Re: PostgreSQL and Poker

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Ivan Sergio
Borgonovo<mail(at)webthatworks(dot)it> wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 19:39:16 +0200
> "Massa, Harald Armin" <chef(at)ghum(dot)de> wrote:
>
>> a quite interesting read.
>>
>> http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/stranger-than-fiction-story-online-poker-tracker-postgresql
>
> There are a couple of comments comment that maybe someone could
> correct:
>
> "The popularity of PostgreSQL as DBMS for handhistories is by no
> means just a matter of some alleged technological superiority over
> MySQL. Let's not forget that Pokertracker, Holdem Manager etc is
> proprietary software, so they really don't have any other choice but
> to bundle with postgreSQL. If they were to ship their products with
> MySQL, they would either have to open-source their products
> according to the GPL, or pay hefty commercial license fees."
>
> or
>
> "Bogdan's comment is right on the money. There are licensing issues
> with MySQL. MySQL commercial licenses are contracts with Sun. Not
> cheap. It had to be PostgreSQL."
>
> I understand the license differences (and for my taste I prefer GPL
> over BSD) but the above affirmations seems to imply pg couldn't
> stand up just on its technical merits.
>
> I don't think this is the case.

Exactly, it could have been interbase / firebird, sqllite, berkelydb,
and a couple other choices that are free. MySQL's licensing just took
them out of the running right at the start.

I'm not sure the comments need correction really, although the
"alleged" bit kind of rubs me the wrong way, but you're not gonna
convince a MySQL fanboi about anything anyway.