Re: Off Topic: open source databases

From: Steve Howard <stevedhoward_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 04:52:23 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <c527b89b-d80d-4693-bd12-558995343779_at_m4g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>

On May 26, 9:34 pm, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mla..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 26 May 2010 10:14:40 -0700, Steve Howard wrote:
> > It's replacement in the world?  I would guess MySQL, based on Oracle
> > Corp.'s ownership if nothing else.
>
> Hmmm, that doesn't compute, from my point of view. That is precisely why
> I opened this topic. Why would a huge corporation suddenly abandon its
> main cash cow in favor of a freebie? Slowly killing the freebie seems
> more likely to me, now that Oracle Corp. owns it. I am not sure as to why
> people are not trying to run away from MySQL, but they obviously are not.
>
> --http://mgogala.byethost5.com

I honestly think that over the longer run, Oracle is trying to figure out how to make money from software as a service, rather than charging for it as a product.

So yes, they don't *own* it from a practical standpoint, as Galen noted. However, they will support it and back it with whatever it needs (including the read consistent model they provided it via InnoDB a few years ago). In the process, they may discover how to make money from it without charging for the software, which I *hope* makes it over the to the flagship RDBMS.

As Monty Widenius has already kind of done, someone will just fork the code if they try to kill it, as it is already in the wild. Received on Thu May 27 2010 - 06:52:23 CDT