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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.'"
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...
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.
Probably yours...
Widenius is only using scare tactics to try to get MySQL back after enjoying the profits from selling it in the first place.
His constant whining will morph into a cautionary tale about using open source programs in a production environment.
Phrases like "You don't get fired for buying from Oracle, Microsoft, or IBM" will return to the IT workplace and all the work open source developers did to enter the workplace will be set back several years.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
If somebody were willing to come up with a billion dollars in cash, they could buy the top 100 people in the PostgreSQL project, and that would cramp it severely for a couple of years.
That said, Monty took VC money, which is basically legalized loan sharking. Taking VC money results, in the overwhelming majority of cases, in the complete screwing of the borrower. Monty was one of the lucky few who managed to get a fortune out of that situation, which makes his whining utterly unseemly.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Um....there's over 70 committers to PostgreSQL. And even the top 20 work for a wide range of companies. Buying them out would be virtually impossible.
And the whole concept seems to assume that there's a fixed pool of people. I'm guessing that if any of those companies lost their PostgreSQL guy, they'd be looking to hire another one and if it's anything like most open source software there's plenty unpaid or poorly paid people who'd love to take the position. Or with 10% unemployment, there would be soon enough if people knew they lacked developers. For that matter, I think it'd be hard to bury MySQL if just the entire community gathered on one fork and not a dozen.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I would like to have a list of serious companies using PostgreSQL for serious stuff
PostgreSQL Featured Users; Quotes has additional detail about the scope of some of those. Most people are probably familiar with names like Skype and Cisco on there, but less well known companies like NTT are huge too--and they even sponsor a good chunk of PostgreSQL development because it's so heavily used there.
And those are just the public record. Because of its BSD license, PostgreSQL also gets used in plenty of places that don't talk about what they're doing with it. For example, I've worked with financial companies that are cutting loose Oracle for PostgreSQL whenever feasible, and with some US defense companies that use PostGIS for geographic databases. (looks out window) I may have already said too much.
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
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.
I happen to know that right after the Columbia accident, all the telemetry data was loaded into a PG database and that is what was used for analysis. At one point tracking the entire .org domain was done with PG as well. I've always thought of MySQL as a racehorse, no other horses can compete for speed when running around a short track (IE read-mostly website). PG is more of a draft horse, able to plow the fields, or pull the wagon, or do a million other things that MySQL is not appropriate for. Oracle would be an Elephant, too huge and expensive to maintain for most things while SQL Server would be a mule, a hopefully sterile off-breed of a horse (Sybase) and a donkey (Windows).
apt-get install redhat please god - Me (take it easy, I love Debian)