Why MySQL is Finnish

O'Reilly editor Andy Oram and I interviewed a number of MySQL attendees last week at the O'Reilly MySQL Conference in Santa Clara, California. After our fourth or fifth interview I was struck by the fact that most of our interviewees were from Finland. Being a novice in the MySQL world (Andy is the expert - I'm a video professional) I asked the next interviewee Henrik Ingo (also from Finland!) why there were so many Finnish attendees and he went on to explain that Michael "Monty" Widenius who is the founder of MySQL AB and the original author & architect of the MySQL server is from Finland. Monty has many Finnish disciples and it turns out that Henrik is the COO of Monty Program Ab, the company behind MariaDB of which Monty is also the founder and CEO. We managed to track Monty down for an interview and I must admit that I'm a new disciple of MySQL's forefather.