Open Source Weblog

Oracle acquired the InnoDB storage engine along with Innobase in October 2005, leading to a potential problem for MySQL given that InnoDB was its database storage engine of choice.

Recent rumours had indicated that MySQL was working on a development deal with Sleepycat to come up with a replacement, raising questions about Oracle's intentions. Oracle's company's VP of technology marketing, Robert Shimp denied that anything untoward was going on, however.

"Sleepycat never had an arrangement with them," he said, adding that there is no change in the relationship with MySQL, and that the two companies continue to negotiate an extension to the existing MySQL/InnoDB relationship.

MySQL confirmed that negotiations with Oracle are ongoing and repeated its previous belief that the fact that InnoDB is licensed under the GNU GPL protects its users' investment in the technology long-term.

"We are in ongoing negotiations with Oracle to renew our current agreement. The beauty of open source is that InnoDB is under the GPL, which will protect users' investment/applications forever - regardless of Oracle or MySQL's actions," the statement read

"Additionally, we continue to work internally and with partners on a number of alternative transactional engines. We are very fortunate that MySQL has a unique pluggable storage engine architecture, which enables us to take advantage of any number of different available storage engines. We plan to provide more details about our storage engine strategy and roadmap at the MySQL users conference in April," it added.

Upsetting the MySQL user base would certainly be a strange way for Oracle to build its reputation in the open source software market, and Shimp maintained that it something the company intends to do via Sleepycat.

"Berkeley DB is one of the pre-eminent brand names in the open source industry," he said, noting that the code is embedded in a wide variety of open source projects, including Linux, FreeBSD, the Apache Directory Server and OpenOffice.org.

"That provides us with additional access in the open source industry and we can of course tap into that user community and the open source community and learn how to build an open source business," he said. "We are involved not only with Linux but also Apache, but each project is unique," he added. "We want to move into that market and learn more."

Last week Larry Ellison outlined the company's intention to position itself for growth in the open source software market. "We are moving aggressively into open source," he told the 2006 Credit Suisse Global Software Conference. "We're embracing it, we're not going to fight this trend. We think if we're clever we can make it work to our advantage."

The company has also been linked with the potential acquisitions of open source Java middleware vendor JBoss, and Zend Technologies, the company behind the open source PHP programming language. Shimp declined to comment on the rumours or how the company intends to move into open source beyond the Sleepycat acquisition, however.