Although this may seem a little off topic, the proposed acquisition of Sun Systems by Oracle, will bring MySQL under the control of the world’s largest provider of closed source databases. MySQL is probably the leading open source database system on the market and is used by many sites around the world. For example this blog which is WordPress based uses MySQL as do all WordPress blogs, regardless of who hosts the site. Similarly my Parlington history site uses MySQL for certain aspects of its functioning. If MySQL is absorbed by Oracle and becomes a propriety format, the world will change, many, many blogs will be affected and the whole culture of the Internet will be damaged.