News : Sun acquires MySQL for $1 billion 

Kaj Arnö announced on his blog about the acquisition of MySQL by Sun Microsystems. He wrote that this has taken everybody by surprise - users, community members, customers, partners and MySQL employees. He believes that depending on one’s relationship to MySQL, the immediate reaction upon hearing the news may be a mixture of various feelings, including excitement, pride, disbelief and satisfaction, but also anxiety. Most Industry experts have been speculating that MySQL will likely be a hot IPO for 2008.

"As part of the transaction, Sun will pay approximately $800 million in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock and assume approximately $200 million in options. The transaction is expected to close in late Q3 or early Q4 of Sun’s fiscal 2008. Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions."

Kaj Arnö is the VP of Community Relations for MySQL. He is responsible for communicating and evangelizing MySQL within the software development community — as well as representing the community’s interests to MySQL’s senior management team. He has been with MySQL since 2001 in a variety of executive positions, including managing the company’s relationship with SAP. Prior to MySQL, he founded and was CEO of Polycon Ab, a training and professional services provider in Finland and Germany. He began his professional programming career with Datema and IBM.

Given Sun’s proven track record as the largest contributor to Open Source, Kaj assures that MySQL users have plenty of reason to feel happy about the acquisition. There are many companies that attempt to ride the wave of positive attention towards Open Source, but Sun gets it right. Sun gets Open Source. Java has been released under the GPL. There’s the OpenSolaris operating system. There’s Open Office / Star Office. There’s the GlassFish application server. There’s the NetBeans IDE tool. And more..

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Courtesy : Brajeshwar.com