By Jason Brown

So I read early this morning that Oracle has bought out Sun. Yadda yadda, one more large company buys out another large company…. However in this case it brings a few more complciations to the table. Sun who bought out MySQL (arguably the most popular open source database server) a while back is now owned by maybe the largest commercial database entity around. What does this mean for MySQL? This is a common question I read while trolling for more information today. Why is nobody asking what is going to happen to Oracle? “Does this mean the fall of the giant?” <- I’m not hearing this question anywhere.

Now I don’t feel just because a company or product is on top in the commercial world, it should auto-magically fall to the best rival in the open source world. Far from it. Good software is difficult to produce and harder to sell and distribute in this market economy and I think anyone who can create something from a few lines of code and stick with as it grows and becomes the greatest thing should be rewarded for their efforts. But what does this mean when one company now “owns” two very similar products at what I see as very opposite ends of the spectrum? Well I think Michael Widenius sums it up rather well on his blog (as he should, being the fonder and original developer for MySQL):