By Emmett Plant
Editor, LinuxToday
During The Bazaar, I had the opportunity to speak with a lot of
really interesting people about very interesting companies and
projects. One of these companies is Sleepycat Software, the developers
of Berkeley DB. With ten employees in three different states,
Sleepycat brings down the Open Source ideology to a small-business
level, and they’ve been growing ever since. I got the opportunity
to speak to Michael Olson,
Sleepycat’s Vice President of Marketing after the show, and we
discussed Open Source license strategy, as well as Sleepycat’s
focus on the embedded market.
So, Mike; Tell me about Sleepycat.
“The product line was launched as an academic project in 1991 at
UC Berkeley, and Berkeley DB (the database engine) was distributed
with 4.4BSD. The people who did the work on that were myself, Margo
Seltzer and Oz Yigit. By 1996, it was being used in lots of Open
Source and commercial projects and products. In 1996, the ones that
made a difference to us were sendmail, OpenLDAP (the LDAP server
from University of Michigan) and Kerberos. In 1996, Netscape was
about to launch a commercial version of an LDAP server based on the
University of Michigan code, and approached us for new features and
commercial support. That was the genesis of the company. Netscape
was our first customer. We did the 2.0 release as a result of that
contract, and began distributing it commercially immediately. Since
then, we’ve done about three commercial releases of the software a
year. The current release version is 3.0. Basically, we’re growing
fast. Lots of paying commercial customers use Berkeley DB in their
products, and lots of Open Source customers distribute Berkeley DB
for free.”
Berkeley DB is Open Source, isn’t it?
“Yes. There are lots of different open source licenses.
Sleepycat’s license permits free use of the software if the
application is Open Source. We use a modified BSD license.
Proprietary applications need to buy a commercial license to
distribute Berkeley DB.”
How did you come up with the name Sleepycat?
“The first year that we were working on the code for NS, we
didn’t have office space, so we were working from home. Keith and
Margo have lots of cats, so they were programming long hard hours.
The cats would sleep on top of the monitors, so they whimsically
decided to name the company Sleeycat Software. We also figure if
Yahoo! can get away with that name, it should be okay for us to get
away with Sleepycat.”
What’s the direction of the company?
“We are right now privately held with the 10 employees we have.
On all the measures that businesses look at, we’re growing well.
We’re going to continue doing what we’ve been doing for embedded
database customers. We’re also real excited about a new market that
we’re working in; real embedded systems. People who ship products
for your cellphone or your palmtop computer write on OS’es like
VXworxs from Wind River and eCos from Cygnus. We believe there is a
huge maket for databases on those platforms, and that big SQL
servers are the wrong answer. We’re investing engineering and
marketing dollars in getting Berkeley DB into that market.”
So, this means that anyone doing Open Source development for
the embedded market can use Berkeley DB for free.
“Yes, we’ll have the same license terms for the server market we
currently service.”
A lot of companies, especially in the Open Source world,
have preconceived notions about their company that they would
rather not have. Do you fight against any of this ‘conventional
wisdom?’
“The one thing that we struggle against is that we shipped
Berkeley DB 1.85 from the university. That code is very well-known
and widely used. When people hear the name Berkeley DB, they often
think of the academic software. The commercial version does
transactions, supports lots of users, and very large databases, and
many people don’t realize that it’s different from 1.85.”
What’s the best part about working for Sleepycat
Software?
“I love working for a small company where we control our own
destiny. We have an absolutely A-team of people. We’re small, but
we’ve got really great employees. The product is very popular and
so good that in many ways it sells itself. We get a lot of business
by word-of-mouth.”
What’s the worst part?
“Being a small company means that there is a ton of stuff to do,
and there aren’t enough people to do all of the work, so we have to
be careful in what we sign up for and what we agree to do. We stay
brutally focused on what we do, we can’t afford to lose our
focus.”
What do you guys do in your offtime?
“Margo Seltzer, who’s the CTO, is a Harvard Professor and black
belt, so that’s what she does with her spare time. Keith Bostic
(CEO) develops the nvi editor, and runs a mailing list called
/dev/null. I mountain bike, and I like skiing, and I have a couple
kids, so I make lunches and wipe noses.”
What did you think of The Bazaar?
“We were disappointed at the turnout. We expected a lot more
people than showed up. The total attendance was a lot different
than what we were told. For us, it was a successful show, because
we met up with you and analysts and other members of the press. We
got the word out about Sleepycat. We had several very interesting
strategic meetings with people we may work with in the future, so
it was nice everyone was in one place.”
Thank you Mike, and I look forward to seeing Berkeley DB in
the embedded market, as well as a regular cowboy on the Open Source
frontier.