Heck, just when Java was getting free from the mammoth’s weight, MySQL gets caught.

I keep wondering how Sun will apply their “expertise” in MySQL. Ideas:

• Launching new versions with meaningless name changes to imply the idea of evolution (after all, it is “obvious” that Java = Java 1.0 or 1.1, Java2 = Java 1.2, 1.3 or 1.4 and Java5 = Java 1.5);
• Sell the software bundled with hardware that almost nobody wants, then open source it when almost nobody cares (like Solaris);
• Open source it under a license that simply does not allow it to be included in places other than inside other Sun products (as they did with ZFS);
• My favorite: start a “smart” marketing campaign saying that MySQL is the “dot in the dot-org” (if you follow the link, scroll down like there was no tomorrow, they trademark huge loads of crap).

Shiny future. The only positive thing I can say about that is that we have PostgreSQL, as a last resort.