The reaction to Sun's Intended Acquisition of MySQL ( Jonathan's blog, Video) is very positive at the end of this first day. Some of the references are:

• Traditional Press - NetworkWorld, Forbes, Guardian, The Register, ComputerWorld, InformationWeek, NY Times, WSJ, PC World, CNet News and many more. • Analysts and Bloggers - O'Reilly, Kaj, Simon, Dana Gardner, ReadWriteWeb, Open Source Solutions, Alex Fletcher, Rod Johnson and many more, including uncountable Entries @ BSC • Discussions - TheServerSide ([1], [2], [3]), Slashdot,

I'll confess I'm slightly (but very pleasantly) surprised at the percentage of positive reactions this soon after the announcement. Also at the number of places where GlassFish is mentioned and how often the deal is compared favorably to Oracle's Acquisition of BEA.

On a personal note, I'm typing this from Orlando where MySQL has an all-employee meeting. Several of us flew here Tuesday evening for today's announcement and to talk with people. We had already met several individuals while preparing for the deal but this is a great opportunity to meet many more folks.

I'm enjoying the visit a lot; the cultures of the two companies are very compatible and yet we can learn a lot from each other. One area that MySQL does better is dealing with "isolated" employees; MySQL is geographically very distributed and there is not much a sense of "HQ" vs "non-HQ" - everybody is in a more equal footing than at Sun. I think the deal is going to work very well at many levels.

PS. At left is Sakila, the mascot of MySQL. She is a dolphin, not a fish :-)