Sun buyout MySQL

What can this mean for us little users for the odd website database etc? Will it stay Open Source or not though, is the main question.
 
What can this mean for us little users for the odd website database etc? Will it stay Open Source or not though, is the main question.

Well the main question isn't 'will it stay oepn source' because it definatly will, the fact that it is already open source means they can't sell it. The previous owner (MySQL AB) were making money by selling support for MySQL. Sun have recently open sourced Java so I think their intentions are good, they will probably integrate it with their products now.
 
the fact that it is already open source means they can't sell it.

Yes they can, nothing stopping people from selling open sourced software, MySQL force you to buy a commercial licence for it if you're distributing it with commercial products for instance, amongst other things.

The current MySQL licensing is a joke, it's such a convoluted mess of licences that vary depending on what you're doing with the software that it'd take an army of lawyers to determine if you're using it legally or not. Hopefully Sun will be able to make some sense of it and produce a more reasonably licensed RDBMS.
 
I am conflicted about this. Whilst I see Sun as a big mover in Open Source software, their contributions to Open Office withstanding, I can't work out what the point of "buying" MySQL is. Obviously they've bought the company that produced MySQL, rather than MySQL itself, and therefore the rights to it, but as I understand, it isn't possible to rescind on past licences, ie make it closed source. If they wanted to tightly couple it to Java, that would be a Bad thing, it had a good setup as an independant.

If Sun **** this up, look forward to a new open source db project I suspect.
 
I am conflicted about this. Whilst I see Sun as a big mover in Open Source software, their contributions to Open Office withstanding, I can't work out what the point of "buying" MySQL is.
My guess is they want to reduce their dependency on the Sun/Oracle relationship. And make Solaris more attractive for their ISP/Hoster market. - akakjs (my enter key is broken :( )
 
My guess is they want to reduce their dependency on the Sun/Oracle relationship. And make Solaris more attractive for their ISP/Hoster market. - akakjs (my enter key is broken :( )

Surely though, they could have done this *without* buying MySQL... unless the licencing was weird...
 
Surely though, they could have done this *without* buying MySQL... unless the licencing was weird...
Sun now have final say in the development direction of MySql. It would be a natural progression for to make a version optimized for Solaris and Sun hardware (This isn't a bad thing as such...).

I'd speculate that ISP/Hosts are Sun's biggest market outside the Sun/Oracle enterprise datacentre, so it makes sense to increase the supplier tie-in. It also means if you want to run a big database under *nix Sun now have a far better chance of selling you the hardware/os it runs on.

akakjs
 
I am conflicted about this. Whilst I see Sun as a big mover in Open Source software, their contributions to Open Office withstanding, I can't work out what the point of "buying" MySQL is. Obviously they've bought the company that produced MySQL, rather than MySQL itself, and therefore the rights to it, but as I understand, it isn't possible to rescind on past licences, ie make it closed source. If they wanted to tightly couple it to Java, that would be a Bad thing, it had a good setup as an independant.

If Sun **** this up, look forward to a new open source db project I suspect.

Just go Postgres if they do, it's far better anyway.
 
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