It may be time for Oracle to donate MySQL -- as it did with OpenOffice -- to The Apache Foundation, or another open source house. It's no secret that the Redwood Shores, Calif. company acquired ...

Oracle “has as many compelling business reasons to continue the ramp-up of the MySQL business as Sun Microsystems and MySQL previously did, or even more,” he wrote.

Both relational database systems have played a crucial role in the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) software stack for web applications, which is used by some of the world's most popular websites.

Percona continues to nip at Oracle's heels, releasing a free version of the open-source MySQL 5.6 database with advanced features similar to ones in Oracle's paid enterprise edition.