"I am very passionate about open source. And I do believe that it is a superior method. But at the same time, I must be pragmatic. So when they say being dogmatic is very important for the Free Software Foundation -- well, they should be. That's what we respect them for. But running a business is not about dogma," said MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos.

News that MySQL was to bring out a closed-source add on has provoked a storm of protest across the Internet. Here is an interview with Marten Mickos trying to explain what is going on

For an executive who had just had his company bought for a cool billion a few months ago and was on the eve of announcing a major update to his business' flagship database program, former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, now Sun Microsystems' senior vice president for databases, didn't look comfortable.

MySQL leader Marten Mickos tries to calm Linux leaders' fears of MySQL abandoning the Linux market, writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols.

Mickos [Mårten] was recruited to lead open-source database provider MySQL AB in 2001 by chief technology officer and co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius, a college classmate. Since then, the MySQL database has become one of the most popular open-source technologies around, used by many of the biggest Web 2.0 sites.

MySQL quietly let slip that it would no longer be distributing the MySQL Enterprise Server source as a tarball, not quite a year after the company announced a split between its paid and free versions.

MySQL AB has made it harder for developers to use the enterprise edition of its database software for free, sparking a debate about whether the company has strayed from its obligation to its open-source community.

MYSQL chief Marten Mickos isn't afraid his rivals in the database-software industry will ever overtake him. "Let them try," he says. "Our secret is in the way we operate our culture, and I'm convinced others cannot imitate that."

Sun Microsystems has backtracked on previous plans to release important backup features for its MySQL database under a proprietary license, following widespread criticism from the open source community.