OSDB Market Soap Opera Update (Mysql and Firebird)

A quick pointer to the news announcement that [http://www.firebirdnews.org/?p=128 mysql has purchased a company called netfrastructure inc], which happens to employ Jim Starkey (one of the founders of InterBase, an ancestor to Firebird) and perhaps more importantly Ann Harrison, one of the primary Firebird developers. The firbird foundation team is trying to do full damage control, [http://www.firebirdnews.org/?p=129 spinning this purchase as a validation of firebirds backend as the best OSS technology on the market]. ISTM it’s more likely there were pieces of technology inside netfrastructure that mysql thought it could polish up and then control for its own commercial offerings without any strings attached. Actually Ann Harrison herself sort of validates this in a (ironic at this point) post that gives an overview of how [http://www.firebirdnews.org/?p=130 you can’t buy up the firebird codebase]. That said, I’m almost certain that you wont see any integration of firebird into mysql (and I don’t think the firebird community would really want that anyway), but it’s probably worth keeping an eye on as this sure looks like mysql’s play to get out from under the shadow of the [http://people.planetpostgresql.org/xzilla/index.php?/archives/148-Oracle-really-did-buy-Sleepycat.html recent oracle maneuvers], and so will have an effect on how the mainstream tech market looks at all open source db’s.