[MrEyes]

Originally Posted by Paul M

If mysql is open source, how can it be killed ? - surely anyone can just continue developing it ?

Hence the "as we know it today" How many people use anything other than the official Sun "supported" release? Have you ever heard of Maria or Drizzle? If you have, have you ever considered installing them over the "official" Sun release.

If Oracle drops MySQL there will of course be people who will continue to maintain the platform, however without somebody at the helm (i.e. Sun) it will be directionless and splinter into many different versions each with their own advantages, disadvantages and more importantly incompatibilities. IMHO open source works for single/dual developer small application frameworks, however once you get into the realms of "enterprise" frameworks (Apache, MySQL, OpenSSL, Subversion etc) you need somebody at the helm maintaining course, direction & consistency. All you have to do is look at the myriad Linux distributions and their associated quirks to see what could happen.

Put your commerical Larry Ellison head on and ask yourself this, what is the incentive to continue to improve an open-source product that could compete with its existing flagship?

As I mentioned, this is an "if" - However if I was Oracle I would hold onto MySQL but mothball the project as it effects the bottom line of my primary database product, I most certainly would not consider improving the product in any way as this may result in loosing existing Oracle DB customers to MySQL. Another alternative would be that Oracle uses MySQL as an feature limited entrypoint into their primary Oracle DB system.

As for Oracle not killing Java that goes without saying, they do not have any comparable competitor product so the addition of Java to the Oracle portfolio is advantageous