Sun recently bought out all MySQL stock for $ 800 million dollars - much to “boos” and “yays” in equal amounts. After all, this was hardly expected by many considering Sun’s stellar (no pun intended) support for PostgreSQL.

However, looking back at Sun’s history with OpenOffice.org, I think this is a good thing. Historically, they have been known to be a leading proponent and contributor to open source software; Stallman himself has been quoted as saying that they provide more to the free software community than any other company. And while MySQL has a huge community and developer-base, a bit of help can’t be that bad.

One of the questions asked was if the purchase will affect the development of MySQL for other platforms. Kaj Arnö, the VP of Community Relations, assures us:

“Absolutely not. MySQL is still being managed by the same people, and the charter is still the same. There is no need for reducing the set of platforms or languages. It only makes sense for us to continue to support defacto Web development standards like LAMP, as well as emerging ones like Ruby and Eclipse. This deal is about addition, not subtraction.”

Of course, there is the question of what they can gain from it. Well, a few possibilities:

As we all are aware, MySQL pushes LAMP - an implementation that has been immensely popular, and widely used. Perhaps they aim to gain from LAMP’s userbase and coverage. Perhaps it is a grab for leverage against competing products (IIS/MSSQL, for one). Or perhaps they are looking for integration of MySQL with their existing products.

We can really only speculate for the moment. But one thing’s for sure - I myself will be watching with great anticipation.

Sun Announces Agreement to Acquire MySQL