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Why Oracle Can't Easily Kill PostgreSQL
ruphus13 writes "Claiming that 'PostgreSQL is a FOSS alternative to MySQL and hence Oracle should be allowed to pursue MySQL' is a specious argument, according to Monty Widenius. He fears that Oracle, or someone else, can easily squash PostgreSQL by just 'buying out' the top 20 developers. The Postgre community has fired back, calling that claim ridiculous. According to the article, 'PostgreSQL as a project is pretty healthy, and shows how vulnerable projects like MySQL are to the winds of change. PostgreSQL could die tomorrow, if a huge group of its contributors dropped out for one reason or another and the remainder of the community didn't take up the slack. But that's exceedingly unlikely. The existing model for PostgreSQL development ensures that no single entity can control it, it can't be purchased, and if someone decides to fork the project, the odds are that the remaining community would be strong enough to continue without a serious glitch.'"
And if postgresql fails there is still firebird, and all the other open source database that kick ass but are less known than mysql and postgresql.
You got your money and now you want MySQL (or at least the spotlight) back.
By your argument, PostgreSQL is fragile because the top 20 developers could be bought out by Oracle. If you think that's a buyout target that can be easily squashed, just think what a SQL DB with only one copyright owner can be? Oh wait, that was MySQL and we already know what you did....
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
someone is trying to sell this idea to Oracle. It is as simple as that.
While buying out the top 20 developers (and I find it unlikely they could in the first place) wouldn't necessarily kill PostgreSQL, it would hamper development until the next 20 developers get up to speed with the code. Imagine what would happen if Microsoft were to buy out the top 20 Linux kernel developers - Linux wouldn't be dead, but it certainly would be stagnant for a while. There's also the real possibility of major changes, since the next group of developers would have a different way of doing things and different goals for the project.
Please stop quoting Monty in slashdot stories, you're giving him a bigger platform for his comments than he deserves. He sold MySQL to Sun and then left Sun. That should be the end of the story. Now he's making sounds like a regular cry baby. Someone please tell him to get some balls and grow up.
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if anything 'bad' happens to mysql, heads will roll.
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Postgres has a diverse group of contributors so it will be absolutely nothing like Oracle acquiring MySQL. Sure it would be temporarily damaging to the project if Oracle did go out and buy the leading contributors but I can't imagine that Oracle would get away with such predatory actions. FTR I believe that Oracle genuinely wants to use MySQL as s competitor to SQL Server in the bottom of the market.
This is precisely why people were concerned about letting ANY single company own it.
Any company can be bought out.
If a product can't be effectively forked, it's not completely open source.
If a GPL fork of MySQL isn't good enough, then whose fault is that? And what does that mean for other dual-licensed GPL+Proprietary products?
no text necessary!
While he is technically correct that Oracle could just bribe the key developers to abandon pgsql, this would likely backfire.
First, it assumes that the pgsql developers of importance can be bought. Our world is decadent, but not everyone has a price tag
Second, seems Monty has been dealing with mysql code for too long. The pgsql code base (at least the parts I've seen) is significantly more pleasant to work with than MySQL's, and the sheer number of projects building off of it, commercial or OSS (due to BSD licence) are a testament to how accessible it is. Even if all of the current developers were to be bribed and stopped working on postgresql, there would be a significant incentive for other parties to step in and pick up the slack, given that postgresql has a sizable user base, and especially since it is now widely seen as the heir-apparent to mysql as the open-source rdbms of choice for your run-of-the-mill applications.
Add on top of that the bad press from a failed attempt to use such questionable tactics, and I think not even Oracle is greedy or dumb enough to try anything.
...sure makes some people whiny.
I would like to have a list of serious companies using PostgreSQL for serious stuff...and what stuff it is PostgreSQL is doing. In my world, all you hear is "...MySQL...MySQL...", even in cases where the back-end is being handled by PostgreSQL.
Our three major DBs have about 13.4 million records combined, with enormous amounts of data about clients. PostgreSQL has never failed us. I work in the insurance business.
Even if all the pgsql developers quit today and nobody came in to continue, it would still be a better product than mysql will ever be.
Do you have ESP?
They released free version XE for the department/small business server. If nothing else, that demonstrates the power of PostgreSQL to give the consumer a break in the marketplace. Up there with Apache and OO.org as one of the premiere open source display projects. I hope that excellence keeps them committed.
I'm getting fed up to the back teeth with this guy. He must have got himself into some mental issues he can't get out of. He had a dual licensed database server in MySQL that brought in good money and had a side-effect of making it the standard database as the web expanded, which he then sold to Sun for a very tidy sum and he still now expects to be able to control MySQL's future?
Before Sun bought MySQL Sun was heavily involved with Postgres (still is in many ways) and they could have quite easily tried to take that project over as opposed to buying MySQL. They didn't, and they would have found that very difficult because there are a lot of different interests in Postgres now.
Maybe, just to ensure that this can't happen, he should join the PostgreSQL project and become a top contributor...
EnterpriseDB is a company that offers commercial support for PostgresQL. They have salaried people on staff that contribute to the project, much like IBM, RedHat etc. contribute to the Linux kernel. So I would say Monty's scenario is about as likely as Linux going away by Microsoft or Apple paying off the to 20 kernel developers. Some people just don't get how open source works.
Nope... one major thing PostgreSQL sucks at is replication. You have to buy a commercial add on to get a decent implementation.
I would rather pay for replication then transactions.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
If the top 20 developers are bought out for a good chunk of money, that will be a huge incentive for at least another 20000 developers to try to get the same amount... by developing PostgreSQL further. I hope Oracle does it. The development of PSQL will skyrocket overnight. BTW, MySQL is being forked too, but PSQL has a better license. MySQL is junk, always has been...
My 2 cents on this non-story
The slave morality of MySQL freeloaders is mind-boggling here! People who choose to devote their time and talent to developing free software are not your slaves! They have rights too, including the right to do what's in their own personal interest. Free / open source software is a natural consequence of free market competition, not government force!
BSD is the most restrictive license a freedom-loving person should ever want to use. GPL is even more dependent on government force than proprietary software is, but usually doesn't come close to it in terms of quality or convenience.
Back in 1998 we developed a system to manage the vehicle and drivers license database for Mexico City, all done with Perl, TK and PostgreSQL. We faced the problem with the 2GB limit size of tables, can't remember the solution.
Nope... one major thing PostgreSQL sucks at is replication. You have to buy a commercial add on to get a decent implementation.
I would rather pay for replication then transactions.
Ah, quick... witty... and about 7 years out of date.
If not chewing gum is one of your principles, you've got some issues.
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He sold MySQL to Sun and then left Sun.
That is factually inaccurate. He was informed that the sale had taken place once it was done. The mistake Monty made was to sell MySQL to shareholders years ago. It probably wasn't a mistake either, although there should have been a clause in the shareholder agreement about the resale of MySQL.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
according to Monty Widenius. He fears that Oracle, or someone else, can easily squash PostgreSQL by just 'buying out' the top 20 developers
Or in MySQL's case, just one ... right, Monty ?
PostgreSQL languished from 1993-1996. Then the developers who looked at the code decided it was best to rewrite everything from scratch. This slowdown in development is why MySQL became more popular in the late 1990's. Plus, it was the database used in almost PHP book published. PostgreSQL in the late 1990's through early 2000's had a very solid codebase but very little work had been done on it from a performance perspective. Work throughout the 2000's has improved the performance tremendously and now the core team is focusing on bring replication to it natively.
For $1 billion I'll become a PostgreSQL developer and then agree to stop developing for it.
Richard Stallman has clarified that he believes the GPL is necessary and sufficient protection for MySQL, in direct contradiction to Widenius' call that the license should be changed and copyrights rest in some entity other than Oracle.
Eben Moglen and the Software Freedom Law Center defend the GPL even more strongly:
you had me at #!
Some people don't do it for the money. You can't buy them. Ever.
I don't know. I mean, I know what you're talking about: I've turned down a well-paying job with equity that would have set me up pretty good because I felt there was something more important than the money.
But here's the thing: at a certain level, once people offer you enough money (the mark starts somewhere around a million bucks) they're not just offering you money anymore, they're offering you freedom to do whatever you'd like to with your time. If the top 20 Postgres devs would rather do nothing else than work on Postgres, then you're right, this wouldn't happen. But if enough of them have other interests, then it's entirely possible someone could buy their non-participation -- with the ability to spend all the time they like on something else.
Tweet, tweet.
It's not a multiuser database.
A web site is a classic multiuser scenario for an RDBMS; you have to have concurrency issues completely nailed down (ideally with row level locking and ACID).
It's also MySQL's sweet spot.
you had me at #!
I think the problem is less about Monty wailing about Oracle's calumny, and more about Monty's view of how FOSS works. He seems to think it needs heroes, and that the rest of us plebes need someone to follow before we can get anything useful done. I'll agree with him that projects need leadership, but like comments above have said, there's a difference between project leadership and making yourself indispensable. If Monty was indispensable when he left MySQL, then he was the one that killed it, not Sun, and not Oracle.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
If so, I suspect that the psql team will nullify a number of those patents with prior art. Long before Oracle 9/10's move into OO, Postgres was there.
Also, once Oracle creates that kind of ill will, how fast will MS move MS-SQL to Linux/Unix? It would happen within 3 months. They would KILL to have all those OSS coders switch DBs.
Finally, Oracle will not go after Postgres with patents. Right now, postgres has many similarities to Oracle. As such, it is increasingly being used for lower end work, and then projects move to Oracle. Basically, Oracle sees it as a feeder project. Personally, I would stick with Postgres for all bu the top demand projects.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Postgresql has a more robust, decentralized community of ISVs and developers than did MysqlAB. The BSD license contributes to this loose federation of collective developers because no one company runs the show.
Furthermore, the folks in #postgresql on irc.freenode.net are superb. David Fetter is the man!
what a troll - and that was lying about what Stallman said
Can we get him put on some terr'rist list or something?
...why this is such an issue. I know that MySQL is distributed (at least to some) under the terms of the GPL. I have received it only under GPL2, and never under their proprietary license.
The GPL has been applied to the MySQL code, and it cannot under any circumstances be removed. Sure Oracle could absorb whatever code they wanted into any proprietary product, but I still have GPL code, we all still have the original.
Development could continue in the community, we can still enjoy the benefit of the MySQL database with or without oracle's blessing. In short, this a non-issue because we will always have the database code as it is now.
The fact that Monty is a prick and a sellout makes no difference either. PostgreSQL won't be sold out, and even if it was, we would still have the GPL'd versions to fork from. That's what the GPL is supposed to do. It is there to protect us from the Monty Wideniuses of the world!
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
He'll just have to kick ass instead.
That's the problem dual licensing has; you never know what to expect from the onwer, and that is why is has to be avoided when truly free projects are out there... same goes to KDE/Qt.
Dear
I once worked for a company called Great Bridge, which attempted to make money selling a boxed version of PostgreSQL. We employed/contracted with several key PostgreSQL developers, and I distinctly remember discussions with management and at least one of those developers about this very topic. The developers had agreed amongst themselves and with Great Bridge management to limit the number of key committers who took money from Great Bridge in order to ensure the company didn't exert too much control over the project (I'm sure we would have been happy to have every one of them on the payroll). History proves Monty wrong on this one.
What? The open source replication alternatives are good enough
You have:
* PGCluster
* Slony-I
* DBBalancer
* pgpool
* PostgreSQL table comparator
* SkyTools
* Sequoia
* Bucardo
* Mammoth Replicator
* Cybercluster
* GridSQL (shared-nothing)
All are open source and some even offer additional commercial support.
Yeah... keep telling yourself that...
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Why is he all in a wad over this? He alleged concerns make no sense when his past actions are taken into account - unless he has some hidden agenda. He sees no problem with selling mysql to Sun, and then has a hissy fit about mysql being sold to oracle. Something is not adding up.
Some have suggested that he wants to double-dip. How would he do this? And why would mysql being sold to oracle make any difference?
His present hysteria about the future of postgresql does not make sense to me either. Is there not always the possibility of top FOSS developers being bought out, regardless of who owns mysql? I mean if you want to get all hysterical about improbable "what if" scenarios, then what if some company bought the top postgresql developers, and top mysql developers?
I'm just trying to understand this.
From my perspective, it's not about "selling out". Given the offer of that kind of money, I'd have had tar'd the repo up and personally delivered it to Sun within the hour in a set of gilded DVD cases, and I won't begrudge anyone that same choice either. What *is* annoying is the whole "I want to eat my cake and have it too" whining that Monty has been expressing through this whole thing.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
PostgreSQL did not exist in 1993-1995. It was Postgres, and Postgres95 in that timeframe. It had its own query language. It was re-written to use SQL, and then became PostgreSQL.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
You know, the kind that plans gambits with the assumption the opposition isn't paying attention to what you're up to.
Suppose Oracle decides to kill PostGres by hiring *all* of the top developers. Getting 40% or 50% of them is probably feasible at a reasonable price, but not the nail-in-the-coffin Evil Ellison is looking for. He needs 100% of the key developers or as-near-as-dammit. The closer you need to get to 100%, the higher the cost goes, and it's not linear.
It'd be easy to hire four or five of the top 20, but to get sixteen or seventeen you'd have to make the offer so amazingly good that only a fool would refuse. How much would that cost? A cool million apiece?
Here's the flaw. Let's say I'm a competitor, and I see that Oracle has just dropped twenty or thirty million to get these exact persons on the team. But there are lots of good programmers in the world. I could hire some darn good ones with a hiring bonus of, say, a hundred thousand plus a good salary and a chance to work on an interesting, high profile project. So after Oracle spends its twenty, I spend two million and replace the lost talent with equally good talent.
Why?
Because it's a serious setback Oracle's plan to become the de facto owner of database technology. Well worth it, to me, even if I compete *myself* against Postgres. Also, because it socks Oracle where it lives -- in the cash flow. That could hurt it in other ways. We could have management turnover, maybe even a purge at Oracle for doing something so stupid with twenty million bucks. Cue the "Mwa-ha-ha-ha" in my boardroom. And once Oracle gives up, I *still* have these twenty top notch systems programmers I can use on any mf my projects.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The 2nd Iraq invasion changed my view about the world.
As we know, the initial success of the invasion wasn't due to military excellence such as the African Desert Tank Battles between General Mongomery and the German Panzer Divisions.
It was due to middle ranked officers - tank commander, platoon leaders being paid money by the US Govt, CIA. When they didnt show up to work on the specified day, the ordinary soldier fled.
In this case Monty is right, its not hard, for orgs with the know-how and resources to de-rail something. Money talks.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Aren't you supposed to buy a license for InnoDB in order to get ACID in MySQL? Last time I checked, ACID was mutually exclusive with fulltext indexing as well. Postgresql is far better for a medium sized to large website, as it doesn't have any of these issues and also supports MVCC, which results in much less waiting than with row level locks.
IMO /. has justed the shark with this "story". Thank you for no longer wasting my time.
Every time I've gone looking for information on how to use FireBird with my favourite language (which changes frequently) I've come away unsatisfied. So I've gone with something that was easier to figure out how to use.
That's a part of why FireBird gets ignored. It was sort of like what Linux was in the late 90's. Probably quite capable, but the documentation seemed to assume that you knew someone to coach you over the undocumented spots. Or that you were familiar with something sufficiently similar. Over the last decade Linux has backfilled, but FireBird hasn't. In fact it seems to have retrogressed, just based upon the last time I considered using it. (I didn't want to use SQLite because I wanted a system that let me use integer keys, and the SQLite interface to the language I was then using didn't. But I wanted a DB that would allow me to pick the file I was using as my database and store it locally with the program. FireBird would seem to have been ideal...but I couldn't easily figure out hot to use it, so I used something else. [I think that time I packed the integers into byte strings with each byte using only 7 bits.])
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Whatever!
The point is received gobs of money and now he's whining like a toddler. I think everybody's fucking sick of it by now.
If he signed a bad deal, THAT IS HIS FAULT AND HE SHOULD FUCKING COPE WITH IT LIKE AN ADULT! And stop spamming up this, and other, forums with his bullshit whining.
Comment of the year
DUH!
Some people don't do it for the money. You can't buy them. Ever.
For me it's like that: I have a goal that I see as the point of my existence.
Yes, well these people would be being paid to give up working on a database server. If your goal in life is to work on a database server, you probably need to get out more.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Do you have actual benchmarks showing SQLite outperforming MyISAM on reads? This might be surprising news to the sites which are using MySQL at large scale. I would repeat: SQLite won't scale.
(Benchmarks against InnoDB wouldn't be relevant of course, as InnoDB is an ACID, MVCC engine.)
you had me at #!
Is there any reason to pay replication before transactions?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
KDE & QT are under LGPL, which, unlike GPL, avoid this vulnerability. The only reason for getting a commercial license for otherwise LGPL'd software is that either 1) you need static linking or 2) you need to make secret modifications to the library.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Sorry, that doesn't disprove the argument. Oracle could just be very patient.
OTOH, my guesstimate is that Oracle intends to be to databases what Google is to information access...trying to index everything on the planet. (Google's goal seems the more practical, because immutable copies count as equivalents. So, e.g., Bing indexing something doesn't interfere with Google's also indexing it.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"GPL is even more dependent on government force than proprietary software is"
Half true; GPL is not more government dependant than propietary software is and probably a bit less... but even this is utterly irrelevant since GPL's government dependency only needs to last for as long as government's support for proprietary software it works against.
Mr Widenius wants to be the EnterpriseDB in the MySQL milieu. He already has salaried developers working on MariaDB, for Monty Program AB. If his wish for MySQL to be relicensed under "a more permissive Open Source license" were granted, he's promised that MPAB would only add "BSD" code to MariaDB, but he could have other companies on the side doing closed enhancement too. In fact he has not explained any other way that MPAB can stay in business.
you had me at #!
Access is a front-end to Microsoft SQL Server Express and Microsoft SQL Server. In a lot of cases, SQL Server Express ($0) is more than enough to run a business and is a nice step up from the Jet engine built into Access.
Mod parent up. He's hit it on the head when it comes to the history of PostgreSQL. What is missing is that fact that PostgreSQL had table/row locking and other ACID compliant features way before MySQL. And even with MySQL, they had to import the features using other DB engines such as Berkley or InnoDB. While native replication has been missing there are a number of 3rd party clustering tools that work extremely well. I've used pgpool, Slony, and GridSQL myself. So what if they are 3rd party tools? They are solid and I have a choice of tools to match the right one for the job instead of one-size-fits all.
Furthermore, PostgreSQL modelled itself around Oracle and DB2. If you developed something that worked well on PostgreSQL it was usually relatively painless to convert to DB2 or Oracle and the system would scream. But today, unless your dealing with databases in the Terabyte range, performance is good enough in PostgreSQL.
The early versions of our product ran on MySQL because that was what was available on the servers at the time and we were on a shoestring budget and had to use what was there. As our product grew, we encountered problems with data corruption on MySQL, found that MySQL's DBCLUSTER engine was horribly buggy, and started to look towards alternatives when I suggested PostgreSQL. When it was announced Sun would buy MySQL, we made the switch that day. Since we were using abstraction to begin with, it just took a couple days to port the tables and then import the data from MySQL and we were done. Our plan was to use PostgreSQL until we could afford DB2 or Teradata.
However, PostgreSQL has yet to crash or corrupt any data in 18 months. With GridSQL we have HA with shared nothing architechure and it seems to be able to handle hundreds to a couple thousand concurrent connections on $12k in hardware without a hiccup. In fact I have to remind our guys to do the routine maintence and preform checks otherwise we'd almost forget about it.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I wonder why MySQL is even considered as an option these days. Honest question -- I don't have much experience with it. I just tried to port my DB schema a couple of years back to it (from MS SQL) and run a couple of queries and it showed ridiculously poor performance on complex joins, so I went with Postgres instead. Postgres has been great.
Is there a good technical reason why people choose MySQL over Postgres?
monty's just an idiot, he sold mysql and now whinges about it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
if it was as easy to setup and maintain as MySQL. I have too much other stuff to do already. :/ From what I can see MySQL has much better maint tools as well.
The slave morality of MySQL freeloaders is mind-boggling here! People who choose to devote their time and talent to developing free software are not your slaves! They have rights too, including the right to do what's in their own personal interest. Free / open source software is a natural consequence of free market competition, not government force!
BSD is the most restrictive license a freedom-loving person should ever want to use. GPL is even more dependent on government force than proprietary software is, but usually doesn't come close to it in terms of quality or convenience.
At first, I was in general agreement with what you were saying. Developers are affected by market forces and are free to take actions that benefit themselves as they desire. But then you dove right in to this freedom-is-tyranny anti-GPL litany. The mental gymnastics involved are what's mind-boggling here. It's rather amusing how BSD fanatics are using this case to push an agenda.
"all of the original founders of MySQL got collectively less than 12 % of the Sun deal". This meant EUR 16 million to Widenius personally last year according to his Wikipedia page. So buying it back is out of the question (even if the owner wanted to sell it) - and no billionaires were made in the deal.
you had me at #!
And why do you think you wield such power to make heads role? What "community" do you lead? Why are you hiding behind a pseudonym of "unity100" when you're supposedly well known?
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Anything that supports Interbase supports Firebird, which is pretty much everything. I don't think you tried very hard.
Firebird is actually way better at the things people typically use SQLite for. It can be embedded about as easily (even statically like SQLite) and works in a similar fashion with a single database file if that's what you want, etc. It performs way better than SQLite though. On par with MySQL's performance or better (but has a much better/freer license than MySQL). Plus it supports features like stored procedures and such like PostgreSQL.
It really is worth the effort.
The other biggie was that MySQL had a native Windows version early, so that any aspiring web dev could practice on WAMP and then move to hosting which was usually LAMP. The hosting providers also played their part. Combine that with a lot of literature on MySQL, PHP etc. and you have the reason it succeeded for so long.
You have:
11 projects which are pain in the ass to individually try out, fail to make work, and move on to the next is not better than one project that works out of the box; the developers themselves have finally realised this, hence making "a simple replication system that covers 90% of users out of the box" a release goal for 8.5 (though it was also a top goal for 8.4, and 8.3...)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
So why should anyone favor a free project where there exist reasons to apply for a commercial license when there are others where you don't even need to think about it?
Dear
It is the Copyleft movement's position that freedom (to fork open source code and do with it whatever you see fit) is "tyranny". This implies that me closed-sourcing my own work (and only my own work, since the upstream code I've copied from remains open-sourced) is somehow an act of aggression, which clearly it isn't. I am not your slave, and GPL is not a legitimate contract that can dictate what I can or cannot do with my own computer and my own ability to write software!
You have the copyright of your own work. You are free to do with it what you want. You are not, however, free to do whatever you want with other people's work. Slave morality indeed.
Copyleft is utterly impossible without government force, without which all Copyleft code would be simply liberated into the public domain - this is why you see people like RMS so fiercely opposed to (semi)libertarian movements like the Pirate Party. And, returning to the topic at hand, here we see the violence inherent in Copyleft philosophy surface once again, attempting to get in the way of what millions of Sun and Oracle shareholders want to do with their own property!
Actually, RMS has stated that he generally supports movements like the Pirate Party. However, he cautions that such movements should level the ground for both Free Software and Proprietary Software, seeing the current activities of the Pirate Party tearing down the few restrictions of Free Software while leaving many additional restrictions of the Proprietary world intact. While I'm not a big fan of RMS himself, what you're portraying is misleading. You may not like the Free Software ideology but at least you can be accurate in your criticisms.
Along those lines, I fail to see how you've managed to return to the topic at hand. There is no Copyleft philosophy getting in the way of Sun and Oracle. The GPL has little to do with Monty's fear mongering. But that doesn't stop BSD fanatics such as yourself from using his noise as a platform.
You are correct. I *didn't* try very hard. I did a once over pass to select something to investigate more closely. Firebird made the first cut, i.e., I'd heard of it and what I'd heard seemed vaguely appropriate. It failed the second cut (which had only one winner) of being the easiest to figure out how to test. The one that passed that was the one I eventually used.
I don't defend this process as a way of finding the best choice, except in the sense that it minimized the time involved in searching. But the question was "Why isn't FireBird better known?"
P.S.: I am not now and never have been an Interbase user, so referring to Interbase doesn't help me at all. (Yes, I know that some of the Firebird documentation is Interbase documentation. This doesn't help me either in feeling confident that it's current or in knowning what to do. It's also no great hinderance, as I presume that if the Firebird site is pointing to it as documentation, then it's what they are recommending as documentation. But that's the way I counted it during my evaluation.)
P.S.: I didn't need a really powerful DB. One of the choices I considered was Kirbybase. I think I ended up using BerkeleyDB (once from SleepyCat). I was probably using Python at the time (which would mean that the Firebird interface I considered was kinterbase).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
as do some other storage engines available for MySQL (such as PBXT).
MyISAM does not, of course; it is more comparable to SQLite, although the latter does have transactions.
you had me at #!
Did they convert?
you had me at #!
InnoDB (and BDB) was bought up by Oracle. They didn't kill it which kind of disproves monty's argument, not that there was any substance behind it in the first place.
It was bought up, but it's also still dual licensed - which means Oracle can't kill it.
the exact point being that innodb isn't gpl, and was actually bought by oracle independently of the deal with sun
Actually InnoDB is released dual-license - GPL and proprietary.
If those reasons aren't relevant to you then why should it bother you? Given the example of making secret modifications mentioned by GP, I'd guess probably 1% of users would be interested in that. The other 99% wouldn't care. But it's nice that the choice is there for those who want it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I really think you're missing my original point, which was about MySQL... since MySQL was owned by a specific company and was licensed in such a way that it actually mattered who owned it, that company was a vulnerability. PostgreSQL is not exposed this way because the license doesn't give the copyright owner the ability to restrict the fork in any meaningful way.
This is a problem with dual licensing, one that (for example) Qt avoided because Trolltech gave the Free Qt foundation the right to release Qt under the BSD license if Trolltech stopped its development. Monty could have given MySQL an escape clause like that, but either he didn't think of it or he thought it was giving up too much control.
RMS is a skilled manipulator. I guess you've read the same gnu.org page that I have read, but failed to see through the nuanced BS and recognize it for what it is: a defense "intellectual property" laws!
I see where you're going with this, but sorry... I can't follow you. You're too keen to jump to your own conclusions and misrepresent what others have said.
This isn't really about GPL vs BSD (I actually prefer public domain), this is about government force.
No, this is about one man and a project he started. BSD fanatics have tacked on their agenda. And now you're tacking on your agenda.
If you want to debate this further then please go to a more libertarian / Anarcho-Capitalist forum instead, where dissenting views are likely to be treated more substantively, and not stifled as they are here.
Sorry - I have no interest in following you down that rabbit hole. While we may agree on some general principles, I find that you take far too many leaps for me to ultimately agree with anything I've seen you write to date. You'll have to be the martyr on your own time.