Actually the forks are pretty reassuring to me wrt the future of mysql. We maybe wont know what that future will look like, but with so much community outside Oracle there's a future for sure.
A report from the (not only) MySQL conference 2011
Posted Apr 22, 2011 20:30 UTC (Fri) by jberkus (subscriber, #55561)
[Link]
As a pure-OSS geek, that's how I tend to see things, too.
However, many MySQL users are pretty accustomed to the idea of there being "one true MySQL company", and are alarmed and afraid about the dramatic changes since 2008.
More importantly, businesses aren't keen on the shift from MySQL AB to having to decide between Oracle, SkySQL, Percona, Pythian, or OpenQuery. If you're a business, supplier stability is an unquestioned good.
Is MySQL going to be around in 5 years? Certainly. But what the MySQL ecosystem will look like in 5 years nobody can accurately predict.