As soon as former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, now a Sun Microsystems senior VP for databases, took the stage, he was asked what was Sun's commitment to the L in LAMP?... the integrated open source stack that includes Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

"The commitment is complete," he responded without hesitation. The scene was The Commons Auditorium at the Austin branch of the University of Texas. It was the site of one historic commitment to Linux -- IBM's decision in 1999 to become a backer, not an opponent, of the open source operating system. The attendees at the 2008 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit wanted to know whether Sun's preference for Solaris over Linux had changed anything inside the ranks of MySQL staffers.

"We are still committed," Mickos said. "If we are not committed, than any one of you can take the MySQL code and fork it to make a new MySQL product, which I am sure you would do" if Sun tried to converts LAMP to SAMP.

Mickos was peppered with questions from the Linux crowd. "What is Sun's Linux strategy? What degree of freedom will the MySQL group have inside of Sun?"

"There's a realization inside of Sun that the days of the monoliths are over, but the Web continues to grow." Sun wants to participate in that growth, not by sticking to Sun-only technologies, but by offering a smorgasbord of choices to its customers, including a core set of Java/Solaris/Sparc technologies.

"Sun can claim to be the biggest open source contributor in the world," Mickos said, repeating a line frequently used by Sun executives as they comment on how Sun is now an open source company. The claim springs from Sun founder Bill Joy creating the Berkeley version of Unix while attending graduate school, and Sun's early donation of the networking file system, NFS, among other things.

"Sun is more than Solaris or Sparc," Mickos told the 300 attendees to the Summit, primarily Linux developers, users and vendors. "It desires to be a major player in an online Web economy," he noted. Without Sun, MySQL had a sales and field representative force of 200. With Sun, it has access to 17,000, he said.

"It's a very positive change. We're drowning in requests from them. They will help us grow in a $15 billion [database] market," he said.