All Sun got for their $1Bn was the domain name mysql.com...

MySQL's battle for the last decade has mostly been getting enough brand recognition that corporate environments consider it a serious, practical alternative. The brand IS the value of MySQL: it is a promise that the technology has been worked on by serious people, and will continue to be patched and improved for the forseeable future (however realistic that promise turns out to be).

Starting again with a new brand is possible, but by definition it would be a new company which would have to prove its chops and its longevity all over again.

Losing the MySQL brand would be a serious setback to MySQL adoption in corporate environments, and thereby a setback to the amount of money that gets invested in improving it. It is in the interests of all users of MySQL that the brand remain trusted.

Losing the mysql brand would mean less than nothing, in the corporate world a brand has value in the open source world the name changes and everybody moves on.

See joomla vs mambo and a ton of other examples.

The only person that really seems to have a problem with this is Monty himself since he can't let go of his baby even after selling it down the river. Which plenty of people spoke up about when he sold it to SUN in the first place.

All those people have quit Sun and work for Monty now...

Which kind of bothers me because I really like Sun hardware. Every blunder Sun makes pushed SPARC closer to extinction.

I hope Oracle keeps making the Type 7 keyboards with Control where God wanted it to be. That's not too much to ask...