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MySQL and Oracle excel in different areas. I would expect Oracle to halt any effort to grow MySQL towards Oracle's feature set. I suspect this is very bad news

by andrewf 18y ago

MySQL and Oracle excel in different areas. I would expect Oracle to halt any effort to grow MySQL towards Oracle's feature set. I suspect this is very bad news for Postgresql. Sun is a major backer, but that will likely end. Postgresql's target market already overlaps with the low-mid end of Oracle's, and Postgresql 8.x has been largely about scaling up.

sethg 18y ago
Wouldn't other hardware vendors be more interested in supporting PostgreSQL now? Before the acquisition, if you bought a big HP database server, HP had no reason to care which database software you ran on it. Now, HP would prefer that you not be directing your software-purchase money to one of HP's competitors.
- bensummers 18y ago
  Amusingly, before they bought MySQL, Sun were the biggest PostgreSQL supporters. They still employ the key contributors!
  - neilc 18y ago
    Sun employes one member of the core team (Peter Eisentraut) and some other people who contribute patches, but that's it. http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/
    - neilc 18y ago
      And actually, I forgot that Peter E. left Sun a few weeks ago anyway: http://petereisentraut.blogspot.com/2009/03/sun-set-part-2.html http://petereisentraut.blogspot.com/2009/03/sun-set-part-2.h...
- ja27 18y ago
  I'm thinking Oracle/Sun will eventually end up in HP's hands.
  - falsestprophet 18y ago
    Why? Oracle has a larger market capitalization than HP: ~90 billion vs. 84.
  - briansmith 18y ago
    How will that work? Oracle's market cap is higher than HP's.
  - ja27 18y ago
    Because Oracle and HP are already tight partners and analysts refer to them as essentially one entity against IBM. Plenty of people expect the Sun hardware line to die or get sold to HP, while Oracle keeps the software line. http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/6606-0-0-225-121.html http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/6606-0-0-225-121.... http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2903 http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2903
    - briansmith 18y ago
      Now that it has aqcuired Sun, it can make those Exadata appliances itself, without HP. That's basically what Oracle said they were going to do today.
jacobian 18y ago
"I suspect this is very bad news for Postgresql. Sun is a major backer [...]" Actually, that's incorrect; Sun is a backer, but hardly a major one. A quick glance at Ohloh's contribution metrics for PostgreSQL (http://www.ohloh.net/p/postgres/contributors/ http://www.ohloh.net/p/postgres/contributors/) shows 17 committers with over 100 commits. If you start matching nicks up to the PostgreSQL contributor profiles (http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/), you'll quickly see that only one, Peter Eisentraut, works for Sun. Actually, it's interesting to note that of those 17 top contributors not a single company employs more that one top contributor. If anything this is good news for PostgreSQL, then: Oracle can easily acquire and steer the course of MySQL development, but shifting PostgreSQL priorities by financial means would take the acquisition of Sun, IBM, UC Berkeley, and over a dozen more companies.
- aardvark 18y ago
  "you'll quickly see that only one, Peter Eisentraut, works for Sun" True, but Josh Berkus also worked for Sun until last summer. So maybe it's correct to say Sun has been a major backer.
  - jacobian 18y ago
    Even when Josh worked there I think you'd be hard-pressed to make an argument that Sun "backed" PostgreSQL in any strategic sense. It's true that Josh is an extremely vital figure in PostgreSQL's community, but he doesn't contribute code as much as he advocates and interacts with the user community. Those roles are extremely important, but the people who hold them are pretty much beyond outside influence: Josh will always act in the best interests of PostgreSQL regardless of who signs his paychecks. On top of that, these types of evangelists don't usually play a part in the technical direction of a project. I'm not sure exactly how closely involved Josh is personally with PostgreSQL's technical direction, but I can tell you for a fact that any attempts a company might make to steer a project through its evangelist are misguided. Either way, though, there's no question that Josh is incredibly important to PostgreSQL. But, still, that's a whopping two contributors out of over two dozen. We can go back and forth about what level constitutes "major backing", and that's fine. But at least now we're talking about some data instead of just hand-waving; that was my point in posting the initial correction.
tvon 18y ago
Well, losing Sun as a backer would be bad for PostgreSQL, definitely, but as far as the future goes, for PostgreSQL the sky is still the limit, for MySQL the limit now seems to be Oracle.
redrobot5050 18y ago
Yes, one area where MySQL excels is it doesn't cost $40k per server to have an unlimited (e.g. wired up to the internet, so anyone can use) license. PG said in one of his rants, "Do you know of any start ups choosing to go with Oracle? I don't either." A whole new generation of companies (like RoR dev shops) are using Postgre/MySQL as clusters/shards and have no intention to ever moving to Oracle. This way, Oracle still captures revenue from them. (If they are paying for support).

by andrewf 18y ago

sethg 18y ago

Wouldn't other hardware vendors be more interested in supporting PostgreSQL now? Before the acquisition, if you bought a big HP database server, HP had no reason to care which database software you ran on it. Now, HP would prefer that you not be directing your software-purchase money to one of HP's competitors.

bensummers 18y ago
Amusingly, before they bought MySQL, Sun were the biggest PostgreSQL supporters. They still employ the key contributors!
- neilc 18y ago
  Sun employes one member of the core team (Peter Eisentraut) and some other people who contribute patches, but that's it. http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/
  - neilc 18y ago
    And actually, I forgot that Peter E. left Sun a few weeks ago anyway: http://petereisentraut.blogspot.com/2009/03/sun-set-part-2.html http://petereisentraut.blogspot.com/2009/03/sun-set-part-2.h...
ja27 18y ago
I'm thinking Oracle/Sun will eventually end up in HP's hands.
- falsestprophet 18y ago
  Why? Oracle has a larger market capitalization than HP: ~90 billion vs. 84.
- briansmith 18y ago
  How will that work? Oracle's market cap is higher than HP's.
- ja27 18y ago
  Because Oracle and HP are already tight partners and analysts refer to them as essentially one entity against IBM. Plenty of people expect the Sun hardware line to die or get sold to HP, while Oracle keeps the software line. http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/6606-0-0-225-121.html http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/6606-0-0-225-121.... http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2903 http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2903
  - briansmith 18y ago
    Now that it has aqcuired Sun, it can make those Exadata appliances itself, without HP. That's basically what Oracle said they were going to do today.

jacobian 18y ago

"I suspect this is very bad news for Postgresql. Sun is a major backer [...]" Actually, that's incorrect; Sun is a backer, but hardly a major one. A quick glance at Ohloh's contribution metrics for PostgreSQL (http://www.ohloh.net/p/postgres/contributors/ http://www.ohloh.net/p/postgres/contributors/) shows 17 committers with over 100 commits. If you start matching nicks up to the PostgreSQL contributor profiles (http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/), you'll quickly see that only one, Peter Eisentraut, works for Sun. Actually, it's interesting to note that of those 17 top contributors not a single company employs more that one top contributor. If anything this is good news for PostgreSQL, then: Oracle can easily acquire and steer the course of MySQL development, but shifting PostgreSQL priorities by financial means would take the acquisition of Sun, IBM, UC Berkeley, and over a dozen more companies.

aardvark 18y ago
"you'll quickly see that only one, Peter Eisentraut, works for Sun" True, but Josh Berkus also worked for Sun until last summer. So maybe it's correct to say Sun has been a major backer.
- jacobian 18y ago
  Even when Josh worked there I think you'd be hard-pressed to make an argument that Sun "backed" PostgreSQL in any strategic sense. It's true that Josh is an extremely vital figure in PostgreSQL's community, but he doesn't contribute code as much as he advocates and interacts with the user community. Those roles are extremely important, but the people who hold them are pretty much beyond outside influence: Josh will always act in the best interests of PostgreSQL regardless of who signs his paychecks. On top of that, these types of evangelists don't usually play a part in the technical direction of a project. I'm not sure exactly how closely involved Josh is personally with PostgreSQL's technical direction, but I can tell you for a fact that any attempts a company might make to steer a project through its evangelist are misguided. Either way, though, there's no question that Josh is incredibly important to PostgreSQL. But, still, that's a whopping two contributors out of over two dozen. We can go back and forth about what level constitutes "major backing", and that's fine. But at least now we're talking about some data instead of just hand-waving; that was my point in posting the initial correction.

tvon 18y ago

Well, losing Sun as a backer would be bad for PostgreSQL, definitely, but as far as the future goes, for PostgreSQL the sky is still the limit, for MySQL the limit now seems to be Oracle.

redrobot5050 18y ago

Yes, one area where MySQL excels is it doesn't cost $40k per server to have an unlimited (e.g. wired up to the internet, so anyone can use) license. PG said in one of his rants, "Do you know of any start ups choosing to go with Oracle? I don't either." A whole new generation of companies (like RoR dev shops) are using Postgre/MySQL as clusters/shards and have no intention to ever moving to Oracle. This way, Oracle still captures revenue from them. (If they are paying for support).