Matt Asay has the news that IBM has taken the decision to discontinue the development of the solidDB for MySQL database engine following its acquisition of in-memory database specialist Solid Information Technology. The official announcement is here on SourceForge.

As Dhiren Patel, community relations manager writes: “This in-memory technology, and not Solid?s open source offering, was the key driver behind IBM?s acquisition. As a result, I regret to inform you that, effective immediately, we will not be continuing further development on solidDB for MySQL.”

Given the commercial drivers it is not …

Given Jonathan Schwartz’s proclamation that Sun will make further open source acquisitions, I’ve been putting some thought into likely targets and/or new directions opened up by the MySQL acquisitions. One likely target sector is the ecosystem of vendors that surround the MySQL database - such as clustering and HA software providers - as well as complementary technologies.

With that is mind it is interesting to see that the company has hired two key Python developers, Frank Wierzbicki and Ted Leung. As the Infoworld report states, this is similar to the way Sun …

Tim Bowden published an interesting post earlier this week about the impact that the choice of open source license has on the potential valuation of an open source vendor. Taking the MySQL and PostgreSQL databases as an example, Bowden wrote:

“When it comes to takeovers and valuations, I think the role of GPL as a strategic weapon is often under appreciated. If you?re top vendor dog in a GPL project, other players have a very hard time unseating you. That may sound counter-intuitive given world + dog has the code, but I don?t believe it?s such an advantage for competitors as most assume. Your lesser competitors in the same space have to share their plum developments with you. Sure, the top dog has to share his plums too, but when you?ve got the top plum growers in your own yard (to push a metaphor too far), you get to go to market …