MySQL Founder Monty Widenius On What to Expect Next

"OStatic: Now that the acquisition is going through, what do you think the future of MySQL is going to be?

"It's clear that Oracle is in the game for the profit and it's in their interest to get out as much money from MySQL as they can over the long term. There will be less development of the Community version of MySQL. MySQL Enterprise will over time be only available as closed source and with a different feature set than the Community version. By keeping the price very low in the beginning for MySQL Enterprise, they will have a high conversation rate as it will be much easier to move to this than to another database.

"This will create an efficient lock-in and make it very hard for a MySQL 'fork' to survive or get traction, as it's almost impossible to keep things compatible. When Oracle finally raises prices, most users just have to pay."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Oracle Begins Picking Its Sun A-Team(Feb 01, 2010)
• The real value of FOSS to business – A personal example(Feb 01, 2010)
• The Fight to Save MySQL: Interview with Monty Widenius(Jan 27, 2010)
• Monty Widenius wants another billion dollars, should we help him?(Jan 06, 2010)
• Monty Still Trying to "Save" MySQL(Jan 04, 2010)
• Many open-sourcers back an Oracle takeover of MySQL(Oct 29, 2009)
• Letter to the EC opposing Oracle's acquisition of MySQL(Oct 21, 2009)