Jonathan Schwartz’s Keynote at the 2008 MySQL Conference can be played directly in your browser or you can download the 147MB .wmv file. (Please do not download the movie on the conference wireless system!)

I finally realized who Jonathan Schwartz reminds me of:

That’s right, comedian and magician Penn Jillette.

Schwartz started by saying, “enough of this free software stuff!” It got lots of laughs. He started to talk about Sun’s agenda, and mentioned that MySQL and Sun had similar values, as well as similar dysfunctions as well — particularly that each engineer has his/her own opinion.

But Schwartz goes on in earnest to say “The future will be defined by free….and freedom,” that “freedom is a price tag *and* a philosophy.” I agree completely.

He sees “the network is a social utility” much like heat and electricity are utilities. His talk somewhat reminded me of the Free as in Water post I made in June 2007.

He finished up by comparing the Amazon River to Sun — The Amazon River is really ecosystem of many rivers — 10,000 smaller rivers. Sun is really an ecosystem of many communities — Java, Open Office, Solaris, Open Solaris, MySQL, and so on. I was very pleased to hear that he feels that community is not only inclusive of all users, paid or otherwise, but that the ecosystem cannot exist without each part of that “smaller river” contributing to the whole. And *that* is Sun’s agenda, to continue to build that river, so if one part has problems, the entire river is not damaged.

Also, Sun has a quote that “innovation happens elsewhere,” so it is crucial to build those bridges (mixed metaphor unintended) so that Sun can support and enable the innovation. In a world where diversity is key, this is an excellent message.

Bravo, Jonathan!