Of course one flip-side to all this is that if Oracle does attack us it actually lends credibility; it means they see PostgreSQL as a threat. At this point that could do more good for us than harm, depending on how exactly the attacked. On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 06:04:40PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote: > 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 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate > subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx so that your > message can get through to the mailing list cleanly > -- Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117 vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
