End of MySQL?

[Rich Braun]

The news broke yesterday:  Oracle to buy Sun.

Sun bought MySQL last year, leading to departure of several key developers and
a fairly disastrous downturn in quality of support and QA.

The news media has said little about the anti-trust implications of Oracle
taking over its lead competitor in the database server software market.  Even
though the Bush Era is over, I doubt the US government will lift a finger to
force divestiture of MySQL from Oracle.

That leaves European regulators, perhaps, or an open-source community
initiative to take MySQL back.

There's always PostreSQL.  But the big picture seems to be this:  large
software companies have found a way to co-opt the most popular open-source
applications in a now-routine 3-step process:  (1) put up some money to help
development, (2) hire a team and adopt the core technology, then (3) put the
whole thing up for sale on Wall Street.  Highest bidder is invariably the
largest/most-expensive rival.

Is that what's going to happen to the rest of the open-source world?

-rich