Is Microsoft irrelevant? Perhaps according to some folks at OSCON. And following on yesterday’s posting of Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at OSCON, I’ve also posted some highlights from a keynote interview that Tim did with Brian Aker and Monty Widenius of MySQL. The video is in multiple sections, and covers different topics such as Sun’s acquisition of MySQL, the virtual workplace approach we have at MySQL, projects Brian and Monty are working on and more. Brian gives a pretty good explanation of his latest research project at MySQL called Drizzle. The idea is to create a micro-kernel architecture database that strips away many traditional corporate features like stored procedures, triggers, views and optimize for high-volume web sites and cloud-based applications. Although it’s still very early in Drizzle’s evolution, it’s an interesting project and one that fits completely with the focus of OSCON on innovation. Drizzle’s not a product per se, but if its successful, we could learn things that would influence MySQL’s core development.Tim also asked them for their reactions do various companies like Google and Apple. I thought it was a bit much when Brian called Microsoft “irrelevant.” Even Monty seemed to bristle at that. But the comment provoked quite a heated internal discussion inside of MySQL, so maybe I’ll write up a separate entry on that. Open Source