If it was me, I'd keep cranking out superior databases, selling them for a billion, and starting on the next one as fast as they'd buy em :)

I think it would be a bit premature to call MariaDB superior to MySQL.

Also it should be noted that the InnoDB storage engine was developed outside of MySQL AB. InnoDB is a helluva lot better than MyISAM for most applications because of performance and support for transactions, consistency, etc. Without it I don't think that MySQL would be a good candidate for many applications, particularly given that Postgres has improved a lot. I.e. I'm not sure Monty should really get credit for everything about MySQL/MariaDB.

I think that's what Stonebreaker did with PostgreSQL, VoltDB, Vertica...

Not sure if intentional, but Stonebreaker is an awesome misspelling of Stonebraker.

Yes, I misspelled Stonebraker, thanks for the correction.

Monty started MariaDB pretty much as soon as he left Sun, long before the Oracle acquisition, but shortly after he started criticizing the release of mysql 5.1 under Sun, which was widely regarded as botched.