Curiouser and curiouser.... IBM today announced a technology and marketing partnership that will have IBM selling MySQL's database, among other things:The agreement calls for IBM and MySQL to develop software that will make MySQL compatible with programs that run IBM's System i line of business computers, including IBM's i5 operating system DB2 database. IBM will also sell MySQL's service products.Just when I th Curiouser and curiouser….IBM today announced a technology and marketing partnership that will have IBM selling MySQL’s database, among other things:The agreement calls for IBM and MySQL to develop software that will make MySQL compatible with programs that run IBM’s System i line of business computers, including IBM’s i5 operating system DB2 database. IBM will also sell MySQL’s service products.Just when I thought IBM was getting stodgy and provincial in its views on open source, it does something like this. This is news because: IBM’s DB2 competes with MySQL, and MySQL is GPL (though dual-licensed under commercial terms), and IBM has tended to be somewhat Apache-centric, its Linux (and Eclipse – yes, I know that IBM does more than BSD-style licensing) involvement notwithstanding. IBM has massive reach and may be just the thing to take MySQL to the next level. Remember when IBM blessed Linux with its billion-dollar announcement?I think this is fantastic news for MySQL, and I believe it will be good for IBM, too (and potentially bad for Oracle and Microsoft which, of course, must be the subtext for this announcement). Yet again IBM has shown that it can be very, very shrewd when it comes to open source. Open Source