MySQL, a popular database system for web application (more than 10 million of installations) announces today that it has been acquired by Sun Microsystems for US $1 billion.

MySQL has been one of the essential component for running web applications like Wordpress, Wikipedia and other huge content management systems (i.e Joomla, Drupal).Most people (web developers especially) would like to know where MySQL is heading after the takeover. Will it remains as an open source project?

I found this on MySQL.com :

I’d like to think that the acquisition of MySQL by Sun will be seen as good news also by the core group of users who form the active MySQL community. This is because Sun is a safe haven for MySQL. Sun knows Open Source, and to the extent things change, I expect Sun to add value to our community. I don’t expect huge change, though. We continue to work with our quality contributors, we continue to provide our MySQL Forums, the Planet MySQL blog aggregator, we remain on the #mysql-dev and #mysql channels on Freenode, we provide MySQL University lessons, we meet at the MySQL Users Conference. We’ll put effort into connecting the many FOSS enthusiasts and experts at Sun — whom we will now learn to know better — with our active user community.

So it guess it safe to say that it will remain free and open source.