[ Thanks to Mark Rais for this
link. ]
“The MySQL database is an Open Source application which boasts
millions of installations worldwide and is available free under the
GPL from the MySQL AB website. (It is also available under a
commercial license, but unless you’re planning to use it in a
closed-source application, this shouldn’t be of concern.) It’s a
popular choice in particular for use on the backend of websites,
especially in combination with the PHP scripting language, but it’s
also compatible with Perl, Python, C, Ruby, and just about any
programming language that supports ODBC. MySQL runs on over a dozen
operating platforms, including Linux (of course), Mac OS X,
Solaris, and Windows, and its behaviour varies very little between
operating systems. In fact, in many cases, you can copy MySQL
database files between machines running MySQL on different
operating systems, restart MySQL, and have immediate access to the
data. (If you’ve been running MySQL on another platform, this makes
it easy to migrate your databases to Linux…)”