Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Oracle buys Innobase

Matthew Terenzio <matt@jobsforge.com> writes:
> As much as I respect Marc and Postgresql.org, I can't see Oracle hiring
> him away as a "killer" threat to the community. People would set up
> camp somewhere else, like Command Prompt. It would hurt things for a
> while but the software is too important to too many to be killed by a
> domain name or person.

Yeah, I was thinking that myself: even if a hostile group managed to
obtain control of the trademark and/or domain name, they could not kill
the project.  We'd just regroup under a new name --- it'd slow us down
for a bit, sure, but no more.  The project name has changed once
already, remember.

The only serious threat I see on the horizon is patent issues.  Again,
I don't think that could kill us over the long term --- we could surely
write our way out of any noncritical patents (see recent ARC fiasco for
a fire drill of this nature), and we ourselves are prior art with which
to defeat any patents on critical algorithms.  A patent lawsuit could
certainly hurt us, if only by soaking up the time and attention of key
developers, but I don't think it could kill the project.

            regards, tom lane