Linux.com

Microsoft has been following open source movement on many levels, nut just Linux/Windows or Office/OpenOffice. I do not think they are so much concerned with MySQL as they are concerned by an increasing number of web sites using PHP. For example, one of the "wins or losses" they are tracking is the ASP vs. PHP battle. Of course, PHP is closely linked to MySQL, so this definitely has some impact. I think they are more worried about PHP because they want ASP to become a monopoly, since it utilizes calls to the Internet Explorer and helps their desktop strategy, because of undocumented links between ASP and the Windows operating system. PHP is a thorn in their side, because it's widely used and it's growth is very steady. I don't think MySQL has gained enough traction in the enterprise market yet, although I know many big companies are already using it in production environments. But I am positive they are worried about PHP + MySQL + Apache. This is a killer application development environment that really bugs them, because it is of high quality and easy to get and learn. That is exactly why they have made available the ASP WebMatrix development tool and the Microsoft Desktop SQL Engine freely available. So far they have been relatively succesful in this area, although, I believe, not as much as the open source movement. So I think the real issue is not so much MySQL vs. MS SQL but more of LAMP vs Microsoft's web development platform.

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