Earlier this week Sun, the new owner of the MySQL brand, announced that upcoming "high-end add-ons" will be included only in the paid MySQL Enterprise. So far, the open source database has established itself as the best option for small and medium-sized web hosting companies, and by extension -- for millions of clients. Will they need to reconsider their choice of database server?

MySQL's popularity is based mainly on two things -- first, it's free, and second -- it has a huge community, established along the best traditions of open source projects. Over the years it has proven to perform and scale well, though there is always the occasional critic. Sites that run MySQL include Wikipedia and Flickr.

The company, which developed it originally -- MySQL AB, also offered an enterprise edition with some premium options. When it was acquired by Sun Microsystems in February 2008, at the price of $1 billion, people speculated that the tech giant, which has an established dedication to open source, will keep MySQL free and open for all. But Sun has a much larger team of programmers and its priority is making a profit. Thus, the company is capable of turning the two versions -- Community and Enterprise, into very different products. And the project's contributors and supporters are not happy about the possibility and are voicing their disapproval all over the internet.

Most likely, MySQL 6 Community edition will serve the majority of webmasters just fine. Still, one has to wonder whether in the long term, Sun's decision won't cause a sizable migration to competing open source database PostgreSQL, which has a big community of very vocal supporters even now.