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MySQL To Be Ikea Of The Database Market
Rob wrote to mention an article discussing MySQL's intent to become 'the Ikea of databases'. From the piece: "While new entrants into the open source database market, such as EnterpriseDB and Pervasive Software, have made no secret of their intentions to chase Oracle's market share, Mr Mickos said MySQL is happy to leave them to it. 'We are thankful that they are there to define the market, there is no product if you're the only vendor,' he said. "Pervasive and EnterpriseDB are going up against Oracle. We don't want to be in that space, we don't want to take the heat from Oracle. If you're working in a zoo you don't want to be the one who has to brush the teeth of the lion.'"
Yes, Windows brought MySQL to me.
I host my site on a commercial service, and previously I was stuck with using Access as my DB, unless I wanted to pay big SQL Server bucks. My site crashed 5 or 6 times a day because of the load on the database.
Finally my hosting service started to offer MySQL, for free...
My site stopped crashing, and now everything loads a lot faster. (I haven't converted the entire thing over to MySQL, but enough to stop the crashing.)
If MySQL were not free, I would not have converted. If it were not on Windows, I would not have converted.
But now I see it as a real possibility for use at work.
No reason to lie.
Why all these crappy slashdot posts about MySQL we have been seen lately? They speak as if MySQL where an uncontested champion in the free-software database arena. This is far from true. Many articles doesn't even mention PostreSQL. Many of them says "Now MySQL is a big player because it's got... transactions" (!).
I think there's interest here in building up the idea that MySQL is important. There's currently no reason to use MySQL, because other products already do what it does and better.