A respectful relationship with the MySQL community remains a priority, according to Arno. Since the merger was announced nearly a year ago, . A couple of attendees at the conference Thursday had contrasting views on Oracle's ownership of MySQL.

"I cannot see any business reason that Oracle has to keep MySQL around," said Laurie Voss, tech lead at Snowball Factory, which offers campaign-tracking for social media.

"They're not going to shut it down completely -- that would obviously be a PR disaster. They're just going to marginalize it," Voss said.

"They're going to turn it into like the amateur product, which nobody here believes it is," said Voss. He cited Oracle's intentions to focus on Windows accommodations for MySQL as evidence of plans for marginalization.

Another attendee had a more positive perspective.