MySQL hits $50 million revenue, plans IPO

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The new option, though it doesn't cover higher-level platinum support or versions of MySQL with some high-reliability "clustering" features, has won over some new customers. Among them are Bookings.nl, Dada, ESPN, Grant Street, IMMI, Instaclick, iStockphoto, Netshop.com, The New York Times Co., Qsent, the Swedish National Police, Trans Union and Uptilt, the company said.

In the past, MySQL development has been restricted largely to a tight group of company employees, though the company boasted of tight links to customers when it came to issues such as new version testing, feature requests and debugging.

Now the company is trying to bring in more outside contributions, Mickos said.

"We have changed our model. We have learned," Mickos said. "We had a lot of contributions before, but we weren't as appreciative, and we didn't ask for them. Now we are."

One major potential ally--Google--appears eager to help out. This week, Google published its own MySQL modifications that it uses internally and expressed hope that the changes would be incorporated in the main project.

[tedhhi]

Hostile takeover

And how long after MySQL goes public will Oracle do a hostile takeover??

[mrslump]

CEO name misspelled

You have the CEO's name spelled incorrectly, that should be Mårten Mickos. You can look up the correct spelling from the company's web pages.