Oracle Picks Up Open Source Company Innobase

Big-time tech company Oracle announced on Friday the acquisition of the Finnish Innobase. The Innobase is an open source software company, known for its product, InnoDB. InnoDB is used in conjunction with the with the MySQL database as an add-on storage engine. It's distributed in the GNU GPL open-source license. The product is bundled with MySQL and the contract is up for renewal next year. Oracle said they have no reason to think the contract won't be extended. "Oracle has long been a supporter of open source software such as Linux and Apache," said Charles Rozwat, Oracle's Executive Vice President in charge of Database and Middleware Technology. "Innobase is an innovative small company that develops open source database technology. Oracle intends to continue developing the InnoDB technology and expand our commitment to open source software. Oracle has already developed and contributed an open source clustered file system to Linux. We expect to make additional contributions in the future." There is some concern in the MySQL field however and there's much speculation on just what this means. One doesn't think Oracle will mess with things too much as MySQL serves as a foil for Microsoft. But, what they will change is anybody's bet. The