As Sun Microsystems Inc. [JAVA] CEO Jonathan Schwartz put it in a blog entry Wednesday morning, the company has decided to put $1 billion behind the "M" in LAMP, the acronym for the major components in the enterprise open-source software stack: the Linux operating system, the Apache Web server, MySQL database and PHP (or sometimes Perl or Python, which are other scripting languages).

Sun said it agreed to buy MySQL AB, the top open-source database software maker, for $800 million in cash and $200 million in assumed options. It's a bold bid to do battle with IBM Corp. [IBM], Oracle Corp. [ORCL] and Microsoft Corp. [MSFT], the leaders in the $15 billion enterprise database software market.

The deal marks a big exit for the Cupertino, Calif.-based database software vendor's venture capital backers, which include Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Institutional Ventures Partners, Holtron Partners, Intel Capital, Presidio STX, Red Hat, SAP Ventures and Scope Capital. Sun's largest acquisition was that of Storage Technology Corp. for $4.1 billion two years ago. - Olaf de Senerpont Domis

See Jan. 16 story from TheDeal.com
See Jan. 16 post from Jonathan Schwartz
See Jan. 16 press release from Sun Microsystems
See Jan. 16 post from Open Sources blog
See June 2003 story from TheDeal.com