1994
Michael Widenius and David Axmark start developing MySQL
1995
Software company MySQL AB founded by Michael Widenius, David Axmark and Allan Larsson
23 May 1995
First internal release of MySQL
April 1998
Michael Kunze coins the acronym LAMP for an open source web server software bundle comprised of Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python
07 October 2005
Oracle acquires Innobase Oy, the provider of an open source database storage engine for MySQL, InnoDB.
14 February 2006
Oracle buys Sleepycat, open source developer of Berkeley DB, another transactional storage engine for MySQL
April 2006
MySQL and InnoDB agree to a multi-year extension of their licensing agreement
August 2006
MySQL drops Berkeley DB from its list of supported database storage engines for technical reasons
26 February 2008
Sun Microsystems acquires MySQL AB
17 July 2008
According to Forrester Research’s “Market Update: Open Source Databases” report, “MySQL has the highest adoption and growth. MySQL continues to have the largest mindshare in the open source database market and has the highest number of paying customers for product support: an estimated 16,000.”
20 April 2009
Oracle Corporation and Sun Microsystems enter into an agreement by which Oracle will acquire Sun for $7.4 billion ($9.50 per share for Sun’s common stock)
early June 2009
US Department of Justice (DoJ) launches an antitrust investigation into the Oracle/Sun deal
27 June 2009
DoJ extends antitrust investigations of the deal beyond the initial 30-day review period
16 July 2009
Sun’s stockholders approve the Oracle merger agreement
20 August 2009
DoJ approves the Oracle/Sun merger
03 September 2009
European Competition Commission opens an in-depth investigation into the Oracle/Sun deal, expressing concerns over MySQL
19 January 2010
Provisional deadline for EC’s decision in the takeover of Sun by Oracle