I’ve given it some thought, and I don’t think there is anything to worry about. Here’s why.

• Over the last few years, Oracle has invested a lot of time and money in adding to their open source credentials. To damage MySQL in any way would also damage the reputation they have worked so hard to foster within the Open Source community.
• The key word among Oracle and their competitors is marketshare. When was the last time you saw an advertisement for Oracle that wasn’t related to the number of customers they have in a given market? By acquiring MySQL, Oracle effectively becomes the dominant player in the online market – a market they had virtually no presence in last week.
• Oracle can now start pursuing MySQL users in an effort to convince them to upgrade to one of the revenue generating products in their database lineup. In fact, they already have. Here’s an excerpt from an email I received from Oracle last night advertising a seminar comparing Oracle to MySQL.
  

  Learn why choosing an Oracle technology platform lowers the total cost of ownership for your company during this live, interactive one hour program. Tony Tarone, the Director of Operations at Cedar Document Technologies, will discuss how he gained a reliable, scalable, secure, and cost effective platform by moving from MySQL to Oracle.

I believe MySQL will be safe under the Oracle umbrella. It may or may not get a new name, but that will be the extent of it. The potential losses in terms of reputation, marketshare and upgrade revenue is far too important for Oracle to start messing with something so loved by millions and millions of users.

Oracle also announced today that its Board of Directors intends to pay a quarterly cash dividend of $0.05 per share, or $0.20 per share annually, on its common stock.

This is the first quarterly dividend Oracle has ever paid, and the first dividend of any kind for a long, long time. In the current economy, this will certainly be good news for their shareholders.

The good news still didn’t stop CEO Larry Ellison from pointing out that they could have done much better if they didn’t have to report their global income in US dollars, but that seems to be all the rage these days…

“But for the strengthening of the US dollar leading to unfavorable currency exchange rates, our non-GAAP earnings per share would have increased 29% in Q3,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “This is a tremendous achievement in the face of the serious slowdown in the world economy.”

I don’t think the shareholders will worry too much…