We have entered a new phase in the possible attacks on PostgreSQL. The purchase of InnoDB clearly shows Oracle is ready to expend money to slow down competitive database technology. Now that MySQL has been attacked, we should expect to be the next target. Let's assume Oracle is willing to spend 1% of their revenue or net income on attacking PostgreSQL. Given this financial statement: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=ORCL&annual that would be USD $20-100 million. (The Oracle financial statement will eventually disclose the purchase price of InnoDB, and we can use that as a minimum amount they would be willing to spend.) Now, I think Oracle realizes that the database will eventually become a commodity based on their purchase of Peoplesoft and other application technology. However, every financial period they delay that time is more profit for them, so it is a cost/benefit of how much it is worth to slow down PostgreSQL. Obviously they thought the InnoDB purchase was worth it to slow down or control MySQL. Our goal should be to make the cost of attacks higher than the benefit. Here are the three most likely attacks on our project: o Hiring Oracle could hire a large portion of our paid or volunteer developers, thereby slowing down the project. Individuals would probably be approach as "We like your work on PostgreSQL and would like your expertise in improving Oracle", but of course once hired what they did for Oracle would be unimportant. What would be important is what they _don't_ do for PostgreSQL. o Trademark Marc Fournier owns the PostgreSQL trademark and domain names. He could be attacked, perhaps by hiring him to do a job, causing it to fail, then suing him to obtain the trademark, and therefore the right to own the domain names. The trademark has not been enforced, and it would be hard to enforce at this stage, but I think it would be effective in gaining control of the domain names. o Patents Most technology people agree the software patent system is broken, but it could be a potent weapon against us, though we have shown we can efficiently remove patent issue from our code. There is probably nothing Oracle can do to permanently harm us, but there are a variety of things they can do to temporarily slow us down, and it is likely a attempt will be made in the future. There are also possible threats to PostgreSQL support companies, though they are somewhat independent of the project. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
