Is it strange or just me feel that way? How can a commercial entity buy open-source product? The founder can easily start a new free branch of this product because it is GPLed. Then, what is the 1 billion deal of MySQL all about?
But yeah, Monty has come out of this laughing. Sun effectively gave him a billion dollars for a few months work, during which time all he did was whine about them in his blog. Sun buying MySQL was a strategic blunder on the order of eBay buying Skype.
However, MySql is also sold under a commercial license. Furthermore, MySql support was offered by Sun since they bought it, generating some income. Whether that is worth 1 billion I don't want to speculate.
