As others have noted, as an Apache project, the CouchDB project can't be "purchased by Oracle". Obviously you meant that somewhat metaphorically (and as a refe

As others have noted, as an Apache project, the CouchDB project can't be "purchased by Oracle". Obviously you meant that somewhat metaphorically (and as a reference to MySQL), but it's worth noting: MySQL was the product of a private company. It was always possible for it to be purchased, and that eventually happened. The same is true for many modern databases, including most of the major NoSQL databases. CouchDB cannot be. Yes, there's risk of the project could die in a variety of ways, but there is an entire class of risks that CouchDB is not subject to, when most of its competitors are. If you really want to avoid having your DB purhcased and killed by Oracle, you'd actually prefer CouchDB over, eg, MongoDB. Beyond that, you say: "You'll have to clone Couch's REST API". That's actually the other half of what makes CouchDB a safer bet: The HTTP protocol is itself open source, well documented, and has already been cloned repeatedly. It's used by quite a few different projects in different ways, including PouchDB, CouchDB, TouchDB, Hoodie.io, BigCouch, and CouchBase Lite. If you're curious about the topic, I recommend this blog post: http://caolanmcmahon.com/posts/couchdb_is_not_a_database/ http://caolanmcmahon.com/posts/couchdb_is_not_a_database/