graeme_p - 8:56 am on Apr 25, 2009 (gmt 0)

1) People are saying "commercial" when they mean proprietary. Open source software can be commerical (ask Red Hat!) and non-commercial software can be closed source (although that is rare).

2) InnoDB is open source (dual licensed like MySQL), older versions of MaxDB are open source so it could be forked starting from one versions back. I do not know about BerkleyD, but as it is based on an open source product, it probably is as well.

3) A lot of MySQL users (most?) do not need these engines.

4) If Oracle neglect open source MySQL it will help Postgres which is much more of a threat to their flagship product.