Sun acquires MySQL for a BILLION dollars

MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database has been acquired by Sun Microsystems for a good BILLION dollars. Jonathan Schwartz has this interesting news to share at his sun blog.

In addition to acquiring MySQL, Sun will be unveiling new global support offerings into the MySQL marketplace. The enterprise plans to invest in both the community, and the marketplace – to accelerate the industry’s phase change away from proprietary technology to the new world of open web platforms.

This is an important development for Sun, as this acquisition will position Sun at the heart of the Web.

Jonathan writes:

Until now, no platform vendor has assembled all the core elements of a completely open source operating system for the internet. No company has been able to deliver a comprehensive alternative to the leading proprietary OS. With this acquisition, we will have done just that – positioned Sun at the center of the web, as the definitive provider of high performance platforms for the web economy. For startups and web 2.0 companies, to government agencies and traditional enterprises. This creates enormous potential for Sun, for the global free software community, and for our partners and customers across the globe. There’s opportunity everywhere.

Sun continues to invest (and establish itself) in the Open Source Software development field which is welcome because it is most likely that we will see radical and efficient changes in the ways we live on OSS, in the near future. Let us see how this acquisition accelerates the development of MySQL to further extend the usability and productivity of the popular open source database that today forms the lifeline of almost every institution off-line and online like banks, companies and social network services on the Internet like FaceBook, etc.

How do you see this acquisition? Leave your comments.