Sun Microsystems, considered as one of the largest contributor to Open Source software with offerings such as Solaris, GNU/Linux, NetBeans, Java and few others. MYSQL, the world’s most popular open source database and the leading choice of Web 2.0 sites like You Tube, Flickr, Face Book, Wikipedia, del.icio.us and many more. Few months back MYSQL suffered from the same fate as most of the other successful open source companies. As Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz puts it we’re putting a billion dollars behind the M in LAMP. This definitely is good news for MYSQL and it could lead to possible adoption of MYSQL by small companies due to Sun’s enterprise support, MYSQL customers will get the Open Solaris and ZFS file system and most importantly it will have access to the technical and the sales relations which is simply huge.But only time will tell whether it proved to be a profitable acquisition for Sun or not. Some of the apparent pitfalls are MYSQL uses INNODB as its storage engine which has been acquired by Oracle, Sun’s relationship with Oracle, MYSQL’s revenue is only half the cost of acquition, cultural differences with MYSQL being small and agile and Sun being big and mature, and above all Sun’s awful record with acquisitions.Nevertheless, the deal definitely strengthens open source.
