Monty Program AB

Monty Program Ab is a Finnish company formed in September 2007 by Michael "Monty" Widenius, The Primary author of the original versions of MySQL and founder of MySQL AB. Its formation was partly in reaction to the direction MySQL development took after it was purchased by Sun Microsystems. Widenius expressed deep dissatisfaction with Sun's stewardship of the MySQL codebase and its development. One of the stated goals for Monty Program Ab is for it to be "like Fedora is to Red Hat".

The company is built upon the principles outlined in a document "The Hacking Business Model". The main areas of focus for the company revolve around the MariaDB branch of MySQL, the Maria storage engine, and performing custom engineering work on various parts of MySQL and MariaDB software.

The company currently employs approximately 15 people working in a distributed environment. Most employees have backgrounds in open source and Free Software, including MySQL and Ubuntu.