Hi all,
Monty Widenius has launched a petition for MySQL to remain free. Save MySQL! – SIGN THE PETITION. I thought I set a link here in case someone is interested.
Monty’s view is not without its weighty critics.
Eben Moglen has come out in favour of Oracle taking over MySql under the GPL.
Pamela Jones of Groklaw has also criticised Monty’s intervention at the EU against Oracle’s take-over of MySql and criticises his favouring of the Apache licence over the GPL.
In other words, there seem to be some very good arguments not to be suspicious of Oracle in the MySql issue since MySql would provide them with advantages in their competition against other market molochs.
The two links you pointed to give a good overview of the controversial points. The problem is this: (Monty O-tone)
All commercial storage engine vendors (who have put 30-100 million USD into the MySQL ecosystem) will probably go out of business. It was because of the above problems that GPL is not a good license for a widely used library and why FSF invented LGPL. MySQL is a bit more complex than a normal GPL library, as one can build upon or inside MySQL, but it has essentially the same problems.
By reducing MySQL to pure GPL, Oracle would effectively kill the user base which funded MySQL’s development and are the primary competitors to Oracle’s products.
I am no MySQL taliban. I just wanted to point to the current state of the discussion. Everyone will make his own choice (and – probably – we don’t have any choice at all).
Already signed hours ago 
I signed it. First petition I signed since the one begging Blizzard to bring Starcraft to Linux.
I also signed the one to give Dog the Bounty Hunter his show back and I think that one actually worked becaue he got his show back.