Let me also reiterate that I share your love for MySQL, as well as your concerns about MySQL’s future. Though I see it as a net-negative business decision, Oracle has every term-sheet-based reason not to let MySQL continue as an OSS project.

That being said, I stand by my position that you did, in fact, have a choice, you simply made it far in advance of the sale to Sun. Bringing in outside investors was tantamount to the surrender of your power of final say. Getting into bed with venture capital puts a company squarely on the road towards one of two outcomes: a sale or an IPO. In either case, you lose the reigns.

I understand you worked to ensure that MySQL would go to a good home, but surely at some point you had to acknowledge the reality that the company could go wherever the hell those in the driver seat wanted. My first company isn’t even off the ground yet and I found three separate advisors who warned me of this reality.

But while I can appreciate that we’re discussing your past business decisions with 20/20 hindsight, I have a very hard time swallowing your argument that a suitable open source replacement won’t come along, should MySQL’s doomed fate come to pass. Yes, switching databases would be a major pain, but to suggest that we won’t ever see another open source alternative because “the unique circumstances that made MySQL possible may not appear again” seems ludicrous, especially coming from someone so deeply entrenched in the OSS community.

The formula hasn’t changed: offer open source version to maximize market penetration, make money on additional services, like premium support, partnerships, and licensing. My experience with the Zen Cart project bears this reality out: the project makes money by providing out-of-box support for all PayPal payment methods. What stars’ alignment do you see at work in MySQL’s success? I submit that such a position sells short all the time and effort of you and your team.

Even your own actions betray your words. After all, what is the MariaDB project if not “MySQL redux,” without the outside investors?

However, despite our disagreement, I can totally and emphatically agree with you on one key point: that open source software could lose protection under anti-competitive regulation. Depending on the nature of their decision, it could have widespread consequences for all sorts of open source-based businesses. And it’s on that basis that I’ve already signed the http://helpmysql.org petition.

To answer a couple of your questions:

The European Commission (EC) does regard MySQL and Oracle to be competitive products; That is why they issued a statement of objection against the deal.

Oracle did a stunt in the last minute by contacting many of their big customers and got them to send letters to the EC where they asked EC to approve of the deal.

The reason for the petition at http://helpmysql.org is to also give the MySQL users a say in the matter.

“In short, if he’s just trying to protect his turf, is his mindset really any different from Oracle?”

It’s much more at stake to protect my turf. I am concerned about all MySQL users who has trusted something that I created and I am doing everything that I can to not betray their trust in MySQL.

“If that was the case, you shouldn’t have sold it off in the first place.”

I didn’t have a choice. This is explained in detail in my blog at http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-keep-internet-free.html#q20

However, we should not loose the big picture; The big losers if Oracle gets to own MySQL uncontrolled is potentially everyone that is depending on MySQL today. They have in this case to spend money and efforts to either switch to a closed source version of MySQL or switch to another database.

The other looser is the open source community that will (over time) loose one of their building blocks and also the protection from anti-competitive regulators if open source products doesn’t enjoy the same protection as closed source products. If a new product would eventually “rise to fill the void”, companies will have a harder time to trust is it can also be bought and killed. There is however no guarantees that such a product will ever exists again as the unique circumstances that made MySQL possible may not appear again.

In the end, the simple truth is that if you don’t do anything, you are helping Oracle. By giving your opinion at http://helpmysql.org you can at least get your voice heard!