Save MySQL Petition Gathers More than 14,000 Names

A petition filed last month by the MySQL creator and co-founder Michael "Monty" Widenius to stop Oracle from buying out the open source database has gathered support from 14,000 signatories.

In an attempt to stop the takeover, Widenius submitted a petition on Monday carrying support of as many as 14,174 signatures to the European Commission, which is carrying out an antitrust probe into the Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

European antitrust officials have already expressed their concerns about the future prospects of MySQL under Oracle, which currently leads the database market with its own signature database software.

The petition has demanded the authorities to allow for the merger if Oracle concurs to one of the proposed "solutions", including selling MySQL to some third-party company, as well as releasing all the prior versions and subsequent iterations for the upcoming three years under the auspices of Apache 2.0 open-source licence.

Monty has also mentioned the list of potential third-party buyers, which include IBM, Fujitsu, Linux distribution vendors, or a private equity company that could take MySQL public.

A majority of the initial signatories of the petition include a number of self-employed software developers, as well as employees working for the firms using MySQL database.