Re: Ooh, scary!

From: joel garry <joel-garry_at_home.com>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 09:01:30 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <9186fed2-9c8c-4198-b2e7-9dacbec3f2e7_at_wp3g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>

On May 31, 7:29 am, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mla..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 30 May 2012 14:48:48 -0700, joel garry wrote:
> > Props to Tim Gorman for the SCTV reference:
>
> >http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/30/heres-johnny-skysql-raises-
>
> another-2-5m-to-give-oracle-nightmares/
>
>
>
> >http://planet.mysql.com/entry/?id=33409
>
> > jg
>
> Open Source databases don't have the capabilities or the support options
> necessary to become a serious alternative to Oracle. I once looked at
> Postgres but it turned out that it's probably the worst of the possible
> alternatives.
> If someone wants to replace Oracle, commercial databases are the only
> game in town. DB2 for Linux is more than two times cheaper than Oracle,
> but IBM wasn't very serious about selling it and supporting it in the
> past. The latest version, available for a month or so is DB2 v10 and
> there are some mixed signals. On one hand, there is quite a number of
> books available and it is available for free for the home use but, on the
> other hand, it is almost impossible to locate a price list on the IBM
> site. If IBM gets serious about mass selling DB2 on Linux, it would be
> the nightmare that Oracle should be very afraid of. MySQL is very far
> technologically from commercial databases like Oracle or DB2, and so is
> the rest of the open source database pack.
>
> --http://mgogala.byethost5.com

1985 - MVS and VMS are the only games in town. 1995 - unix is the only game in town, free software is very far technologically from commercial operating systems. 2005 - linux and Windows are the only game in town... 2015 - cloud is the only game raining down.

Of course, a silly oversimplification, but you get the idea. Eventually, it's some combination of the apps and the marketing milieu that rule. Commercial databases are what economists call economically obsolete - kind of the opposite of technologically obsolete, but what we might call mature technology. The immature technologies are where the risk and return are, so people specializing in startups have to downplay the risk and fluff the return. You wind up with silly statements like Oracle would even care, much less have nightmares, about some startup involving the people they've already acquired the tech from.

I wonder what happened to the comment I put on the techcrunch article with my facebook login? Sheeeeitttt....

jg

--
_at_home.com is bogus.
http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a384715/steve-jobs-was-a-control-freak-says-oracle-boss.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57443942-92/ellison-oracles-cloud-will-cast-a-shadow-over-enterprise-software-world/

Received on Thu May 31 2012 - 11:01:30 CDT