|
I read that too yesterday and had the same thought.
Sun most likely wants to strengthen it's dominance in the enterprise market. MySQL is quickly becoming the new Oracle and as such this is most likely Sun's strategy for getting back in the game.
It seems like only the new functionality will be closed.
MySQL 5 is a solid product and doubt there will be need for the new features for the majority of users out there.
Java was closed source and yet it was still free. Quite a good product as well.
Sun has a history of giving away the lower end stuff for free and only charging large enterprise companies. The company is not set up to service small businesses.
My first reaction was that of concern, but then thinking about it more I think it is for the better.
Worse case scenario, someone forks the current GPL version of MySQL and parallels the closed development Sun will be doing / charging for.
Personally I'm sick of RDBMS and can't wait for a serious ODBMS to come out.
|