MySQL AB was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

software company A software company is a company whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. They make up the software industry. Types There are a number of different types of soft ...

founded in 1995. It was acquired by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

in 2008, Sun was in turn acquired by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

in 2010. MySQL AB is the creator of

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

, a

relational database management system A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

, as well as related products such as

MySQL Cluster MySQL Cluster is a technology providing shared-nothing clustering and auto-sharding for the MySQL database management system. It is designed to provide high availability and high throughput with low latency, while allowing for near linear sca ...

. The company was dually headquartered in

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

, and

Cupertino Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 57,8 ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, with offices in other countries ( France (Paris), Germany (Munich), Ireland (Dublin), Italy (Milan), and Japan (Tokyo)). MySQL AB had 400 employees in 25 countries, and

Open-source model Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

companies. Around 70% of the employees were remote workers. Together with

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

Apache The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...

, and

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

, the MySQL Server forms one of the building blocks of the LAMP technology stack. The company claimed over 5 million MySQL installations and over 10 million product downloads in 2004.

Revenue

MySQL AB representatives are commonly cited as champions of what they claim to be a "second generation" of open source companies. The revenues of both first and second generation open source companies usually derive from selling support, consulting services, and training for their products. What generally distinguishes this "second generation" of companies, such as MySQL AB and

Trolltech The Qt Company (pronounced "cute"; formerly Trolltech and Quasar Technologies) is a software company based in Espoo, Finland. It oversees the development of its Qt application framework within the Qt Project. It was formed following the acqui ...

, from earlier "open source"

business model A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value,''Business Model Generation'', Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, and 470 practitioners from 45 countries, self-published, 2010 in economic, social, ...

s is

dual licensing Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses ...

— the software is supplied under an open source license, but traditional software licences are also sold by the company that owns the software. As an example, MySQL AB makes MySQL available under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

at no charge, but sells it under other more traditional licenses to clients who do not find the GPL to be ideal for their purposes, such as inclusion of MySQL AB technology in a closed source product. Other sources of revenue for MySQL AB were providing support and consulting, as well as training and certification for MySQL Server. Together with some additional services, MySQL also provided a subscription-based product called

MySQL Enterprise MySQL Enterprise is a subscription-based service produced by Oracle Corporation and targeted toward the business, commercial market. Oracle's official support, training and certification focus on MySQL Enterprise. MySQL Enterprise contains * MyS ...

, which is also resold by other companies such as

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

, HP, and

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...

History

* 1995 – Company founded by

Michael Widenius Ulf Michael Widenius (often called Monty; born 3 March 1962, in Helsinki, Finland) is the main author of the original version of the open source MySQL database, a founding member of the MySQL AB company and CTO of the MariaDB Corporation AB. ...

David Axmark David Axmark, born 28 May 1962 in Sweden, is one of the founders of MySQL AB and a developer of the free database server, MySQL. He has been involved with MySQL development from its beginning along with the fellow co-founder Michael Widenius. He ...

, and Allan Larsson * 2001 –

Mårten Mickos Mårten Gustaf Mickos (born November 6, 1962 in Espoo, Finland) is a technology executive based in San Francisco. He is the current CEO of HackerOne, a security vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform. Mickos was chief executive off ...

elected CEO * 2001 – First round financing by Scandinavian

venture capitalists Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

* 2003 – Second round financing by a group of investors headed by

Benchmark Capital Benchmark is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups. History The firm's most successful investment was a 1997 investment of $6.7 million in eBay for 22.1% of the company. In 2011, it invested $12 mil ...

* 2003 – Partnership agreement concluded with

SAP SE Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a sepa ...

, acquiring the full commercial rights to

MaxDB MaxDB is an ANSI SQL-92 (entry level) compliant relational database management system ( RDBMS) from SAP AG, which was also delivered by MySQL AB from 2003 to 2007. MaxDB is targeted for large SAP environments e.g. mySAP Business Suite, and othe ...

* 2003 – Acquired Alzato, a subsidiary of

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in informa ...

* In February 2005 the MySQL Network subscription service was announced (later called MySQL Enterprise). A third round of about $18.5 million financing led by Institutional Venture Partners, including

Intel Capital Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, s ...

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

, SAP Ventures, and others was disclosed in February 2006. On 16 January 2008, MySQL AB announced that it had agreed to be acquired by

for approximately $1

billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: *1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English. * 1,000,000,000,000, i. ...

. The acquisition completed on 26 February 2008.

then acquired Sun in 2010.

References

External links

Company home pagePlanetMySQL
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mysql Ab Software companies of Sweden Free software companies Sun Microsystems acquisitions Companies based in Uppsala County Uppsala Software companies established in 1995 1995 establishments in Sweden 2008 mergers and acquisitions