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Microsoft Plays Up Open Source
An anonymous reader writes "Recently Microsoft's open source software lab posted PostgreSQL on Windows: A Primer. Postgres is one of the longest running open source databases — it has been around for nearly 11 years. The powerful object-relational database is a direct competitor to other OSS databases, as well as Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. So why is Microsoft promoting it? I get Redmond's interest in boosting anything that runs on Windows as a platform. Is this simply a case of left-hand, right-hand, or is something deeper going on?"
Easy. This is targeted at folks who have already decided they want to use Postgres, so they can't be sold on the $xx,000 MSSQL license... but maybe they can still be sold on the $300 OS license! It may be too late to lock them into our database, but it's not too late to lock them into the OS.
MS is boosting Postgre because they don't want people buying Oracle or IBM's database offerings.
It is widely reported that Microsoft makes its money on Windows and Office. The other products earn little or even lose money. If this is true, it may make sense for Microsoft to attract people to Windows or keep them using Windows, by supporting PostgresSQL, even if it reduces their sales of their own database.
Version 1 of Postgres was released in 1989. It later evolved into Postgres95 and then PostgreSQL. And it keeps getting better every year!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Postgres is one of the longest running open source databases it has been around for nearly 11 years. The powerful object-relational database is a direct competitor to other OSS databases, as well as Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. So why is Microsoft promoting it?
.Net... but use a free (as in beer) database. MySQL is pretty slow with joins, so Postgres with PL/SQL and stored procedures support, may be the answer.
Firstly, an article on Port 25 is not promotion. It does not count as mainstream media by any stretch.
Remember the ads on TV.. where there's a forklift, lifting up what looks like battery cells... and placing them on top of a huge building... and then you see, SQL Server 2005. If Microsoft replaces those ads with Postgres instead; we can call it promotion... not until then.
Many firms (like mine) would like to use the manpower conversant with and trained on
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
They're really several companies with distinct businesses under common ownership. Occasionally the strategy tax must be paid (e.g. no IE for linux, no java/lamp for Visual Studio, no Exchange for *nix, MSN using wmv instead of flash), but I would guess most of the inner businesses want to do what their competitors do. It shouldn't be a surprise when they do, just laughable/sad when they don't.
Because PostgreSQL isn't licenced under the GNU GPL.
http://outcampaign.org/
Maybe they beleive they have a solid case that postgressql infringes on their patents. They want more companies using it (and to know who) so they know who they can take to court and extort some protection money.
Obviously, MS is interested in weakening the position of any competitor. In this case, Oracle is a bigger player in the databases market than MS ever dreamed to be. Therefore, helping PostgreSQL damages the competition more than it does damage MS itself, which is a win for them, in terms of market share and potential risks due to loss of control over that market. Kind of the same reason why IBM supports PostgreSQL and other OSS in detriment of its own products.
To do list for Windows
.. that didn't miss the most obvious comment.
Embrace. <-- You are here
Extend.
Extinguish.
True to an extent, but MSSQL is free to many users. What's more likely is that they're promoting it as a way to break the L out of the LAMP/LAPP stack, like the recent Sun Microsystem moves.
Anti-Microsoft bandwagon. I'm seriously beginning to wonder if reading Slashdot makes any sense. It seems to be nothing more than a constant bash of Microsoft along with questionable articles about anything non-Microsoft. You claim to be a news source, but when you slant the news all the times you become a propoganda machine and not a news source. There is nothing wrong with sharing information about how to do something. Microsoft is merely showing people how to do something on their operating system. It isn't a consipracy theory, there are no hidden agendas, it is just people sharing information with other people.
Nobody has mentioned it yet, so I'll throw in my two cents. Microsoft is not against open source at all, they actively encourage and even use it on occasion (the TCP stack in windows is famously known to be from BSD Unix). They are happy when people write code that they can use.
Where they have the biggest problem is with GPL'd stuff, which they can't use at all. Of course in this particular situation there are other factors involved, but since they have been addressed by others, I will not repeat them here.
Qxe4
"Cygwin is required"? Apparently you haven't actually looked at Postgres in a few years. There's been a native port since PG 8.0.
MSSQL is only free if your database is smaller then four gigs. On the other hand DB/2 is free no matter how much data you have.
evil is as evil does
MS is boosting Postgre [PG] because they don't want people buying Oracle or IBM's database offerings.
I tend to agree. Oracle is a huge company, and if lots of people used PG instead of Oracle, then it may mean more Windows sales over Unix/Linux sales. Even if they lose a bit of SQL-Server sales, the migration over to Windows may offset that. Perhaps the MS bean-counters calculated that gained Windows sales would offset lost SQL-Server sales. They maybe figure that OSS DB's will eat into *all* commercial DB's anyhow. MS may rather be in the OS biz than the DB biz because of this. I hear PG's SQL syntax is closer to Oracle's than SQL-Server anyhow.
Table-ized A.I.
You're right. You beat me to the comment. Postgres is not a threat in the sense that MySQL is. Also MySQL takes money away from MS and puts it in their own bank account, whereas Postgres does not build up a cash-hoard that can be used against MS later. Postgres is really free, as opposed to GPL, which signifies ownership by "the community". A Few years ago, MS said very publically what their list of okay licences was. That list included BSD, but did not include GPL or the Artistic licence.
Best part: "The install on Vista is similar to other Windows installs but to install on Vista, you must turn off User Account Control first." :-)
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
"Again (and again, and again ..) the antitrust case against MS was a civil one. MS hasn't been convicted of anything and isn't a criminal."
s c_sec_15_00000002----000-.html
Riiiiight.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode15/u
Seeya.
--
BMO
Seriously, people who can get by with Postgres wouldn't buy SQL server anyway - it's not even in the same league.
Most people who use databases don't make much use of the advanced features. This is why MySQL is even in the market. I like MS SQL server a lot - it's good DB server, but most of the stuff done on it could just as easily be done on PostgreSQL. Good old select, insert, update, delete covers a lot of ground. The pressure with commercial software is to add new features in new versions, regardless of if they are needed or not.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I disagree specifically with "people who can get by with Postgres wouldn't buy SQL server anyway" - I think the problem is that people _do_ use SQL server when they can get by with Postgres.
On a different note, I've never liked the idea of having a heavy database - i.e. one with code procedures etc. It seems to make more sense to keep the database as just a database and implement your model logic in the model classes of what ever access it. That way you can change the database fairly easily and aren't tied completely to one particular database system.
While that's not money any of us as individuals would sneeze at, I doubt that's the money Microsoft cares about. The big money is surely in support, and Microsoft is leaving that money on the table if it insists, based on foolish pride, that it won't support stuff it didn't develop.
Large companies like Microsoft have little to fear from free software. It provides a rich source of business problems to solve for respectable consulting return. In many ways, the initial production of software is just a loss leader for big companies to get into the consulting game. Free software doesn't threaten that. All it does is limit the ability of the author to gain economically from royalty revenue at levels that would probably matter to them but that almost certainly is too smallfry for a company like Microsoft to even care about.
It seems to me very sad for the producers of useful software to unilaterally and voluntarily economically disempower themselves. The world needs people who can think and develop, and when they don't use that power to put food on the table, they lock themselves into day jobs working for someone else to do so... Worse, the main places to get those day jobs will be the places business wants to buy software support from: stable companies offering longevity and stability... companies like, say, Microsoft. Great.
Personally, I'd rather see a few more "small" millionaires, perhaps starting small and interesting sofwtare houses from royalty revenue, than no royalty revenue going to the code authors and all of industry's money going to the same old big consulting houses, who realize the market will bear the spending of that money and are willing to provide a product that the market can spend it on.
The big companies know they don't have to waste time and money trying uselessly to put the free software producers out of business. They can just use the freeness of the software to reduce their development costs in producing new products--why not do your R&D on someone else's nickel? Then they can make money on cleaning up the mess when the failure to acquire revenue means the talented creators of free-and-should-be-charged-for software software can't scale to support what they've made.
Heck, if the Postgres business really takes off for Microsoft, it could later eliminate a few of its developer jobs and cancel its own SQL product and just let Postgres continue to be developed by people willing to give away their skills rather than charge for them in a legitimate commercial challenge to Microsoft.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer