View Single Post
  #6   (View Single Post)  
Old 20th April 2009
ocicat ocicat is offline
Administrator
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 3,318
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by robbak View Post
Well, if this is not the end for MySQL, I don't know what is.
Why would this be the end of MySQL? If Oracle were to kill off MySQL, they would be guaranteed to make no profit off of it, & Postgres might become a really viable competitor. If they keep MySQL around, they can reap the benefits of offering professional services for MySQL customers along with leveraging control over Postgres' future marketshare.

In fact, with Oracle owning both, they can make sure that "improvements" which might be going into MySQL will somehow be delayed, not be as good, become really hard to implement -- making sure that their flagship commercial product continues to be the "best" solution for big customers with deep pockets.

As always, this is merely conjecture, but there is no reason to think that Oracle would blatantly pull the plug on MySQL when ownership could mean that they can capitalize on yet another revenue stream.

And for history buffs, the early database companies (ie. Tandem...) made their own hardware for their database. There can be a lot of performance & stability gains made when the entire system is owned by one entity (what is old is new again...). However, the disadvantage is that they can move away from the de facto marketplace standards & become quite closed.

Oh, the drama of the marketplace...
Reply With Quote