Joshua D. Drake wrote:
But what if they came in sideways and bought Command Prompt?
Well then I would be sitting on a beach in New Zealend with an umbrella
drink :)
(As an
example.) You could do a lot more to destroy PostgreSQL's market in the
business world by destroying the various support mechanisms. Your
business is much closer to eating their lunch than PostgreSQL itself.
That is a farily good point but one of the beautiful things about Open
Source is that even if they bought Command Prompt, they would also have
to buy Pervasive and EnterpriseDB and GreenPlum and SRA.
And then -- by doing so they are just opening the market for a new set
of companies to start supporting PostgreSQL.
So what if they bought Command Prompt (or someone else like it) and then
cut it off at the knees? No one ever accused Larry Ellison of being
dumb ... different strategies for different opponents.
No, Larry isn't dumb. You don't get to be the second richest man in the
world by being dumb. However he is very strategic and I don't see (at
this point) a strategic reason to attack PostgreSQL via Oracle.
I don't think that PostgreSQL is really on Oracle's radar at the moment.
PostgreSQL at this point is actually a good value add to the Oracle
proposition. In 5 years we are probably going to be a immediate direct
threat but not right now.
Note that it was a few years ago that MySQL first popped up on Oracle's
radar screen enough for them to add migration tools helping people move
from MySQL to Oracle. I don't see such tools available currently for
PostgreSQL to Oracle migrations at the moment. So I suspect that we are
still seen as the little guy :-) The difference is that while we have a
smaller number of large users, MySQL has a larger number of smaller
users so they technically have better market share numbers *and* they
have better plublicity.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting
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