MySQL & Sun
I noted on something that come across my inbox yesterday that MySQL is being sold to Sun. I was kind of shocked and a bit disturbed by this. A note, the deal was reported worth one billion dollars. Not a bad deal of you were one of the two contributors to the code (see below).
First my shock, I was under the impression that MySQL had been developed and released under the GNU GPL licensing schemes. Which basically I thought meant that the code was free for everyone to develop and that everyone got to use all the contributions that came from everyone developing the code base. And that all this development leads to great things on the software package and everyone is happy. Apparently however, there are some variations where the GNU GPL licensing allows for code to be wholly owned by a few people – in this case apparently two. And I guess, though I didn’t realize this, that they have not taken any code developments from anyone else – otherwise how would they be able to sell the MySQL product to Sun?
Now my disturbance – Sun has a bit of a bad track record with things from an open source stand point. What is even worse about this particular product that they have acquired is that it is used by, well I suspect millions of computers, but if not, easily approaching the first million for sure. I know in my server room there are now less than 20 installations of MySQL, possibly more. Now when all of those were installed there were no license fees of any sort associated with using them. Now that Sun has purchased the product, will that change for the future usage of the product? Beyond that, will the product have new innovations in the future that keep up with technological demands? Or will it become stagnant, wither, and eventually die?
