MySQL Forks, MariaDB and Drizzle...

By Mathieu CARBONNEAUX

December 28, 2009

**MySQL is in trouble… It’s forking… **

The acquisition of InnoDB and BerkeleyDB (sleepycat) by Oracle…

Then following the acquisition of MySQL AB by Sun, then by Oracle…

A certain number of former MySQL people left Sun, notably the principal architect “Monty Widenius” and quite a few pillars of the MySQL team…

It seems that all the key developers of the project don’t agree with Sun’s direction and even less with Oracle’s objectives…

But now it’s going very badly… the Sun Oracle merger accepted by the United States but hanging in the balance at the European level…

As part of its antitrust investigation into this operation, Brussels has asked Oracle for guarantees on the database’s future.

The creator of MySQL is therefore appealing to ‘save’ the Open Source database (cf LMI article of 12/15/2009)

Worried about the risk that Oracle’s acquisition of Sun poses to the future of MySQL, the Open Source database he created, Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius is asking users of the product to write to the European Commission.

“I’ve spent the last 27 years creating and evolving MySQL and I hope to work on it for many more years with my team of developers, writes Michael Widenius on his blog. […] With your support, there’s a good chance that the European Commission will ask Oracle to […] give other guarantees to users. Without your support, this may not happen. The European Commission is our last really important hope now that the American government has approved the acquisition [of Sun].” The father of MySQL emphasizes that Oracle has contacted “hundreds of major clients”

http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/entretiens/lire-michael-monty-widenius-fondateur-de-mysql-et-de-mariadb-137.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10033614-16.html

http://monty-says.blogspot.com/

http://solutionspme.lemondeinformatique.fr/articles/lire-le-createur-de-mysql-appelle-a-sauver-la-base-open-source-3029.html

http://odba.org/

http://www.generation-nt.com/widenius-petition-mysql-rachat-oracle-database-actualite-934661.html

This has given birth to two MySQL forks…