The M In LAMP Now Stands For Billion: Sun Acquires MySQL

Software giant Sun Microsystems has just acquired MySQL AB (the makers of the open source database, MySQL) for a sum of 1 billion dollars in cash and debt.

I’m not sure if I should be excited or weary of this gobbling up of open source projects by large software companies (Yahoo! just acquired Zimbra, and Citrix got XenSource). In this case, I think things will turn out for the better–for everyone. Sun has a great history of providing flagship quality programs in an open manner… Java, Solaris, and now MySQL.

The MySQL blog writes of how this acquisition will be good for the community, as the developers will have access to the worlds leading Sun experts (MySQL was originally developed for the Sun platform, and it continues to drive it now). Sun has probably purchased MySQL to further its’ reach into enterprise web applications, knocking down the gate of the Oracle castle with Java running on Solaris and MySQL.

The heartwood of the internet though, is not enterprise level applications: it is the plethora of small sites that make up the fiber of the internet; most of which run on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). What does this mean to the majority of us running all open source? Well, the answer looks pretty good there too.

According to the press release on the MySQL blog, “MySQL grew with LAMP and MySQL without LAMP at its core is simply unimaginable… Sun is a safe haven for MySQL. Sun knows Open Source, and to the extent things change, I expect Sun to add value to our community.” [emphasis in original]

Ars Tecnhica hit the take-home message perfectly: “Regardless of the underlying platform implications, Sun’s acquisition of MySQL broadly validates open-source database solutions as viable alternatives to proprietary commercial database products like those from Oracle and IBM. In the long-term, this could be a very positive development for open source on the server.”

I’m pretty sure that it will be several years before the implications start to truly surface. Perhaps it will mean a more open, accessible, web.

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