ($18 mln) is attracted in 2003 to
cover the losses.

In the press around the third, series C round of funding (again $18
mln), it gets mentioned that MySQL has been profitable for the last
two quarters. So the funding is needed for battles ahead.

Those battles are Oracle, us and two other VC backed companies:
Ingres and EnterpriseDB.

Ingres has an estimated $25 million in revenues and the VC behind it
is committed to invest some $10 million per year to drive it forward;
it can also make use of the CA infrastructure. On the downside, they
do not have a community around their product at all and need to do
the hefty lifting all by themselves.

EnterpriseDB got some $7 million to build a business from scratch. So
far it looks a repeat of Great Bridge, burning through money without
getting through at the customer level. Estimated revenues < $200K.
Somehow Postgres is hard to sell.

As Ann has pointed out, the DB market is > $10,000 million and in
terms of sales revenue there is room for us all. However, we are all
competing for the same mindshare, and the same "new workloads".

Mindshare is scarce and money buys publicity. Let's not forget that
InterBase lost out to Sybase around 1990 essentially because the
latter was quicker to play the publicity card.

Paul