Monty Widenius wants another billion dollars, should we help him?

“Sometimes inbetween Christmas and New Year’s Eve, the
“Help MySQL” initiative was founded. This initiative,
publicly supported by Monty Widenius, the co-founder of MySQL would
be interesting if it wasn’t somehow indecent. Let me
explain.

“What does “Help MySQL” advocate, in a nutshell? It
claims that if Oracle were to merge with Sun, MySQL customers would
be trapped in a market that would be pretty much controlled and
captured by Oracle, both through its existing propietary databases
offerings and the acquisition of MySQL. Another issue explained on
the web site is that the inherent free and open source nature of
MySQL will not be enough to grant effective freedoms to the market
since Oracle would be the sole copyright owner of the code and
trademarks.

“I think I will not be the only one to notice that in a whooping
twist of history, Monty Widenius explains us why the business and
contribution model to MySQL he crafted himself since the beginning
of the database company is terrible for customers.”

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