MySQL has backed off a plan to charge for some encryption and compression backup widgetry in the next version of the database – and, heavens, NOT OPEN SOURCE THE STUFF, an idea it trotted a few weeks ago and predictably caught hell for.

Sun, which bought MySQL for a billion dollars, a good reason to try to make some of the money back, took the rap.

MySQL’s community relations VP Kaj Arno says on a blog that the features will be open sourced after all, admitting “a change in direction” and absolving Sun of complicity in the, um, miscalculation. Sun gets enough bad press.

“The change,” he writes, “comes from MySQL now being part of Sun Microsoft. Our initial plans were made for a company considering an IPO, but made less sense in the context of Sun, a large company with a whole family of complementary open source software and hardware.”

That is not to say, MySQL won’t try again. Arno says “To financially support MySQL’s free and open source platform, we have a business model which allows both community and commercial add-ons, and we remain committed to it….expect Sun/MySQL to continue experimenting with the business model, and with what’s offered for the community and what’s offered commercial-only.”