What MySQL Founder Michael Widenius said about Oracle acquiring Sun
monty-says.blogspot.com
monty-says.blogspot.com
And a repeat at that.
1. Create a good product and a company. 2. Sell the company for 1 billion. (Profit!) 3. Whine about how the new owner is bad and leave it. 4. Start a NewAndBetterMySQL company. 5. ??? 6. Profit?
Now seriously. If there will happen a confrontation between "Oracle MySQL" and "OpenSource MySQL", I see two possible outcomes:
1. Noone will pay 1 billion for NewAndBetterMySQL next time.
2. The confusion between different versions of the database may mean, that the "OpenSource MySQL" will lose the enterprise market for some time.
However, MySql is also sold under a commercial license. Furthermore, MySql support was offered by Sun since they bought it, generating some income. Whether that is worth 1 billion I don't want to speculate.
But yeah, Monty has come out of this laughing. Sun effectively gave him a billion dollars for a few months work, during which time all he did was whine about them in his blog. Sun buying MySQL was a strategic blunder on the order of eBay buying Skype.
That distinction rightly belongs to PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/about/