MySQL, is this the beginning of the decline?

Recently a customer asked me to research MySQL alternatives during a quiet time in the project.   My immediate response was 'why' and my boss said 'money'.

I did some research to find that a lot of companies are looking to move away from Oracle MySQL and there are alot of alternatives out there to pick from.  My personal thoughts were dismay at the thought that Oracle want to try and charge for MySQL, but indirectly using features as a revenue source.  One thing I have always liked is that MySQL is open source and companies produce open-source tools for it:

"Oracle has stirred discontent in the MySQL community when the company shifted the development model away from a fully open-source approach to an "open core," with new enterprise features offered under a commercial license only."

Also in recent news  - Red Hat to ditch MySQL for MariaDB in RHEL 7

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/15/red_hat_to_ditch_mysql_for_mariadb_in_rhel_7/

This company have shown a particular interest in MariaDB and Percona Server.  Both companies have a cluster product and look to be interested in keeping MySQL open-source.   The new version of MariaDB (version 10.0) looks very promising with good performance and rich features.  Percona on the other hand comes fully loaded with a toolkit to help administration and a non-blocking hot backup solution.  The considerations currently are the backup and recovery options, upgrades and compatibilities from Oracle MySQL to another database and finding a support vendor for those problems that need a fast resolution.

Oracle do provide some good tools for Oracle MySQL particularly MySQL Enterprise Backup and MySQL Enterprise Monitor but these comes free as part of the enterprise license.  Will there come a point when Oracle will charge for individual options?  The Oracle MySQL support is excellent, most of my calls are resolved fully and in a timely manner.  I am happy to sing there praises as it is a company that treat support as a real service.  I will miss it, but it strikes me as a risk to start trying to make money in this manner, but I guess there is always the community edition, with no support from Oracle (but maybe from another vendor).

Whilst moving away from Oracle MySQL looks to be a serious consideration for some companies with licensing and cost speculation.  Companies will have to pay one way or another or can we live with the risk of not having support at all?   I can't help but think Oracle are changing the rules regarding MySQL and that can be dangerous as people have other serious options to consider.

Percona Server

MariaDB

Drizzle

SQLite

MongoDB

PostgreSQL

CouchDB

etc