Matt Asay outlines the roles of Monty Widenius and IBM in the arguments surrounding the future of MySQL, and says “it has everything to do with money”.

I’m now not so convinced by Monty’s arguments and am concerned there may be a conflict of interest lurking in the background.

This follows the Oracle’s planned takeover of Sun Microsystems, which itself acquired MySQL AB in February 2008.

The Oracle-Sun deal has been approved by US regulators, but has not yet been approved by the EC due to concerns about MySQL.

Monty is asking readers of his blog “urgently to help save MySQL from Oracle’s clutches“. He details the current situation, and urges everyone to act quickly to support MySQL.

MySQL is the database used by WordPress, and if the scenario outlined by Monty comes to pass, I can see problems on the horizon.

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• Sound and vision [Jeremy Keith]