RE: Ellison Pans Open Source Databases

Infoworld has an article about some [http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/004074.html recent comments by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison] playing down open source databases. Of course this is really to be expected, you’ll notice that many of these same arguments we’re made by Bill and Paul about Linux 5 years ago. From the article: While the open source Linux operating platform has benifitted from investments from companies such as IBM and Novell, open source databases have not had this kind of support, Ellison contended. “One of the myths around open source is open source is built by a bunch of guys who work at Radio Shack and when they go home at night, they log onto the Internet and write code,” Ellison said. But this has not been the case with Linux, he said. Now I have to admit I think you’re right on this one Larry; good open source projects (well, at least the ones that become the ubiquitous pieces of other software, like [http://www.linux.org operating systems], [http://www.apache.org/ web servers], [http://www.postgresql.org databases], and [http://www.php.net programming languages]) are underwritten by big companies. It’s one of the reasons why I have always been skeptical of the other [http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=1013 open] [http://www.firebirdsql.com source] [http://www.mysql.com databases], who tend to have a single controlling entity behind them… after all, if we wanted to expose ourselves to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in vendor lock in] or [http://www.bizintelligencepipeline.com/datasources/170702382 shifting corporate visions], we’d choose Oracle. But we don’t have to worry about that kind of thing, because we do have companies like Fujitsu, Red Hat, and Pervasive, who all are standing behind PostgreSQL, and a large community focused on one thing, making PostgreSQL the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_management_systems best database out there].