MySQL "editions"
Dear Oracle,
MySQL is Open Source. By making it even more of a toy than it already is, you're just asking people to create a fork.
On the other hand, perhaps nobody will actually do so, and this will kill off MySQL for good. Which wouldn't be a shame; so if that turns out to be the case, then thanks.
Love,
Wouter.
Update: the above links to the non-GPL versions of MySQL only. There is still a "community version" of MySQL under the GPL. Seems I missed some things.
Whoops.
I'd consider MariaDB to be a fork. At least "MariaDB is a database server that offers drop-in replacement functionality for MySQL" sounds a lot like a fork while Drizzle might be off a bit with a different focus. Beside that I can also see SQLite and Postgresql as vital replacements for the various use cases in the long.
Yes, MySQL has its disadvantages (and some might see these as important enough to make MySQL not a real SQL database - ACID comes to mind). However, if you know the limitations and advantages (like easy to set up almost-real-time replication - a lot closer to realtime than any replication scheme for PostgreSQL), you can gain a lot compared to other SQL database systems.
Now what Oracle does with MySQL is more than just suboptimal (see OpenOffice as well for how Oracle handles open source).