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Sun raised the ire of the open source community last week when it stated that some upcoming online backup features would be made available solely to paying enterprise users of the MySQL open-source database. Well, now the company appears to be doing some damage control by stating that will not necessarily be the case, as they are still deciding under what license to release the so-called “high-end add-ons.”

Still, Marten Mickos, former CEO at MySQL AB and now senior vice president of Sun’s database group, strongly defended the closed components strategy as not being influenced by Sun, noting that the decisions were made by MySQL well before the acquisition. The company further clarified that core backup functionality and a backup API in version 6.0 will be available to users of both the community and enterprise versions of the database, adding that many or perhaps most community users won’t even require these particular add-ons.

Making certain components only available to paying customers is nothing new in the open source community, at least the company claims to be open to “an honest discussion” with customers and community members alike.