It seems that MySQL has countered Oracle's purchase of Innobase's InnoDB and Sleepy Cat's BDB, by buying its own transactional engine from Solid Tech, and even making it GPL.

The obligatory Slashdot discussion here.

Solid is not in widespread use in the web world, but is used in the telecom industry.

In the open source arena, it does have a Perl DBI interface, a Zope Adapter, and an interface to the sometime popular AOLServer.

This is of course good news, since MySQL AB will not be choked to death by Oracle's stranglehold on its transactional engines.

Another bit of good news is that Red Hat bought JBoss, and not Oracle as initally feared. Although I don't do much Java, Red Hat is an open source software company, and not a newcomer with questionable intentions like Oracle.