Ulf Michael Widenius (born 3 March 1962), also known as Monty, is a Finnish software programmer. He is the main author of the original version of the

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

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, 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 rel ...

database, a founding member of the MySQL AB company, founding member of the

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported Fork (software development), fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Developm ...

Foundation and CTO of the MariaDB Company. Additionally, he is a founder and general partner at

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm OpenOcean.

Biography

Early years

Born in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, Widenius went to the co-educational school Broban, which was first merged into Minervaskolan and later to Lönnbeckska gymnasiet. After dropping out of Helsinki University of Technology, Widenius started working for Tapio Laakso Oy in 1981. In 1985 he founded TCX DataKonsult AB (a Swedish data warehousing company) with Allan Larsson. In 1995 he began writing the first version of the MySQL database with David Axmark, released in 1996. He is the co-author of the ''MySQL Reference Manual'', published by O'Reilly in June 2002; and in 2003 he was awarded the Finnish Software Entrepreneur of the Year prize. Until MySQL AB's sale to

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

in 2008, he was the chief technical officer of MySQL AB. After the acquisition, he remained one of the primary forces behind the ongoing development of MySQL.

MySQL acquired by Sun

Widenius sold MySQL to Sun in January 2008, earning about €16.6 million in

capital gain Capital gain is an economic concept defined as the profit earned on the sale of an asset which has increased in value over the holding period. An asset may include tangible property, a car, a business, or intangible property such as shares. ...

s in 2008 (€16.8 million total income), making him one of the top 10 highest earners in Finland that year.

After Sun

In 2008, Widenius established venture capital firm OpenOcean with his MySQL AB colleague Patrik Backman and early advisors Tom Henriksson and Ralf Wahlsten. On 5 February 2009, he announced that he was leaving Sun in order to create his own company. On 12 December 2009, Widenius asked MySQL customers to lobby the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

(EC), regarding

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

's acquisition of Sun, citing concerns about potential Oracle control of MySQL; this resulted in an online petition campaign called "Save MySQL". After leaving Sun, he formed Monty Program Ab and forked MySQL into

, named after his youngest daughter, Maria. It includes several patches and plugins developed by the company itself or the community. One of these plugins is the Aria storage engine, which was renamed from Maria to avoid confusion with MariaDB. Monty Program Ab merged with SkySQL, who later renamed themselves MariaDB Corporation. In 2012, he was a founding member of the MariaDB Foundation, a non-profit organisation charged with promoting, protecting and advancing the MariaDB codebase, community, and ecosystem. The Open Database Alliance, also known as ODBA, was founded in 2009 by the Monty Program and Percona. According to its first announcement, "the Open Database Alliance will comprise a collection of companies working together to provide the software, support and services for MariaDB, an enterprise-grade, community-developed branch of MySQL".

Personal life

Widenius lives in

Kauniainen Kauniainen (; ) is a town in Finland, located in the southern interior of the country. Kauniainen is situated in the southern part of the Uusimaa region, and it is Enclave and exclave, enclaved by the City of Espoo. The population of Kauniainen ...

, Finland with his second wife Anna and his youngest daughter, Maria. Widenius has three children – My, Max, and Maria – who inspired the names for

, MaxDB and the MySQL-Max distribution, and

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Widenius, Michael Swedish-speaking Finns Free software programmers 1962 births Living people Businesspeople from Helsinki Finnish computer programmers Technology company founders Aalto University alumni