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Sun Microsystems completed their acquisition of MySQL on February 26, 2008. This may be the year of the database wars. However, this move might not be the big break for open source systems that it would first appear. To make an educated guess, we can look at the move to Linux by the corporate world.

In the past, corporations used the version of UNIX provided by the computer manufacturer of their hardware on their mainframes and minicomputers. Companies paid big bucks for maintenance of the hardware and the operating system. Linux became available for smaller servers, but there was no dependable support or the software. Businesses that lose $100,000 per hour for downtime couldn't take the chance of an extended loss of service. It was only when the hardware manufacturers offered support for Linux that Linux server farms began to replace the mainframes and minicomputers of the past.

As companies made the move from a few large computers to lots of smaller boxes, software publishers began to change their licensing policies. One common change was to license the server instead of the user. Oracle took this path. Corporations using large server farms were priced out of the market. Even companies who used a few larger servers in a fail-over, clustered environment saw their database costs soar. Negotiating a better pricing model was very hard to arrange. MySQL offered a cheaper platform for corporate databases. Major web companies such as Facebook, Wordpress, YouTube and Nokia, who do business differently than older corporations, flocked to MySQL. However, companies who followed a more traditional model scaled back their servers or cut costs elsewhere.

However, for those using MySQL, the lack of support problem remained. With the Sun acquisition, we can expect support at the same level as provided for their operating systems. This will probably result in Sun developing their own code, or freezing the current code rather than incorporating modules created by the open source community. We can expect to see a new branch of open source database software that will remain truly open source.

As open source products move into the mainstream corporate environment, they tend to lose innovation and migrate toward the model of the proprietary products that they are replacing. This acquisition may be a tremendous boast for both the software and Sun hardware. If handled correctly, it might threaten Oracle's hold on the big corporate databases of the world.

It remains to be seen how the acquisition of MySQL will affect corporate culture as well as the open source community. The IT community awaits the outcome with interest.

Learn more about this author, Lynn Jordan.
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