Re: Comparison of Oracle and PostgreSQL full text search

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 8:38 PM, Daniel Verite <daniel(at)manitou-mail(dot)org> wrote:
>        zhong ming wu wrote:
>
>> I always thought there is a clause in their user agreement preventing
>> the users from publishing benchmarks like that. I must be mistaken.
>
> No you're correct. Currently, to download the current Oracle 11.2g, one must
> agree to:
> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/licenses/standard-license-152015.html
>
> which contains:
> <quote>
> [...]
> You may not:
> [...]
> - disclose results of any program benchmark tests without our prior consent.
> [...]
> </quote>
>
> Not having such frustrating license terms is also what makes PostgreSQL a
> nicer alternative!
>
> Best regards,
> --
> Daniel
> PostgreSQL-powered mail user agent and storage: http://www.manitou-mail.org
>
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Hi Daniel:

Nice catch -the thing is, you've linked to the *technet* license. The
one you sign up to when you download the product for free, for
development, prototyping and self-learning purposes. That's not the
same license as the one you sign up to when you pay them stacks of
cash for the 'proper' product for a production deployment (which I
haven't read lately, so I can't say the same silly term isn't in
there, but I'm just saying: the license you linked to is not the one
that applies).

Also, I would argue that what I did was not a 'benchmark test'. We
capture the results and timings of queries as part of our production
application, for management and review purposes. Those are real
results, experienced by real users... not what I'd call a benchmark
"test". (The PostgreSQL results are, certainly, an artificial
benchmark, but then the Oracle license doesn't cover those, happily!)

Regards
HJR