Customers at the MySQL conference this week said Sun
Microsystems' acquisition of the database company could increase MySQL's
credibility among senior IT decision makers still skittish about using open-source
software.

There were some, though, who feared that ownership of MySQL by a traditional
IT vendor would diminish growth in the community of MySQL developers, who provide
a regular stream of patches and new features for the database.

"The main downside is that the community might reject it [Sun's purchase
of MySQL]," said Yuriy Demchenko, a database administrator and Web applications
developer at a large Canadian telecommunications company. "We'll see if
the community continues to grow at the rate it has."

Demchenko said his company, which he did not want identified because he is
not authorized to speak for it publicly, runs primarily Oracle and IBM's DB2
databases, but his department uses MySQL for "semi-official startup projects"
that sometimes end up running in production. He uses the community edition of
MySQL "because it's free."

The upside of the acquisition is that it will make higher-level executives
at the carrier more comfortable with MySQL because it is owned by a big, stable
company, Demchenko said. His company already uses Sun servers.

Sun closed its US$1 billion purchase of MySQL in February and is hosting its
first MySQL user
conference this week in Santa Clara, California, where it released a near-final
version of MySQL 5.1. It has been at pains to emphasize its support for open
source and similarities in the companies' cultures, despite their vast difference
in size.

"Sun has a relatively enlightened attitude to open source, so I don't
see [the acquisition] affecting the community too much," said Steffen Higel,
a systems engineer with online gaming company DemonWare, which is using a version
of MySQL 5.0 to serve up games like "Call of Duty 3."

DemonWare switched from the Ingres database to MySQL about a year ago because
it found Ingres "terrible" in terms of support and performance, and
because Higel and his colleagues had experience with MySQL at a university,
he said. It began with the free community edition and switched to a paid subscription
after DemonWare was acquired by Activision, Higel said.

He is happy with MySQL but would like more back-up capabilities, which are
not due until MySQL 6.0 later this year. Sun said this week it would delay the
final release of MySQL 5.1 by up to three months, but Higel said that's "not
a huge deal, there's nothing show-stopping we need."

Lionel Beaudet, technical manager for the French division of Virgin Mobile,
is more worried by Oracle's acquisition of Innobase than by Sun's MySQL buy.
Innobase makes the default transactional storage engine for MySQL, and the Oracle
deal has created some uncertainty for MySQL users.

MySQL is developing a storage engine for MySQL 6.0, called Falcon, and partners
are developing others. Virgin Mobile will test Falcon to see how it performs
in case it needs to make a transition, Beaudet said. Marten Mickos, the former
CEO of MySQL and now a Sun senior vice president, said MySQL recently renewed
its license with Oracle, though he would not say for how long.

Another user is WePlayTV.com,
a startup that will soon launch a service for building online communities around
television programs. The Sun deal is "a good thing, it adds maybe some
respectability to the MySQL brand, plus you know now that the company is always
going to be there," said Silas Martinez, a systems engineer for WebPlayTV.

"Some people might be hesitant, but as long they see that MySQL remains
its own entity within Sun, I don't think it will be a problem," he said.

WePlayTV picked MySQL for its fast performance and ability to scale at low
cost, Martinez said. His company has a policy to use open-source software because
of the lower cost and support from the developer community. He is using MySQL
5.0 and was at the show to evaluate MySQL Cluster.

Ron Rosen, founder of online affiliate marketing company MyStoreMaker.com,
also cited the low cost of MySQL compared with top-tier databases like Oracle.
He favors the acquisition because it will bring stability to MySQL and its product
road map, he said.

"As long as Sun doesn't do anything crazy, everything should be OK,"
he said.

IDG News Service

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