Is the Sun/Oracle Deal Good for MySQL Customers?

Posted by: Rachael King on April 21

There’s no shortage of commentary about whether or not Oracle’s decision to buy Sun is a good deal for each party. But is it a good deal for Sun’s customers? Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said it was a “fantastic day” for Sun’s customers in a press release. But some of Sun’s MySQL open source database customers worry that they’ll have to pay higher prices now that Oracle is acquiring a major database competitor. One MySQL customer complained about high acquisition and maintenance prices for Oracle DB in a response to this ZDNet blog post. “It’s a sad day for MySQL,” the customer wrote here, “Who is Jonathan fooling, ‘fantastic day’? Maybe for him only.”

That fear may have some merit. Some customers used the competition between MySQL and Oracle to get the best prices, says Gerry Narvaja who began working for MySQL in 2001 and then for Sun after the company acquired MySQL last year. “Those customers aren’t going to be happy,” says Narvaja who now works for The Pythian Group, a firm that does database administration outsourcing.

Some executives point to previous increases in prices after open source acquisitions in the industry. “When RedHat acquired JBoss, customers reported an increase in their subscription prices of as much as 400%,” says Steve Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic, a firm that provides support for many different open source packages including MySQL. Grandchamp adds, “We expect that trend to continue with Oracle’s acquisition of Sun.”

Larry Dignan at ZDnet even suggests that Oracle could kill MySQL. “There’s no way Ellison will let that open source database mess with the margins of his database,” he wrote here, adding, “MySQL at best will wither from neglect.”

Oracle wasn’t available for immediate comment about its plans for MySQL but experts say it’s difficult to kill open source projects because the code is freely available. “Someone can always take the code and put out a branch and call it something else,” says Bernard Golden, CEO of consulting firm HyperStratus.

Still, that’s cold comfort to customers who are wondering what’s in store for them in the immediate future. What do you think? Was yesterday a “great day” for customers or does it signal the beginning of something else?