0.06 The History of MySQL

MySQL was created in 1994 by Swedish developers David Axmark and Allan Larsson, along with Finnish developer Michael “Monty” Widenius, who had been building database tools since 1979 (his low-level storage engine UNIREG at TcX was the direct precursor). The first version shipped on May 23, 1995, initially for personal use as a faster, more flexible alternative to mSQL.

Key milestones:

• 1995 — MySQL AB founded in Sweden; first release.
• 1996 — First public release (Solaris binary); Linux binaries followed.
• 2000 — Released under the GNU GPL, going fully open source.
• 2001 — Mårten Mickos elected CEO; 2 million active installations.
• 2003 — MySQL 4.0 production release; partnership with SAP.
• 2005 — MySQL 5.0 added stored procedures, triggers, and views.
• 2008 — Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL AB for ~$1 billion; Widenius and Axmark left shortly after.
• 2010 — Oracle Corporation acquired Sun for $7.4 billion, gaining ownership of MySQL. On the day Oracle announced the Sun purchase, Widenius forked MySQL to create MariaDB.
• 2018 — MySQL 8.0 released with CTEs, window functions, and atomic DDL.

The name “MySQL” combines Monty’s daughter’s name, “My”, with SQL (Structured Query Language). It is now owned by Oracle and remains one of the most widely used open-source relational databases in the world.