Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Oracle buys Innobase

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 01:19:53PM -0700, Chris Travers wrote:
> Ok. but it is still a lazy approach and indicates that Oracle has not
> singled us out for special treatment. Again, this was not the case with
> MySQL as of 2000 at the latest.

I may be more paranoid, but that may be because our use of PostgreSQL
was real unpopular in the original Oracle shop where the registry
software was developed (the technical side of Afilias was originally
called Liberty RMS, and was a subsidiary of TUCOWS. I was hired
originally by them. Afilias bought Liberty not long after the .info
registry went live, however, and we've always been a better fit here
than we were at TUCOWS). I do know, however, that Oracle doesn't
publicly talk about PostgreSQL, but they have plenty to say in
private about it to their existing customers. And it's not nearly as
ill-informed as the public comments suggest.

> I think it is important to eventually capture the image of PostgreSQL as
> *the* FOSS RDBMS (which MySQL currently still holds among too many
> developers). But that is the extent of my concern with them.

Sure. But if you build a reputation as an industrial-strength system
that happens to be free, you can go after the FOSS area without much
additional effort; whereas if you concentrate first on being free,
you then have the later problem of moving from "free" to "enterprise
grade".

A

--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca
Information security isn't a technological problem. It's an economics
problem.
--Bruce Schneier