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Why Oracle Keeping MySQL Alive Makes Business Sense: Mårten Mickos

"They can kill the business. But I don't think they will."
By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
April 22, 2009 04:45 AM EDT
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 2,784

"Having MySQL makes business sense for Oracle," former MySQL's former chief executive, Mårten Mickos (pictured), told an interviewer this week as Oracle, through its proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems for $7.4BN, positioned itself to become the next owner of MySQL. Mickos does not agree with industry pundits who say that Larry Ellison will kill MySQL.

"Larry Ellison is smart.," Mickos told an interviewer at Forbes.com "MySQL was getting around 70,000 downloads a day when I left. It's an amazing grip on young developers."

In Mickos's view, with an installed based of 11-12 million, MySQL will above all allow Ellison to compete with Microsoft, "his [Ellison's] favorite enemy" as Mickos puts it.



Mickos's overall verdict."They can kill the business. But I don't think they will."

Another open source, luminary, Wordpress creator Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress runs its operations on MySQL) is also unfazed. He had this to say in his blog:

"Today our servers are running various versions of MySQL, tomorrow they’ll be running the same thing, and if need be ten years from now they can run the exact some software. Because of the GPL every WordPress user in the world is protected — we’re not beholden to any one company, only to what works best for us. Today that’s MySQL, tomorrow that’s MySQL, a year from now we’ll see."

Published April 22, 2009 – Reads 2,784
Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Jeremy Geelan

Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the all-new International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series, of the International Virtualization Conference & Expo series, of AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, and of the long-running SOAWorld Conference & Expo series. He's founder of Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.

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