Fortunately for all of MySQL’s users, including some large corporate names, collectors from Oracle won’t start visiting them and requesting the immediate payment of licensing fees for the InnoDB technology used in MySQL.

Oracle purchased InnoDB last November, sparking controversy that its top executive, Larry Ellison, could use the purchase as a wedge to dislodge MySQL from companies using it. However, Oracle president Charles Phillips assured MySQL that wasn’t the case.

IDG reported from LinuxWorld Boston 2006 that the agreement was in place. Neither side will be releasing details of the agreement, such as the term or the license fee paid.

A formal agreement will be signed during the MySQL user conference starting on Arpil 24th.

Between 30 percent to 40 percent of MySQL users are using InnoDB for online transactional processing, Zach Urlocker, vice president of marketing at MySQL, said in the report.

It appeared MySQL had made a defensive move by acquiring Netfrastructure after Oracle’s InnoDB purchase. Netfrastructure’s Jim Starkey, well known for his database architecting skills, has experience in crafting the type of transaction processing engine MySQL would need to replace InnoDB.

The possibility remains that MySQL and Starkey could develop a replacement for InnoDB anyway, to eliminate the need to license it from Oracle.

That likelihood was reinforced by another report, from ZDNet, that indicated MySQL would build its own transactional engine now that InnoDB and another Oracle acquisition, Sleepycat Software, are off the market.

“Given the shot across the bow those acquisitions represented and the potential for customer disruption, it probably was in MySQL’s best long-term interests to control that technology,” RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady said in that report.

Until that happens, MySQL and Oracle are in a unique situation, according to MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, who commented in the article, “Oracle told us that it’s business as usual–they don’t want to slow us down, and they will fix bugs. It’s pretty good having Oracle as a subcontractor.”

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Even when combined with their previous purchase of Innobase Oy (and InnoDB), it’s not about MySQL.

With all due respect to Phil Windley (and Gadgetopia), you’re wrong. Oracle is thinking much bigger and more strategically than “put the squeeze on MySQL.”

Trying to put MySQL out of business would be a fairly short-term tactical move. I think Oracle is looking 5 years down the road and seeing what the world looks like as the commoditization of enterprise scale infrastructure software components continues. They’re seeing that they “own” a progressively smaller piece of that pie unless they act soon. The rumors of Oracle eyeing JBoss and others are completely in line with this thinking.

If Oracle can become a one-stop shop for folks building the next generation of big business applications, whether or not they use “traditional” Oracle software, the company manages to stay relevant in the new world–and that includes their lucrative consulting services.

Is this reminiscent of IBM’s approach to Linux circa 2001? It sure is.

Think bigger guys. Oracle’s not just a database company and hasn’t been for years.

Now, they could still end up putting the squeeze on MySQL along the way. But I suspect that’d be a happy byproduct of larger moves they’re making.

What do you think?

Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

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First it was Innobase (see Oracle buysInnobase. MySQL between rock and hard place?) and now it’s Sleepycat Software.

The purchase of Sleepycat, which has been rumored for weeks, gives Oracle another open-source product to complement its proprietary database offerings. At an investor conference last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison reiterated the company’s strategy to generate revenue from a combination of open-source and proprietary software.

They produce and support the famed Berkeley DB embedded database engine and have radically improved it’s features since the version 1.x days. Nowadays you get a small, fast, transactional database engine with industrial grade reliability and replication.

It’s interesting to note that MySQL’s first transactional storage engine (BDB) was created on top of Berkeley DB. Their more popular transactional storage engine (InnoDB) is built on top of technology produced by Innobase, which Oracle bought last year.

This leads to the obvious question: What is Oracle up to? Are they trying to do to Open Source Databases what Yahoo appears to be doing to Web 2.0 companies?

There’s been speculation of a master plan at Oracle that involves buying up various bits of the Open Source infrastructure used in building applications. Is JBoss next, as some have suggested?

We’ll see.

Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.

(Slashdot, InfoWorld, AP on Yahoo, Reuters)

This appears to be a strategic move by Oracle to put MySQL between a rock and hard place.

Innobase is the company that provides the underlying code for the InnoDB storage engine in MySQL. It’s the de-facto choice for developers who need high concurrency, row-level locking, and transactions in MySQL. For many years now, MySQL AB and Innobase Oy (founded by Heikki Tuuri) have worked closely together to make that technology a seamless part of MySQL.

Like all of the MySQL code, InnoDB is dual licensed. That means you can freely use it under the GPL or buy a license for it if your usage would violate the GPL.

MySQL’s public reaction right now isn’t the “holy f$@%ing shit!” that likely occurred internally. Kaj Arno, MySQL’s VP of Community Relations, sent out a message to many MySQL users today titled ” MySQL AB Welcomes Oracle to the FOSS Database Market”.

The message began by saying:

MySQL AB and the Free / Open Source database market today received some unexpected recognition by Oracle, through their acquisition of Innobase Oy.

Just like the rest of MySQL Server and its Storage Engines, InnoDB is released under the GPL. With this license, our users have complete freedom to use, develop, modify the code base as they wish. That is why MySQL has chose the GPL: to protect the freedom that users value in free / open source software.
Later on, Kaj makes an effort to calm the fears of MySQL users by saing that MySQL will continue to support all their users and work with Oracle as a “normal business partner.”

The big elephant in the room, however, the uncertainty around Oracle’s future plans for the InnoDB source code. Their press release says:

Innobase is an innovative small company that develops open source database technology. Oracle intends to continue developing the InnoDB technology and expand our commitment to open source software. Oracle has already developed and contributed an open source clustered file system to Linux. We expect to make additional contributions in the future.

As well as:

InnoDB is not a standalone database product: it is distributed as a part of the MySQL database. InnoDB’s contractual relationship with MySQL comes up for renewal next year. Oracle fully expects to negotiate an extension of that relationship.

I expect those negotiations could be quite interesting. Maybe not next year, but the year after? Oracle could decide to put the squeeze on MySQL someday in a way that hurts their customers but not “the community” (those using the GPL version).

MySQL is now faced with the prospect of licensing technology they cannot ship without from their biggest rival. Interestingly, there’s always been once piece of the InnoDB puzzle that’s not available under the GPL: the InnoDB Hot Backup Tool. Without it, database administrators cannot backup their InnoDB tables without shutting down MySQL or at least locking out all transactions.

Oracle just bought themselves a whole lot of leverage with MySQL AB and a talented team of database engineers to boot.

I’ve always wondered why MySQL AB didn’t buy Innobase Oy years ago. It always made complete sense from where I sat. But I’m hardly an insider when it comes to the relationship between those companies. Needless to say, that relationship just got far more “interesting.”

I hope, for the sake of the community and the company (I’ve known many MySQL employees for years), that Oracle is true to their promises. But it is Oracle, so I’m naturally skeptical.

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Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.