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OurSQL Episode 24: “The Sun is Shining”

Sun Microsystems recently announced the purchase of MySQL. In this interview the day of the announcement, OurSQL asks Brian Aker about what this means for customers, community, Sun and MySQL.

Tell us what you think of Sun buying MySQL by calling the comment line or sending your voice through Odeo!

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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 — just enough for me to say “Sheeri from Boston wants to know, does this mean we’re getting Sun T-shirts at the MySQL User Conference and Expo this year”?

SUN Microsystems just bought MySQL, see the announcement at http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-01/sunflash.20080116.1.xml

Now, MySQL isn’t going away any time soon; there are just way too many people that use it. And while Postgres is not actually owned by SUN, they do employ some great folks to develop on it, and those folks are the the “known” Postgres folks.

However, SUN can decide to stop development, lay off all the [former] MySQL developers, support techs, etc. I’m not saying they will, but they could. They could stagnate the growth….or spur it along.

I don’t know much about SUN internals, but I’m not sure how the company resolves being the primary developer of 2 differing DBMS’s. And since those are the top 2 open source DBMS’s (and there aren’t really any other ones out there, as I don’t count sqlite as a DBMS), there could be a real conflict of interest.

I’m sure it will be a good move, but I’m worried. I wasn’t worried when Oracle bought InnoBase, I wasn’t worried when the community/enterprise split happened. But now….