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In an attempt to win over the European Commission with regard to Oracle’s acquistion of Sun Microsystems, Oracle pledged 10 “commitments to customers, developers and users of MySQL” today.

Critics of Oracle were not impressed. See the CNET article for comments.

A summary of the 10 commitments, published by CNET, are listed below. Since Sun Microsystems was one of my past employers, I probably should not comment further.

1. Continued Availability of Storage Engine APIs. Oracle promises to maintain and enhance MySQL’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture, which gives users the ability to select from a variety of different storage engines that can plug into a MySQL database server.
2. Non-assertion. As copyright holder, Oracle will change Sun’s current policy and will not assert against anyone that a third-party vendor’s implementations of a storage engine must be released under the GPL (GNU General Public License) because they used the APIs that are part of the Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture. Further, Oracle will not require a commercial license from third-party storage engine vendors to implement the Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture’s APIs.
3. License commitment. When current MySQL OEM agreements with storage vendors end, Oracle will offer an extension up to December 10, 2014, with the same terms and conditions.
4. Commitment to enhance MySQL in the future under the GPL. Oracle promises to enhance MySQL, including version 6, under the GPL. Oracle won’t update MySQL Enterprise Edition without also updating MySQL Community Edition and will make the source code of Community Edition available to the public at no charge.
5. Support not mandatory. Customers won’t be required to buy support services from Oracle to get a commercial license for MySQL.
6. Increase spending on MySQL resarch and development. Oracle promises to spend more money than Sun did to continue to further develop MySQL, both the commercial and GPL editions.
7. MySQL Customer Advisory Board. No later than six months after the anniversary of the closing, Oracle will create a customer advisory board to offer guidance and feedback on MySQL development. The board will include end users and embedded customers.
8. MySQL Storage Engine Vendor Advisory Board. No later than six months after the anniversary of the closing, Oracle will create and fund a storage engine vendor advisory board for guidance on issues important to MySQL storage engine vendors.
9. MySQL Reference Manual. Oracle will continue to update and provide a free download to a MySQL Reference Manual similar to the one currently available from Sun.
10. Preserve Customer Choice for Support. Oracle will make sure that end-user and embedded customers paying for MySQL support can renew that support each year or every few years, depending on the customer’s preference.

-Bill at

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