Did Oracle Just Make MySQL Worse?

Deals

from the you've-left-your-core-components-exposed dept

With all the buying that Oracle’s been doing lately, it would have been fairly easy to overlook the supposedly small acquisition the company made on Friday. In fact, it didn’t seem worth posting about. However, as the discussions about the acquisition are spreading, this small deal could actually be a very big deal. Unlike their recent big enterprise software deals that often seemed to be grasping at straws in dwindling markets, buying Innobase may put MySQL in a world of hurt. For years, Oracle has insisted that it doesn’t really compete with MySQL at all, but that argument is pretty weak when you look at the overall trends of the market, and the number of companies who are figuring out how to get by pretty nicely with the open source database. However, as Jeremy Zawodny points out, MySQL may have left one of their most important parts completely exposed. Innobase makes a key component of MySQL that it needs to compete effectively… and now Oracle owns it. While Oracle says they’ll continue to support it, they’re also going to “negotiate” when the contract between Innobase and MySQL comes up for renewal next year. It does make you wonder why MySQL didn’t try to buy them earlier, as it certainly looks like a big weakness hasn’t just been exposed, but ripped out. It’s likely that MySQL will try to figure out some way around this — and, if not, that some other open source databases will have an opportunity to move up in the world. However, in one small move, it certainly looks like Oracle may have given themselves a bit more breathing room in the database world.