So one high-tech firm ate some other open-source company. "Big deal," you'd say, and you'd be right: $1 billion big.

That's the price tag Sun Microsystems Inc. yesterday officially declared themselves willing to pay for MySQL AB. The Sunny ones hope to acquisition will "[accelerate] Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market."

MySQL has been deployed all over the internet, becoming essentially necessary to 100 million downloads and sitting at the heart of companies unknown or simply non-existent in 1995 when the open-source database began that are today household names: Facebook, Google, Nokia.

Sun CEO/president Jonathan Schwartz stated that "MySQL's employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun's open approach to network innovation." In non-PR speak, this means that the 400 MySQL employees in 25 countries are to be integrated into Sun's organizations, and CEO Marten Mickos will be named to Sun's senior executive leadership team.