Sun Buys MySQL

Last month Leslie asked if 2008 would be the year of Open Source, and I commented that most successful Open Source applications ended up bankrolled and under the control of one of the major industry players. Sun just rolled one more Open Source app under it's gigantic umbrella, this time purchasing MySQL AB for 1 billion USD. It may be shaping up to be the year of acquiring Open Source.

In the old days, if you needed a database that could scale large, you had no other choice but Oracle. Microsoft entered the game with SQLserver, but it's MySQL that became the darling of Web 2.0. Besides running behind the scenes of Facebook and Google , odds are if you have a blog using WordPress or MovableType , you have it running on a MySQL back-end.

As the press release states, Sun is going to bring MySQL even more into the mainstream, leveraging their existing distribution channels with major computer manufacturers. It also will step up the support for MySQL with Sun's worldwide support infrastructure. Sun's President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz says,

"Today's acquisition reaffirms Sun's position at the center of the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from Internet media titans to the world's largest traditional enterprises."

With this acquisition, Sun adds yet another enterprise apps to their existing stable of application and framework products that should morph into a neatly integrated package of development tools. They have a media conference scheduled for this afternoon my time (EST, GMT -5) and we may hear more about their plans for MySQL then.