FUD abound around MySQL this morning. Relax chicken little, the sky ain't falling.
Just like this time last year (I hope this isn't a perennial event) everybody is expressing fear, uncertainty and doubt about the future of MySQL in the wake of yet another acquisition. What is going to happen?

MySQL isn't going to disappear tomorrow. Or even in the next ten years. Why?

• The internet runs on the LAMP stack. There is so much technological infrastructure dedicated to MySQL that anybody would be crazy to think that it is going to disappear anytime soon. Hell, lots of companies still run 4.0 databases.


• The MySQL codebase is GPL. Even if Oracle just closed up the MySQL office and set everybody packing the source code is ours to use, to repackage, to redistribute and to enhance. Drizzle already exists as a fork and others could emerge. I don't think that forks and alternative distributions are bad.


So if MySQL isn't going to disappear, what is going to happen (not that I really know)?


• Support contracts might get more expensive in the Oracle world.


• MySQL will continue to provide a low barrier-to-entry and high performance database for small enterprises and OLTP environments. There will still be lots of consulting and support opportunities for these companies. Large companies already running MySQL will be less likely to switch to an alternative technology unless compatibility with their existing apps can be ensured, or there is a clear value prop in terms of price/performance from an alternative technology.
  
• The community might move behind a new fork of MySQL. Drizzle is a good alternative, but its goals are not aligned with all use cases of the MySQL database, in particular data warehousing and analytics. This obviously could change in the future.
  
• Oracle could actually improve MySQL. MySQL needs improved triggers, stored procedures, materialized views, roles and other features. MySQL 5.1 was in RC for almost two years and a lot of stagnation has happened. A lot of planned features are half-ass or half-baked.
  
  Honestly, these are probably pretty much the same things people said last year about the Sun acquisition. Has anything /really/ changed over the last year, except community getting shafted by not having enough version numbers remaining? We still have a buggy 5.1 release, the conference is an explosion of marketing diarrhea and nobody is certain about the future of MySQL.
  
  I find it funny that I started as an Oracle DBA, and I guess technically, I am again!