January 04, 2010

Save MySQL petition kicks off 2010

Online petition collects over 16,000 signatures in under a week in an attempt to prevent Oracle from controlling MySQL

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Florian Mueller began 2010 by demonstrating why he was named EU Campaigner of the Year by the Economist magazine five years ago. While most of us were prepping for New Year's Eve celebrations or contemplating New Year's resolutions, Mueller and MySQL co-founder and creator Michael "Monty" Widenius spent Dec. 28 launching an online Save MySQL petition against the Oracle acquisition of MySQL via Sun. Mueller reports via e-mail:

www.helpmysql.org campaign delivers first 14,000 signatures against Oracle's proposed acquisition of MySQL to European, Chinese and Russian competition authorities. In less than one week, during the Holiday Season, we gathered 50 times more customer support than Oracle claimed three weeks ago.

You can read the full press release. The campaign is displaying stats from petition signees. This post is based on the first 16,306 signees as of 9 a.m. EST on Monday, Jan. 4. If the results change markedly with new signees, I'll post an update.

[ InfoWorld's Bill Snyder says Europe is engaging in a dishonest squeeze play on Oracle over MySQL, while Neil McAllister traces who wins if Oracle loses MySQL. | Back in September, MySQL users expressed nervousness about Oracle acquiring Sun, and Michael "Monty" Widenius has said Oracle should sell the database. ]

MySQL enterprise usage
Whether MySQL poses a competitive threat to Oracle's database business has been a point of significant disagreement between Oracle and opponents of the MySQL acquisition, including Monty and Mueller. Oracle says there is little to no overlap. Monty argues that MySQL has become feature rich and is a suitable replacement for Oracle's database in several situations.

Nearly a quarter of respondents identified themselves as working at a company using MySQL, and not simply an independent or self-employed software or Web developer. Of the respondents working at a company using MySQL, just over 20 percent worked at a company with 1,000 or more employees. This is clearly a customer group where Oracle databases would compete.