of Open Source Community Relations
LONDON & CUPERTINO, Calif. — October 5, 2005 — MySQL AB, developer of the world’s most popular open source database, today announced the promotion of Kaj Arnö to vice president in charge of the company’s open source community relations group. He is responsible for communicating and evangilizing MySQL within the software development community — as well as representing the community’s interests to MySQL’s senior management team. His blog is now available at http://www.planetmysql.org/kaj/.
The announcement was made on the first day of the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, being held this week at Olympia 2 in London. At the show, the company will be previewing MySQL 5.0’s enterprise database features in the HP booth, #HP-6.
Marten Mickos, MySQL AB’s CEO, said, “Interacting with the community on many levels is strategically important to our company and the success of our product. I am pleased to appoint Kaj as the driving force and chief coordinator of these activities. At the same time, it is key that each of our employees continues to participate and build useful relationships within our community.”
Kaj Arnö, VP of Community Relations
Arnö has been with MySQL since 2001 in a variety of executive management positions — including responsibility for the company’s relationship with SAP, and internal IT, software engineering, support and training/consulting departments. Prior to MySQL, he founded and was CEO of Polycon Ab, a training and professional services provider in Finland and Germany. He began his professional programming career with Datema and IBM.
Arnö attended Helsinki University of Technology’s department of Technical Physics. He holds a M. Sc. (Eng.) in Production Economics from the department of Industrial Engineering, and an MBA in Marketing from Hanken, Finland’s Swedish School of Business Economics. In addition to his native Swedish, Arnö speaks German, English, Finnish and French fluently — with a general knowledge of more than ten other languages. In his career, he has coded in Delphi, Visual Basic, Focus, APL, PHP and at least five other programming languages.
“I am happy to see Kaj devoting his energy and leadership to our community,” said David Axmark, MySQL co-founder and vice president. “Monty and I have debated databases, development and community with Kaj since the 1980s when he was a software entrepreneur and we were developers. I will enjoy working closely with him for the community of MySQL users.”
“Kaj made a more dedicated effort than any other executive in our industry to get companies to support the fight against software patents in Europe. Without him, my NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign would never have taken off,” says Florian Mueller, the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, who has been nominated for the title of the “European of the Year”.
Kaj Arnö said, “Community is the foundation of any successful Open Source business. I am excited and honoured to serve the MySQL Community, and to help grow our ecosystem together with the support of our Community.”
About MySQL
MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high performance, affordable database products — including MySQL Network, a comprehensive set of certified software and premium support services. The company’s flagship product is MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database, with more than 6 million active installations. Many of the world’s largest organizations, including Yahoo!, Sabre Holdings, The Associated Press, Suzuki and NASA are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power high-volume Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software.
With headquarters in Sweden and the United States — and operations around the world — MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers’ needs in a profitable, sustainable business. For more information about MySQL, please visit www.mysql.com.”
