Leaving MySQL, 20030908 - 20080321

Ask me a couple of months ago and I would have said that I was going to join Sun Microsystems after their acquisition of MySQL. Ask me two weeks ago and I would have said that I hope that things would work out.

At the end of this month, MySQL as a corporate entity would cease to exist and the MySQL employees become Sun Microsystems employees. Except for me and a small handful of people: Today, Friday 21 March 2008, is my final day working for MySQL. For various reasons, I felt I could not sign the agreements with Sun. This gives me an opportunity to go in a slightly different direction with my career.

Why have I only announced it on my final day? It was all quite sudden: Only on Tuesday I was informed that I would not be permitted to work through my notice period - which originally would have had me working until the middle of June. I had plans to get a couple of projects completed before I left and it would give me time for a smoother handover of tasks and perhaps a nice announcement a few weeks in advance. Who is now going to maintain the plug-ins code? I suppose it will now fall into someone's lap in a similar way how it fell into my lap: Somewhat haphazardly and unplanned. Of course, that happened soon after InnoDB was purchased by Oracle and Martin Mickos, made an announcement about plug-in storage engines being the way of the future - someone had to work on it to make it happen.... **plonk**
Still, I hate leaving things partially completed. Just makes things untidy for someone else to take over. Not that I have much choice under the current circumstance. I will resume being a member of the MySQL community and will stay in touch with MySQL, contribute a few patches. I told Jeffrey that there needs to be a better process for community to interact with the MySQL code - he said that something is being worked out.

So many things going to happen soon too - next month, April, has the MySQL User Conference and Expo in Santa Clara - I hope that our presentation on External Language Stored Procedures for MySQL is informative and well received. In May, I have a much deserved vacation which was booked last year - I had plenty of accrued vacation. Those plans are not going to change now - so I suppose I will start my new job in June.

Oh well, end of a 4 years 6 month chapter... also end of the MySQL-as-a-small-upstart-company era too. I wish all my former colleagues, including those which have now joined Sun, all the best for the future. I hope that Sun continues the great MySQL traditions. keep growing their business, keep MySQL as a fun product to use.