Forgive the crappy title - and the plagiarized ideas. It seems everyone's recycling the same info. Sun recently announced plans to acquire MySQL for nearly $1 Billion. The companies should work well together. Sun is the biggest proponent of open source software - think: Open Office, Java, Netbeans, and Open Solaris.I don't understand the economics or motivation behind the move. Does Sun intend on shifting the demographics of the server side scripted web site scene from the, oh-so-popular LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) to some form of SAMP? Solaris was the first platform that MySQL ran on. Perhaps Sun is making a move at the mighty Oracle. Historically, supporting open source was justified as a means to promote hardware platforms. It certainly makes them the "good guy" in my book. Look how far that philosophy carried Google ;-).
The real question is how this affects the little guys. It's premature to make specific predictions. My gut feeling is that end users will benefit. Sun knows Open Source. They're committed to maintain the same "mission", staff, and direction. Hopefully they throw development resources to MySQL and make the platform more capable.
This looks to be a win-win for users. It makes me nervous that it's sitting on the shoulders of a baffling billion dollar move. Am I missing the obvious? It screams sellout to me - yet I can't think of a better company for MySQL to sell out to than Sun. So, I remain optimistic that this acquisition will drive a better, free product for all.
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