When asked if Oracle is doing a better job with MySQL than he did, Mickos said, "I would tend to think I was a wonderful CEO and I did everything absolutely right. And we did it very well. The plans we had, they [Oracle] continued to execute on it. The long-term version, they are continuing to execute on it. They are reaching new heights with the technology, exactly as we would have done on our own. But they are really doing it. Many times when technology is acquired by somebody they sort of stop developing it or development slows down. But it hasn't -- they are moving along on the same ambitious plan we had three years ago, four years ago."

Mickos is moving along too, with , maker of an open source cloud-building platform. "We are trying to build one of the most significant software companies of this era," he said.

After leaving Sun, Mickos sent an email to friends "asking them, 'What's bigger than open source?'" Cloud computing was the answer. With the proliferation of , laptops, iPads, Amazon Kindles, even medical devices and electrical meters, a new style of computing is needed, he said.

"If you continue as today with dedicated servers for every application," Mickos said, "the planet will be full of servers and there will be no room for humans. Well, I'm exaggerating now. But they would take up too much space, too much production, too much electricity, too much management. The only way to deal with this increase in computing is to make the compute resources fungible and pool them into one place so that any compute cycle can be put into the use of any application at any time."

Amazon, despite a serious , is "doing an amazing job" furthering cloud computing, Mickos said.