Well, it doesn't affect them at all. And not Mr. Mendelsohn got that wrong but TFA and our/. poster.
You could download and test Oracle's DBs for free for quite a while - but only now you can use them for free in a production environment. That's clearly aimed at MS' offerings like MSDE and SQL Server Express and not at MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Also Oracle is an enterprise DB and MySQL, PostgreSQL or even MS SQL Server can not be compared to it in that regard. This also means you need trained staff to administer it - forget about just downloading and using it. Tried to get a demo of Oracle's XML Publisher working - I know what I'm talking about;-).
So if your shop is already using Oracle's DBs this is a nice offer for the occasional small project. But for everyone else, just stay with what you know and love - whether it's MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server or something else.
The problem with this "classic monopolist example" is that it stops thinking after the first two steps:
Big company undercuts prices and forces all others to close shop
Big company raises prices higher than before 1.
World stopped?
We really do have this example over here in germany. There where only small bakeries and some local chains with maybe 20 shops. Then came a Mr. Kamps, formed one big chain of bakeries, and forced all the small ones out of the market.
This was back in '98 and AFAIk he didn't even do your step 2. What bugged me was that I didn't have as much choice as before and that his (franchised) shops weren't as gemütlich as the old ones.
But for about 2 years you see new turkish bakeries opening in the old bakeries locations (at least here in Berlin) and the existing turkish bakeries changed their assortment. Most of them now offer the kind of bread and cake we germans are used to - maybe because they could now afford laid-off german bakers teaching them how to produce these. So even if the big company decided to raise prices now it wouldn't work.
As a consumer, I profit from both changes:
Kamps had some good ideas like new sorts of bread and cake and providing a place for a snack
The turkish also brought new sorts of bread and cake and they open their shops on christian feasts
And now just replace Kamps with Microsoft and the turkish bakeries with OSS.
The "free" market and democracy both implement evolutionary principles - thats why they prevailed against alternative models like communism. Evolution is about trying things - its not about controlling or suppressing them.
Just remember that evolution works in the long run and don't get impatient when you (seem to) see your step 2 looming.
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You could download and test Oracle's DBs for free for quite a while - but only now you can use them for free in a production environment. That's clearly aimed at MS' offerings like MSDE and SQL Server Express and not at MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Also Oracle is an enterprise DB and MySQL, PostgreSQL or even MS SQL Server can not be compared to it in that regard. This also means you need trained staff to administer it - forget about just downloading and using it. Tried to get a demo of Oracle's XML Publisher working - I know what I'm talking about ;-).
So if your shop is already using Oracle's DBs this is a nice offer for the occasional small project. But for everyone else, just stay with what you know and love - whether it's MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server or something else.
The problem with this "classic monopolist example" is that it stops thinking after the first two steps:
We really do have this example over here in germany. There where only small bakeries and some local chains with maybe 20 shops. Then came a Mr. Kamps, formed one big chain of bakeries, and forced all the small ones out of the market. This was back in '98 and AFAIk he didn't even do your step 2. What bugged me was that I didn't have as much choice as before and that his (franchised) shops weren't as gemütlich as the old ones.
But for about 2 years you see new turkish bakeries opening in the old bakeries locations (at least here in Berlin) and the existing turkish bakeries changed their assortment. Most of them now offer the kind of bread and cake we germans are used to - maybe because they could now afford laid-off german bakers teaching them how to produce these. So even if the big company decided to raise prices now it wouldn't work.
As a consumer, I profit from both changes:
And now just replace Kamps with Microsoft and the turkish bakeries with OSS.
The "free" market and democracy both implement evolutionary principles - thats why they prevailed against alternative models like communism. Evolution is about trying things - its not about controlling or suppressing them.
Just remember that evolution works in the long run and don't get impatient when you (seem to) see your step 2 looming.