Dvorak: The Sun-MySQL deal stinks of Larry Ellison
marketwatch.com
marketwatch.com
I just ignore his stuff these days.
Also remember that anyone at that level is completely insane.
Sun has, in fact, destroyed every acquisition they've ever gotten their paws on. That list he links to only goes back to 2002. The full set is a dizzying tower of failure.
Soon he will simply complain about being old each week.
Still it is not impossible that management style people at companies like Oracle and Sun are so stupid to don't realize this, or maybe it's the best they can do to mitigate the MySQL effect in the current situation, that is to continue the development in a way that makes MySQL uncomfortable in some way but still usable enough to slower the switching to other products.
If mysql were Nike, it would be worth it for a competitor to pay a billion to force a name change. But anyone who even knows what mysql is would know instantly what happened.