Oracle and Sun have just announced that Oracle acquired Sun in a $7.4 billion deal.

Well, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know what impact this will have on the network – the database stuff usually ends up in the realm of the “developers” and so far all I can tell is that people are panicing over Sun’s Open Source projects, such as Java and MySQL

That is the big question – MySQL has been the go-to database for any project requiring a database, but doesn’t necessarily need to scale.  Used in everything from cloud computing to MythTV installations, the major concern is that the open source MySQL might be killed by Oracle, which makes proprietary databases. 

Now, while MySQL is already open, there are ways to cripple, if not kill, open-source projects once they’ve been acquired – though the best example of that I can give you is when Hasbro released D&D 4. 

MySQL (the company), was, if you recall, acquired by Sun, and similar (unfounded) concerns erupted as no one knew what Sun would be doing with the new intellectual property – and eventually MySQL developers and company officers had to explain what was going on.  Perhaps Sun will have to do so as well.

NetQoS uses MySQL Enterprise edition in our network monitoring and reporting products, so this may affect us, but we don’t quite know how yet – let’s wait for the dust to settle.