The creator of popular open-source database MySQL, Michael "Monty" Widenius, wants to see the now-Oracle-owned product disappear from the earth within the next five years" - displaced by his own alternative, MariaDB.
Speaking to Computing after his company, Monty Program, merged with support and training provider SkySQL, Widenius railed against Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010, just two years after Sun purchased MySQL from the company's investors, which included founder Widenius
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"I never thought that MySQL would be bought by a buyer that potentially wouldn't care about MySQL and would benefit by killing MySQL rather than keeping it alive. That was something we never talked about," Widenius told Computing.
Indeed, Widenius had specifically stipulated when the company was sold to Sun that MySQL should never fall into the hands of Oracle.
"When we sold to Sun, there was an agreement they would never sell to Oracle... But that Sun would be sold to Oracle was something you'd never even see in your dreams."
Widenius described how, after the Sun acquisition of MySQL, he had been "preparing ways to work more closely with Sun to enhance MySQL," but after the Oracle buyout "it was not important anymore; it was more important to ensure MySQL survived, whatever happened".
But it was the open source spirit of the product, rather than the product itself, that Widenius believes eventually found its way into MySQL fork product MariaDB, which was first released in 2009.
Since then, Widenius has been determined to "make sure that what happened to MySQL could never happen again". In December 2012, he created the MariaDB Foundation - effectively a governance body for MariaDB – which he says has "enough rights to the project to make sure it could not be hijacked".
"So even if someone bought us, nobody could hijack it, and stop the project being open source. So if Oracle bought MariaDB, they couldn't call what they made MariaDB."
Widenius was also extremely aware of protecting his team, believing that, with the Sun acquisition, "these people [who] were the original creators of MySQL together with me... didn't really get fair treatment in the Sun acquisition - they really didn't get the shares they deserved. When we started MariaDB I said 'we've got four years to prove ourselves'.
"SkySQL was a support, sales and training organisation, but at MariaDB we had all the technical people, but not the sales," he added.
"So it was basically me out doing the selling of the product by myself. The problem was that there was a conflict there about agility."
The companies have now merged under the SkySQL name, bringing together MariaDB's products and growing market savvy, and SkySQL's salesmanship, support services and expanding knowledge - and even development - of products.
The merged SkySQL's CEO Patrik Sallner believes the month-old partnership has already started to generate positive results. An independent survey recently estimated that 50 per cent of MySQL database users should have migrated to MariaDB within the next two years, should uptake remain as steady as it is now.
"We've got up there with NoSQL [another MySQL fork product] within the last four months, and we're focusing on interoperability," said Sallner.
"There's a lot happening in big data with many NoSQL solutions available, but none are actually compatible with each other. MariaDB can help there. Also, around cloud and distributed architecture we're going to build the elasticity required for this sector."
"After the Sun acquisition, people became uncomfortable having Oracle as a vendor," said Sallner.
"But over the next three years we got over 300 large enterprise customers." Deutsche Telecom, Craiglist, the Financial Times, Home Depot and the French Post Office and police force are all on board, and the UK Cabinet Office has also been registering an interest.
"The public sector is a long haul - government departments change more slowly. But it's a huge market, and education is another possibility. We have Harvard University already," said Sallner.
Widenius described how MariaDB also persuaded Wikipedia to come on board by "offering free tech support". "They noticed a 10 per cent speed increase for everything they did. They said 'Let's just forget about Oracle'," said Widenius.
But there's a perspective that Widenius himself just cannot forget quite so easily - MySQL and MariaDB are part-named after his own daughters. Hence, even though one daughter is unhappy about how Oracle is handling MySQL, Widenius is hoping to replace it with another open-source database named after his other daughter.
"My daughter is not happy with the way Oracle is handling the product," said Widenius. "She would like them to drop the My prefix."
Taking shares in the new company rather than money in order to show people MariaDB is "not for the money" and that he hasn't "sold out", Widenius has publicly thanked "so many people who trusted me, going on the MySQL road".
Moving on with a product he feels will remain true - and protected - to its open source roots, rewarding his old friends and pleasing a community (not to mention his daughters), Widenius' elevation of MariaDB to a contender for the database thrown is shooting for a lot of goals. But whatever it eventually achieves, it's already given Widenius the peace of mind.
"MariaDB allows me to sleep with a clean conscience."
