You cannot relicense GPL as closed source (i.e. you could stop licensing the code to all parties that want an exclusive, but you can't "close" the existing bran

You cannot relicense GPL as closed source (i.e. you could stop licensing the code to all parties that want an exclusive, but you can't "close" the existing branches and you can't prevent forks). The fact that the core team can stop development is a much more concrete problem. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's too valuable for too many people. Percona is patching MySQL, along with Google, Facebook, Monty's MariaDB company, etc. If anything, MySQL is more alive than ever before.