Infrastructure management company dbaDirect, in a move similar to Oracle’s play to intercept Red Hat’s enterprise support for its own distribution of Linux, is now supporting the MySQL open source database with dbaDirect’s usual enterprise services that include on-demand technical expertise, patches and upgrades.

While Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux announcement last year was no surprise and consistent with the company’s history and strategy, the dbaDirect MySQL offering is more on the level of the larger industry (meaning not just companies that throw around a few billion in acquisitions and extensions each year).

With dbaDirect, we now have a mid-sized, typical enterprise IT services company (3,000 corporate databases managed) basing strategy on the availability of code that comes with open source software.

MySQL AB does not seem offended by dbaDirect’s offering, and why should it? In its press release, dbaDirect cites MySQL’s ‘rapid adoption among corporate IT departments’ and reports ‘more than 10 million installations’ of MySQL worldwide, listing MySQL alongside Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server as ‘all major database platforms’ supported by dbaDirect.

MySQL, which includes dbaDirect in its ecosystem and may indeed partner with dbaDirect, continues to have the most expertise and recognition with MySQL database. Still, the dbaDirect offering highlights the ‘indirect’ risk open source ventures, particularly successful ones, face when using technology that is open and available for anyone who wants to base business strategy on it.

It will be interesting to see whether such efforts, which also represent endorsements, come to represent a complimentary or competitive force for open source software.