There has been quite a bit of confusion as to the fate of MySQL after the acquisition of Sun by Oracle. If you’ve missed this one, Oracle has publicly pledged 10 items they promise to do regarding maintaining MySQL—stating:
- Continued Availability of Storage Engine APIs—not only will Oracle maintain but they will periodically enhance MySQL’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture
- Non-assertion—a change in the current Sun policy in which Oracle will not assert against anyone for the implementation of the Storage Engine API
- License commitment—Oracle will offer extensions of agreements on the same terms and conditions of existing licenses until 2014
- Commitment to enhance MySQL in the future under the GPL—Oracle will continue to enhance (both Enterprise Edition and Community Edition) MySQL under the GPL
- Support not mandatory—no requirement to purchase support services from Oracle
- Increase spending on MySQL research and development—Oracle intends to spend more on R&D for MySQL than sun did
- MySQL Customer Advisory Board—Oracle will actively seek end users and customers to help provide guidance and feedback on MySQL
- MySQL Storage Engine Vendor Advisory Board—Oracle will actively create and fund a storage engine vendor advisory board to give guidance and feedback on MySQL
- MySQL Reference Manual—Oracle will continue to make available MySQL Reference Manual at no charge
- Preserve Customer Choice for Support—Those end user and embedded customers paying for MySQL support may renew annual or multi-year subscriptions according to their preference
