About Michael Widenius and his experiences and achievements in his life.

2. About Michael Widenius
Ulf Michael Widenius (often
called Monty; born 3 March 1962,
in Helsinki, Finland) is the main author
of the original version of the open
source MySQL database, a founding
member of the MySQLAB company
and CTO of the MariaDB Corporation
AB. Additionally, he is a founder and
general partner at venture capital firm
OpenOcean.

3. Early Years
• After dropping out of Helsinki University of
Technology, Widenius started working for Tapio
Laakso Oy in 1981. In 1985 he founded TCX
DataKonsult AB (a Swedish data warehousing
company) with Allan Larsson. In 1995 he began
writing the first version of the MySQL database
with David Axmark, released in 1996. He is the
co-author of the MySQL Reference Manual,
published by O'Reilly in June 2002; and in 2003
he was awarded the Finnish Software
Entrepreneur of the Year prize.

4. • Until MySQL AB's sale to Sun Microsystems in
2008, he was the chief technical officer of
MySQL AB and still one of the primary forces
behind the ongoing development of MySQL.
• MySQL sold to Sun
Widenius sold MySQL to Sun in January 2008,
earning about €16.6 million in capital gains in
2008 (€16.8 million total income), making him
one of the top 10 highest earners in Finland
that year.

5. After Sun
In 2008, Widenius established venture capital firm
OpenOcean with MySQL co-founder Patrik Backman
and early advisors Tom Henriksson and Ralf Wahlsten.
On 5 February 2009, he announced that he was leaving
Sun in order to create his own company.
On 12 December 2009, Monty asked MySQL customers
to lobby the European Commission (EC),
regarding Oracle's acquisition of Sun, citing concerns
about potential Oracle control of MySQL; this resulted
in an online petition campaign called "Save MySQL".

6. After leaving Sun, he formed Monty Program AB and
forked MySQL into MariaDB, named after his
youngest daughter, Maria. It includes several patches
and plugins developed by the company itself or the
community. One of these plugins is the Aria storage
engine, which was renamed from Maria to avoid
confusion with MariaDB. Monty Program AB merged
with SkySQL, who later renamed themselves
MariaDB Corporation. He is also CTO of the MariaDB
Foundation, the non-profit organisation charged with
promoting, protecting and advancing the MariaDB
codebase, community, and ecosystem.

7. The Open Database Alliance, also known as
ODBA, was founded in 2009 by the Monty Program
and Percona. According to its first announcement,
"the Open Database Alliance will comprise a
collection of companies working together to provide
the software, support and services for MariaDB, an
enterprise-grade, community-developed branch of
MySQL".

8.  MariaDB Corporation (8 Years)
◦ CTO
◦ Jan 2016 - Present5 years
◦ Grankulla, Finland
◦ Founder and CTO
◦ 2012 - Dec 2015 3 years
 Founder
MariaDB Foundation
Jan 2016 - Present5 years
 CEO & VP Community
Monty Program Ab
Feb 2009 - 2013 (4 years)
Developing Maria, a transactional storage engine for MySQL and MariaDB, community
developed MySQL server with Maria included.
 Board member
Web of Trust by Against Intuition Inc.
2009 - 2011 (2 years)

9.  Chairman
ODBA
2009 - 2011 (2 years)
 Board of Advisors
Finsor
May 2008 - 2011 (3 years)
Working on their Advisory board to help them make sound technical decissions.
 Founder
Open Database Alliance
Apr 2009 - Dec 2010 (1 year 9 months)
 Board member
IT Mill Ltd
Sep 2008 - 2010 (2 years)
 MySQL Fellow and Sun DE
Sun Microsystems
Mar 2008 - Jan 2009 (11 months)
Working in Sun CTO Lab under Sun's CTO: Greg Papadopoulos
Working on the Maria Storage engine and trying to make Sun an even
bigger player in the open source community