Dans le cadre des discussions actuelles pour contrer le projets de modification du droit européen en matière de brevets sur les logiciels, Michael Widenius, principal auteur de MySQL, s'exprime contre ce projet:
``Software patents are more harmful than useful for the community. The major problem is that the people that give patents, doesn't have any insight into what is easy and what is hard and because of this most software patents are given for things that trivial things. The total outcome is that software patents makes problems for the whole software industry and only the companies that already have a lot of money can afford to go on!''