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But recent discussions between Oracle and the EC have apparently been fruitful, as Oracle on Monday pledged 10 “commitments to customers, developers and users of MySQL.”
Among other things, the company pledged to spend more cash than Sun did on MySQL development and to set up advisory boards to include MySQL customers. Oracle also said it would not require paid support to get a commercial MySQL license and that it would offer flexible support contracts to customers.
Comment
I think that there are lots of good reasons for Oracle to be a good citizen when it comes to MySQL. First, most of the people who are using it for free have no intention of ever paying for a database, so up-selling isn’t an option. If they cripple it, people will just move elsewhere. However, I’m sure there are lots of people who actually can afford and need to move to Oracle and now Oracle will be able to comfortably up-sell them so that everyone wins.
I don’t know for a fact that Oracle has good intentions, but if they don’t, there are lots of open source databases looking to take MySQL’s spot. I’m actually happy about this, Oracle couldn’t do a worse job with the crappy MySQL website. And hopefully they can both improve the install and upgrade processes, which right now are both very difficult compared to traditional software installs and updates.