Sun Microsystems has bought MySQL AB, the Swedish company that is the creator and owner of MySQL, in a deal worth $1 billion.
This is most likely good news as Sun is one of the largest contributors to open source software. Sun will raise the profile of MySQL further by providing global support at the enterprise level.
MySQL is a very popular database management system for web applications. It is closely tied with PHP and is used on some of the most well known websites.
It is part of the LAMP stack that provides a free foundation to run dynamic websites.
Sun are well known for their development of the Java platform as well as the development of Unix-based operating systems such as Solaris. They are also known for releasing OpenOffice.org, a popular free open source office suite.