Kaj Arnö

Kaj Sigurd Ademar Arnö (born 29 June 1963) is a Finland-Swedish IT-entrepreneur and columnist. He is since 2016 (also) a German citizen and has lived in Germany since 2006. He is the former Vice President of the MySQL Community at MySQL AB, Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation, founder of MariaDB Corporation Ab and the current CEO of the MariaDB Foundation.

Biography

Education Born in Helsinki, Finland, Arnö went to the Swedish-language co-educational school Nya svenska samskolan. He studied physics at the Helsinki University of Technology.

Arnö joined MySQL AB as VP of Training in May 2001 and subsequently served in roles as VP Consulting, VP Services, VP Engineering and VP Community Relations till February 2008, when Sun bought MySQL AB. Arnö was the main spokesperson towards the MySQL community from 2005 onwards, as well as a frequent speaker at MySQL events. He served as VP of the MySQL Community in the Database Group at Sun Microsystems until June 2010, when the German subsidiary of Sun was integrated into Oracle. In October 2010, he announced his retirement from Oracle.

Since 2019, Arnö has been the CEO of MariaDB Foundation. Svenska Yle's culture pages (2015-2021) and Åbo Underrättelser since 2021.

Other work Arnö has condensed his philosophy of running into what he calls "Runnism, the Religion of Running".