IBM to open source DB2?

There’s a story on CNet about IBM considering open sourcing DB2. While there are no immediate plans, IBM UK’s director of information management software Chris Livesy has said that market conditions may make it unavoidable.

“Looking at IBM’s heritage in contributing to the open-source market, we’ve been particularly keen to lead that market. Open source is an interesting space, as a whole. As the future unfolds, and the economics become clearer, there’s going to be more commitment to open source by everybody. We’ve made good steps towards that.”

And why not?

A while back, I predicted that within 10 years all major DBMS systems would be open source. While DB2 is a good database, it’s fallen behind MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle in terms of popularity. And the “express” editions released in 2006 have done little to increase popularity of DB2 and Oracle.

In recent years we’ve seen Cloudscape and Ingres both go open source. Could IBM DB2 be next? What about Informix? Sybase? And, dare I say it. What about Oracle? And Microsoft? Stranger things have happened.

Maybe this little statement from the UK was a way a trial balloon, intended to test the reaction from customers and press in order to gain support internally to open source DB2. IBM’s been a great contributor to open source, so this move makes a lot of sense. As I’ve said before, I think its odd when a company says “Open source is great –but not for your database.”

So how about it? Would an open source version of DB2 be interesting?

Update: This morning IBM issued an official statement that they are not open sourcing DB2. Presumably those responsible for earlier statements have now been sacked.