MySQL Planning to Go Public

News hit yesterday that MySQL reached the $50 million revenue mark in 2006. They are now ramping up for an Initial Public Offering. MySQL is a leading open source database engine and I would venture to say it is the most popular among the web development crowd. MySQL has proven to be reliable, scalable and high performing.

What will going public mean for MySQL and the web 2.0 world? MySQL has been around for a while and is pretty stable. They did report $50 million in revenue also but as is quoted by their CEO Marten Mickos in the above article,

“Profitability isn’t a specific goal yet, but we aren’t burning cash. We go a bit above breakeven, a bit below breakeven.”

What is the main reason for going public then? Mickos claims credibility amongst the more conservative customers. If that is true then this bodes well for us web developers. When bidding on projects we sometimes get questions about using open source options. We usually can do a pretty good job at explaining the wide spread use of MySQL but a little added credibility outside the technology world can only help.

I personally am interested in seeing what kind of improvements in their technology can be realized through the funds raised from an IPO. I just pray that profitability doesn’t become the main goal in an effort to keep share prices up. MySQL’s focus on a solid, stable database that performs extremely well is what keeps them our first choice here at NFi Studios.