Sun Microsystems has been acquired by Oracle Corporation (after it looked like Sun would be part of the IBM stable). Of particular interest to many bloggers and corporate Internet Application developers is what will happen with MySQL, the GNU General Public License (GPL) database engine.
A Bit about MySQL
MySQL was acquired by Sun in February 2008 which basically gave the rights of MySQL intellectual property (e.g. documentation) to Sun (which has now been procured by Oracle). MySQL is distribute under GPL therefore is available to download, install and use without financial cost.
MySQL is very widely used particularly for Internet Applications including search engines, content management systems and blogging platforms. High-traffic sites such as Wordpress, Google, Wikipedia and Facebook use MySQL. MySQL is equally popular for individual and enterprise use due to its scalability, reliability and ease of use.
Why Would Oracle Want MySQL?
The question many MySQL stakeholders have is just why Oracle would want MySQL and how it fits in with Oracle’s current Database products. After all, MySQL is licensed under GPL whereas most of Oracle’s products are specifically licensed to Oracle Corporation. All Oracle has said so far about the aquisition of MySQL is ‘MySQL will be an addition to existing suite of database products, which already includes Oracle Database 11g, TimesTen, Berkely open source database and the open source transactional storage engine, InnoDB’. It’s still early days in the acquisition of Sun by Oracle so we are sure to see more of the MySQL product strategy being shared by Oracle in the near future.
What does the Rest of The World Think about Oracle MySQL?
There is much chatter on blogs, the media and Internet in general (both positive and negative) about the concerns and likely fate of MySQL. Here are a few for your reading pleasure:
I’m certainly not about to turn my back on MySQL. I think it is a great database engine and constinue to recommend it to all setting up web applications and blogs (such as Wordpress).
