Two Key MySQL Executives Leave Sun

They include Marten Mickos, the CEO of MySQL before it was acquired by Sun last year for about $1 billion, and Michael "Monty" Widenius, founder and original developer of MySQL.

Widenius said in a posting on his blog on Thursday that he told Sun management last Fall that he would resign because he "strongly believed that the 5.1 release was not ready and that those problems needed to be fixed before it went GA (general availability)."

Instead, he wrote, he agreed to stay with Sun three more months to help the company fix the problems and create "an optimal role for me within Sun."

That three months turned to seven months, but Widenius wrote that he left in the end because the changes he hoped Sun would apply to the MySQL database did not happen fast enough.

While Sun was the best possible buyer for MySQL, Widenius wrote, it could have done a better job of moving it to "a true open-development environment that would encourage outside participation and without any need of differentiation on the source code."

Widenius wrote he plans to work on a small company called Monty Program Ab, which develops open-source software applications. He also plans to open a restaurant which he said will use databases to achieve a better customer experience.

Reuters reported that Mickos was leaving for personal reasons.