MySQL is a relational database management system RDBMS1 which has more than 11 million installations.2 The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.
MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm the Swedish company MySQL AB now a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems which holds the copyright to most of the codebase. The projects source code is available under terms of the GNU General Public License as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements.
MySQL is officially pronounced maɪˌɛskjuˈɛl4 My S Q L, not My sequelmaɪˈsiːkwəl. This adheres to the official ANSI pronunciation SEQUEL was an earlier IBM database language a predecessor to the SQL language.5 However the company does not take issue with the pronunciation My sequel or other local variations.