At the MySQL conference today I had a chance to chat with Sun Microsystems' CEO, Jonathan Schwartz (pictured in the centre, photo by James Duncan Davidson). We covered several topics including the MySQL integration, the subject du jour, free/open software, utility computing, Eclipse and Open Office versus Google Docs. The room was very noisy and crowded with journalists and other executives from Sun, MySQL and Zmanda.

"Now I can have a discussion with a Fortune 500 company about putting MySQL on commercial deployment and we offer a very different brand value and services capability than MySQL did. So that's a synergy that we already begun to see. We already closing deals today that we would not otherwise close if MySQL has been standalone... The [the acquisition] had a profound impact on Sun brand... In many parts of the world the MySQL brand was as strong or stronger than Sun's. So it introduces us to a new community, a new audience, a new set of developers", says Sun Microsystems' CEO, Jonathan Schwartz.

But how is Sun going to make sure it keeps the MySQL team alive and kicking? By behaving like a student!

"We are a really tiny company going against very big companies... We are a company that was born out of the innovation of students and as many things what we're turning back into".

Is Sun ready to join Eclipse? Maybe

"It's up to Rich [Green, VP of Sun's Software group] to make the decision... We're really happy with the download volumes we're seeing with Netbeans. They are accelerating rapidly. What we've seen with the members of the community as they like Netbeans is so fast, that it is comparatively so light weight. We could make a lot of progress, very quickly go after a target, hit in and then move on. But on the other hand we recognise there is a big community with Eclipse and there are a lot of very important partners and we work with them...".

Can Sun really continue to give away the hardware to anyone who wants one to try it? They've got a lot of capital to spare!

"The programme more than pays for itself. Because what happens is you give somebody a 12 tera-byte thumper and then they come back and buy 10 48 TB thumper. We give to anyone who asks but you have to prove that you are capable of paying. We just don't send out to every 9 year old who got access to the Internet... we're just loaning you intellectual property... We have a lot of capital, so we could use that capital to introduce customers to Sun".

Did Sun miss the boat on utility computing? Yep.

"We went after the high performance computing community. Which is the hardest community to go after because you have all kind of security issues in the U.S. to address... We also targeted a very esoteric marketplace, which is high-end fortune 100 businesses building large scale super computers. Amazon went after the low end, went after the developer community. Almost all of the clouds that are out there are our customers".

On Cloud computing:

"The definition of a cloud is also changing...The cloud is just a new word for network computing. We had that for awhile... eBay has a wonderful cloud. Salesforce, Google, Amazon... that's never going to stop".

Will Sun have a cloud too? Yep again.

"Absolutely! We offer update services today. We offer provisioning services, download services. Those are all forms of network computing. Do we offer developer services, not yet. And I think we'll likely will. But again, I don't think there's going to be a big market in just providing core infrastructure. It's tough to make money there... Will be going to deliver rich technologies which are back-ended by our cloud".

The business model for open source works and saves time to companies that have money!

"I'm not worried about making money out of free software. There's a very bright line between those who want to spend time versus money and those who spent money versus time. I had lunch with Mark Zuckenberg a few weeks back and I asked him why picked MySQL 4 years ago in his dorm room... and he said because it was free... 4 years later they decided they have more money than time now and they wanted to begin transitioning the people they had working on MySQL maintenance to do higher value work... So they've gone to commercial contract with MySQL. In that instance it was a 4 years transition. In some instances, Nokia-Siemens, Google and others it may have been more rapid than that".

Sun's CEO does not think Google Docs competes with Open Office and sees bridges between the 2. I disagree on the first premise.

"We have about 100 million users for Open Office right now. One of the services those users have asked for is they'd like to hit save and have it saved on the network. And there's no reason why they couldn't save it to Google Docs. Simultaneously, once you have a Google App open why wouldn't you want to open an Open Office document. So I think they are additive. I don't think they're diluted to one another. I think that Eric (Schmidt, Google's CEO and former Sun's CTO) shares that belief... So Open Office is downloaded a million copies a week and it accelerated since Google introduced Google Docs".