MySQL AB has made it harder for developers to use the enterprise edition of its database software for free, sparking a debate about whether the company has strayed from its obligation to its open-source community.

MySQL has placed itself in the middle of a rising furor over its allegedly diminished commitment to open source. To be fair, it has only itself to blame.

I can be an idiot some days. As proof I'll only mention that I thought Sun buying MySQL was a great move. Boy was I wrong. First, the crème de la crème of MySQL's developers and founders started leaving Sun.

Roughly a year ago, MySQL stood near the top of The VAR Guy’s Open Source 50 — which tracks the world’s most promising open source partner programs. Fast forward to the present and MySQL’s ownership remains in doubt. The reason: The European Union continues to scrutinize Oracle’s planned takeover of Sun and MySQL. For MySQL channel partners and ISVs what does the future hold?

Yesterday Computerworld reported that MySQL cofounder and lead engineer David Axmark has resigned from Sun Microsystems. Axmark indicated that he felt he would be "better off in smaller organizations" and working with MySQL and Sun on a "less formal basis."

But there are better tools for managing your MySQL databases. One of those tools, MySQL Administrator, is actually released by the MySQL developers. This tool will work with any MySQL installation >= 4.0 and makes the daunting task of administrating MySQL databases far easier than any other desktop GUI tool.

Monty Widenius, founder of MySQL, has said in a blog posting – "Thoughts on Dual-Licensing Open Source Software" – that he recently became aware that Sun Microsystem's OEM licence agreement for MySQL would restrict users who had signed up for the commercial licence to the open source database from modifying MySQL or using any forks of MySQL.

For Sun Microsystems, the acquisition of open-source database vendor MySQL is a positive step, giving Sun its own database and a growing, loyal community of open-source users and developers to add to its portfolio. So what's the upside or downside for the MySQL community itself?

MySQL GUI Tools is a suite of graphical desktop applications for working with and administering MySQL servers. The suite consists of three tools: MySQL Query Browser, MySQL Administrator, and MySQL Migration Assistant (available only on Windows). We'll look at the first two to see how well they let us manage MySQL without using the command line.