Re: [pgsql-advocacy] MySQL gets $19.5 MM

Jean-Michel,

Please cc: this to the original poster:

> > PostgreSQL.  Today, it's clearly the superior product.  It will be

It is really?   According to which criteria?  Clearly more popular, certainly.
However, I may point out that MS Access still has more installations than
MySQL ...and nobody is calling MS Access a "superior database product".

> > tomorrow too.  But Betamax was pretty neat too.
> > PostgreSQL needs more corporate support.  Case studies are great, but
> > someone needs to step into the void that Great Bridge created.

To be completely blunt:  MySQL the database will not easily survive the demise
of MySQL AB.   Their development is still centrally and very corporately
controlled; they are more a commercial company using the GPL as a
distribution mechanism than a real Open Source project.  And while Open
Source is hard to beat in the marketplace, MySQL AB is easily beaten  or
consumed by larger, fiercer commercial competitors.  Particularly since the
company has shown anything but astuteness in their commercial relationships.

Think about this: What would happen if Microsoft or Oracle purchased MySQL AB
in order to shut it down?  What would happen to the MySQL Project?  The same
thing that's happening to the SAP-DB project?

PostgreSQL has survived the deaths and/or acquisition of several companies,
most notably Great Bridge.  In this way, PostgreSQL is just like Linux ...
many people commercialize it but nobody owns it.

From my perspective, Great Bridge was, in fact, a problem for us because our
project became associated with GB in the public mind ... meaning that when GB
shut down due to a bad business model, a lot of people got the impression
that PostgreSQL was shutting down too.  We've been quite a while recovering
from that, and MySQL's public profile has surged ahead in the meantime.

I would ... or perhaps will ... be nice to get some corporate money again for
useful things like trade show booths.   But we want to avoid the impression
ever again that PostgreSQL is owned by any one company.  (Thankfully,
PostgreSQL Inc. has been very careful in this regard)

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco