Sun Microsystems has acquired MySQL for $1 billion in cash and options. That's now old news. The implications of the deal, however, have yet to be felt, but this deal means several key things for open source.

In no particular order:

• Sun is directly competing with Red Hat to become the heart of the open-source business community. I've written before that either Red Hat with its operating system or MySQL with its database could become the center of an alternative ecosystem to the Proprietary Bloc (Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM). With Sun at the helm of MySQL, MySQL just became a lot more credible in this role as it now has cash to match its ambition.
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As Zack reported, Sun is buying MySQL for ~$800M plus $200M in options. Interestingly, the MySQL acquisition represents 8% of Sun's current market cap (~$13 Bil). While I'm happy for the MySQL team, my views on Sun's OSS "strategy" are mixed at best. Let's hope Marten and team can help Sun realize that there is value in software...good software, not the stuff that was 5th in class, and remains so after open sourcing it. Oracle also announced it will acquire BEA for $8.5 Bil, a higher price than Larry rejected a little while back. The deal also represents 8% of... READ MORE

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, talked up MySQL's customer list: Facebook, Google, Digg, etc., but also Toyota, IKEA, Southwest Airlines, Nokia.

"The single biggest impediment to MySQLs growth is their ability to give peace of mind to global companies that want to put MySQL into mission-critical deployments."

Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL [For some reason in Orlando, Florida - was he swimming with dolphins?]:

"Wonderful industry logic underlying this transaction."

"This strengthens our ability to serve our existing customers and to serve our new customers as enterprises migrate over to open-source databases."

Rich Green, EVP, Software, Sun:

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Apparently, Larry Ellison didn't like the idea of anyone getting more than a few minutes of press for an acquisition. Following on the heels of Sun's acquisition of MySQL, Oracle is announcing that it is buying everyone else on the planet to prevent this from happening again.

No, actually, Oracle has announced that it is buying BEA Systems for $8.5 billion. The proprietary world just got even more consolidated with less choice and higher costs for buyers.

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A lot is being said about Sun's acquisition of MySQL. I think it is great news. Congratulations to the MySQL folks.

I have a lot of respect for Sun from using their systems for many years. In recent years they have moved in a good direction with respect to open source. Having MySQL under their umbrella is excellent news for them. For MySQL, being tied to Sun seems like a great place to move.

Will be very interesting to see where this goes over the next few years and how MySQL benefits from being part of Sun.

In 2006, when I joined Fotolog, I made a decision: my specialty is going to be Solaris 10 and MySQL. Very quickly, I realized that MySQL on Solaris is not very commonly deployed architecture. Atleast not as common and popular as MySQL on Linux. Since then, I have promoted MySQL/InnoDB and Solaris combo at various conferences, meetups and through podcasts.

So you can imagine, I couldn't be more happier with Sun's announcement to buy MySQL. It has been one of my top wishes for MySQL and Sun to work together. When I checked my email today, I had the following comment left on my wish list post.

"Looks …

The only criticism of the deal I could possibly give is that MySQL is still on the early phase of an exponential adoption curve and I think they’ve got lots of growth yet to come. But really, a billion dollars has a lot if not most of that growth factored into the price already. Think of what [...]

At 2 pm EST (-5 GMT), OurSQL will be interviewing Brian Aker, MySQL’s Director of Architecture, about today’s announcement that Sun Microsystems bought MySQL. If you have a burning question (about the purchase), please comment here. If you’d like to be identified, please leave your name and where you’re from in your comment [...]

Holy simoleans, Batman. I wake up this morning, write a nice little Oracle tip and then next thing I see is Josh's post about Sun->MySQL. That was totally unexpected to me.

I browsed over to PlanetMySQL to get the scoop and what do I see, Sun buys MySQL for $1 billion to take centerstage in the web economy. I don't often agree with Matt but on this topic, I think I have to. This just makes a lot of sense for everyone involved. Sun, MySQL and MySQL users.

The first post I saw that shows concern about Sun's Postgres support is this one from the 451 Group, Sun acquiring MySQL for $1bn.

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you may have heard that sun has agreed to acquire mysql. what does that mean for me? that i still really wish i wasn?t in orlando, and was at home with my wife and puppy.