When I talked with journalists, lawyers and analysts about the Oracle/Sun merger case questions were raised about the possibility to fork MySQL and that everybody who is not satisfied with Oracle’s future way regarding MySQL could do this. I don’t agree with that and I think it’s best to put Monty’s own words (found in a comment in his blog) here because I can’t explain it better:

In addition, the MySQL trademark is so strong that it’s hard to impossible for a fork to attract enough attention to be able to compete in a meaningful manner if MySQL would be owned by a vendor that refuses to cooperate and works against the fork.

These are tough days in the case of the Oracle/MySQL decision the EU faces. First of all, the lobbyists of Oracle achieved that the decision deadline will be extended from January, 19th to January, 27th 2010. Secondly, Monty recommended that a license change from GPL to BSD would be a great idea for MySQL’s future.

Today, Johann pointed me to a document called „Project Peter“ which can be found at wikileaks.org (download PDF from wikileaks.org server in Sweden). It’s a presentation of MySQL’s Robin Schumacher. You may ask „What is Project Peter?“. The presentation says:

Project Peter is an internal effort to assist Sun/MySQL customers in migrating from Oracle to MySQL by offering them a comprehensive solution that consists of Professional Services, Best Practices, and a set of approved third party migration tools and utilities that will enable them to move to MySQL in a way that is as easy as possible.

Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, tweeted some time ago about an interview in eWeek where he was asked if Oracle and MySQL compete directly against each other. On page 2 of this interview, he claims that certainly Oracle and MySQL compete to each other:

„MySQL most certainly competes with Oracle,“ Mickos said. „And successfully so. But what must be remembered in terms of dollars in that competition, it is not significant enough to warrant an antitrust consideration. Secondly, this competition happens partly outside of the business—in the free, installed base.

„So no matter who owns MySQL, the competition will continue to exist.“

Even if Oracle does ultimately own the MySQL code base and act as the enterprise headquarters for the database, „MySQL will still apply price pressure on Oracle,“ Mickos said. „That won’t change. This is why there’s no reason to stop the acquisition.“

Asked about the future of MySQL, Mickos claimed: „The MySQL business is a very strong business, with enormous potential in the next 10 to 20 years.“

So, maybe MySQL doesn’t compete in terms of dollars today. But if MySQL does have a bright future in the next 10 or 20 years, there’s evidence that numbers will climb up in the era of the „database for the web“. So that’s why there’s Project Peter for the sales force of Sun to try to convert Oracle customers to MySQL. I’m not sure if Oracle will accept a Project Peter if Oracle will own Sun and MySQL in the future – I guess they’ll shut down Project Peter because MySQL may be kind of a threat to Oracle’s business in certain areas.

And this is why Oracle mustn’t own MySQL.