Last week, after much speculation, the European Commission finally approved Oracle's purchase Sun Microsystems. What does the future now hold for OpenOffice, Java and MySQL?
Of course Oracle are remaining tight lipped but I can tell you Oracle's takeover of Sun was driven by it's desire to control Java. Java is a key component of Oracle's database applications and is so fundamental to Oracle's business that it could not afford the continued risk of Java being in the hands of a 3rd party, particularly one without strong revenues.
So what's to become of the open source applications OpenOffice and MySQL database?
Personally I've never really seen how Sun could justify a free application like OpenOffice; I think it's had a fair chance to build market share and not really managed to do so. I know some parts of the public sector are big users of the paid version; StarOffice but with Office 2010 coming soon it is falling vay behind.
Of more concern to us web designers is what is going to happen to MySQL?
MySQL is a very popular database for website applications. Popular mainly because it is free, it is developed by the Open Source community as a viable alternative to Microsoft's SQL database.
Like many web developers we have built many websites on MySQL and obviously are concerned of it's future existence.
Of course we don't know yet what Oracle's intension with regard to MySQL is but my guess is that Oracle has no interest in MySQL; yes they are in the database business but MySQL doesn't compete in the same market space so Oracle are probably not interested in removing it as a competitor.
MySQL just came to Oracle with the necessary purchase of Java and they can do 3 things:
I believe Oracle has no interest in fostering the open source community and contining to develop MySQL just as Sun has done.
I also think it would not want the PR disaster of letting MySQL wither and die - too many of the world largest companies that use MySQL for their websites are also Oracle database customers.
No, I think Oracle will offload MySQL as soon as possible to another Open Source sponser and we can all sleep soundly.
This article is the personal comment of it's author and it's accuracy is not guaranteed.
