Oracle said today that it plans to increase support for open source software development with the announcement that it will acquire Finland-based Innobase OY, a developer of discrete transactional database technology.

Innobase OY's flagship offering, InnoDB, is distributed under an open source licence. It is not a standalone product, but is distributed as a part of the MySQL database.

InnoDB's contractual relationship with MySQL comes up for renewal next year and Oracle said it "fully expects" to negotiate an extension of the relationship.

"Oracle has long been a supporter of open source software such as Linux and Apache," said Charles Rozwat, Oracle's executive vice president in charge of database and middleware technology.

"Innobase is an innovative small company that develops open source database technology. Oracle intends to continue developing InnoDB and expand our commitment to open source software.

"Oracle has already developed and contributed an open source clustered file system to Linux. We expect to make additional contributions in the future."

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.