There is no denying that MySQL has a huge amount of momentum behind it. 10+ years as the leading free SQL database kinda does that. It has successfully changed the perception of databases - where people used to visualise big-iron mainframes in specially cooled rooms to where anyone can install it for free within 15 minutes.That is not what this blog post is about. The topic of today is the "Save

Since the European Commission announced it was opening an in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle with a focus on MySQL there has been no shortage of opinion written about Oracle’s impending ownership of MySQL and its impact on MySQL users and commercial partners, as well as MySQL’s business model, dual licensing and the GPL.

In order to try and bring some order to the conversation, we have brought together some of the most referenced blog posts and news stories in chronological order.

Part one took us from the announcement of the EC’s in-depth investigation up to the eve of the communication of the EC’s Statement of Objections.

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One of the most widely discussed topics to go around the tech industry last year was the Oracle acquisition of Sun and what this meant for the MySQL database. This topic held up the merger with the US DOJ and currently has it stalled in the EU commission.

One of the primary forces behind these hold ups is a series of FUD articles written by Monty Widenius, the most recent just a few days ago. Monty has a huge following so whenever he writes up one of these articles it gets huge circulation and riles up the Slashdot and LAMP crowds.

I think that the open source community should be very skeptical about anything written by Monty on this topic, and should start looking at the big picture of what this merger means for themselves and the various players involved.

I don’t know why I haven’t been seeing many serious rebuttals to …

Red Hat’s Q3. Google’s definition of open. Copyright assignment. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# Red Hat reported third quarter net income of $16.4m on revenue up 18% at $194m

# Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president, product management, presented Google’s …

Larry Ellison makes it very clear that Oracle believes in a back to the future model where software and hardware meld together into “systems”, purpose-built, integrated solutions. In other words you won’t buy an Oracle database and a server and configure it to run a data warehouse, instead you’ll buy the “Oracle Data Warehouse Server.” The first such system is Exadata, which is apparently doing quite well, according to Ellison.

This is a classic bundling, although some may call it a tying strategy. Microsoft, seeing that they couldn’t win each office productivity segment individually—including word processing, spreadsheet and presentations—decided to play to their strength and bundle them into a solution that no individual company could compete with. This is bundling. The tying strategy is where Microsoft used their dominance in …

It finally dawned on me while reflecting on the year past this Sunday that the missing voice since the announcement of the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems (and therefore MySQL) has been the MySQL employees.

When I worked as an employee for MySQL Inc, the acquisition by Sun Microsystems in 2008 lead to several requirements about the acquisition.

• You were not allowed to talk about the acquisition publically.
• You were not allowed to communicate with any Sun (i.e. the acquirer) resources.

In other words it was “business as usual” which is really an oxymoron, because business will never be exactly as it was before the announcement. The ongoing delay in pending acquisition by Oracle Corporation is really hurting everybody with getting on with doing their jobs, being happy with their work, and making a difference in open source and in the lives of all the benefit from using MySQL.

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Recent non-Oracle/EC/MySQL news.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# Novell reshuffled its Linux business into Security, Management and Operating Platforms business unit.

# HP partnered with Red Hat, Novell and Microsoft to target Sun migrations.

# The US DoJ …

What is going on with the version numbers coming out of Sun/MySQL?Once upon a time, we had 5.2.Then, to incorporate Falcon, it became 6.0.Somewhere along the line, there was a 5.3.Then a 5.4 appeared which seemed to be 5.1 with performance fixes for InnoDB.Now there is a 5.5, which claims to be a 5.4 with a few stuff added.Stop confusing your community.And whatever happened to community

Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems looks set for approval by the European Commission after the competition commission welcomed commitments from Oracle related to the future development and licensing of the open source MySQL database.

The EC has until January 27, 2010, to reach a final decision however it appears that significant progress has been made following hearings in Brussels last week where Oracle made its case for approving the acquisition and opponents including SAP, Microsoft and Monty Program AB argued against the proposed acquisition.

Oracle has published a list of ten commitments that it is prepared to make to assuage the EC’s concerns over the future of MySQL, which were quickly and enthusiastically welcomed by the European Commission.

Oracle’s commitments …

You’ve probably seen Monty’s post Help Saving MySQL. This is about

1. Development (will Oracle put significant effort into MySQL, actually innovating)
2. Brand (”MySQL” has a huge footprint), the trademark owner can enforce this – there have already been issues with companies offering MySQL related services via Google AdWords not being able to use the word MySQL in their ad text even though it was correctly used as an adjective.
3. Forking is fine, but still has to deal with the branding. For MySQL, that’s possibly the most significant issue of any OSS product ever encountered. You’re not competing against a company, but against an existing brand footprint that you (because of the trademark) have to steer clear of. So “just fork it” is not an easy or short term option, there’s more involved than …