The acquisition of MySQL AB, the people behind MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database, by Sun Microsystems earlier this year was not taken to very kindly by the open source community, in spite of the recent support that Sun has shown to open source technologies. Oracle’s (almost complete) buy-out of Sun Microsystems now has everyone wondering about the future of MySQL, especially with Oracle’s poor reputation in the open source space.
MySQL is estimated to have a more than 3 million installations worldwide, including those licensed under GPL. MySQL is present behind the scenes of thousands of very popular websites/companies today, including Facebook, Google and YouTube. Oracle is the world’s most widely used enterprise database system, and is being increasingly threatened by the popularity of MySQL. In this scenario, what does the buyout of Sun, and hence MySQL, imply for the millions of users of MySQL worldwide?
First of all, the current version of MySQL is distributed under GPL, which means that Oracle cannot kill it outright. It may stop support and development on it, but would this really matter? A majority of the existing patches have been developed by the community of users, as also most of the innovation. Online forums and interfaces are generally able to provide the support required by most users.
Oracle may stop development and support, but the development could still be forked to continue development. Of course, in this case, the product would have to be renamed due to trademark issues, but for a credible product like MySQL, a change in name would probably not matter much. A community developed branch, MariaDB, which has all the features of MySQL and was put together by some of the original creators of MySQL, is one such example.
It is possible that Oracle may sell MySQL to a third party because of anti-trust laws. Oracle does, after all, own the world’s best selling database platform, and owning two best-sellers in the top 5 could be a calling card for lawsuits against monopolistic competition. In this case, how things pan out will depend on who ultimately ends up owning it.
However, what will most probably happen is that Oracle will keep MySQL, provide support and development, and provide features that will make it easy for a user to quickly upgrade to the Oracle database platform. It will also possibly monetize the popularity of MySQL by developing proprietary support tools that offer value-add at a price. In addition, with a giant like Oracle at the helm, MySQL in particular, and open source in general, will surely find greater acceptance among all those large corporations that currently shy away from open source.
There is a very small chance that the shareholders of Sun, due to meet on July 16 for a vote, will strike down the merger despite the Sun board of directors having okayed it. If this is the case, MySQL will stay with Sun and users will definitely not have to worry much. Sun has been publicly supporting open source for some time now, and after the MySQL acquisition, has been trying (not very successfully, so far) to get the product to cater to both enterprise users and less sophisticated users. The only way forward that we see is for Sun to provide better support and development resources and, maybe, more value-add proprietary products. And, just like if Oracle were to own MySQL, there will be wider industry acceptance of open source architecture.
What this means is that over the course of the next few years, users of MySQL will not have to worry too much about having to change their database platform. What Oracle does with MySQL once the merger with Sun goes through is yet to be seen, of course, but like all the MySQL users around the world, we hope for the best.
Sources: www.sun.com; monty-says.blogspot.com; http://boycottnovell.com/2009/04/27/acquire-to-destroy-mysql/; http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/24/fork-well/
