With 50,000 copies downloaded daily, MySQL has nothing to prove and is probably one of the most popular open source applications. In the acronym LAMP or WAMP, the M is MySQL (L=Linux, W=Windows, A=Apache and P=PHP). LAMP is the most popular web development system as it’s included in every Linux distro (apart from the smallest).

MySQL powers millions of websites from small to very large as well as network servers on many platforms. Following announcements from January 16^th (yesterday) MySQL has been acquired by Sun MicroSystems for the sum of $1 billion. 800 million in cash and 200 million in equility options.

Who says Open Source doesn’t make money? Of course MySQL was always dual licensed and had been selling commercial licenses and support for years. It’s how they grew to 400 employees.

I’ve been using MySQL in websites that I’ve developed mainly and also in desktop applications. Of course it’s not the only database in town; PostgreSQL and SQLite are amongst the better known open source alternatives. For me things are vague what will happen to MySQL in the future…

Sun promises to all users of MySQL that things won’t change that much - they’d even will become better (would you tell your customers anything else?). Anyway, Sun says that the same people, the same community will keep on managing MySQL. Finally Sun refers to its experience concerning Open Source products.