Why Oracle Can't Easily Kill PostgreSQL 279
ruphus13 writes "Claiming that 'PostgreSQL is a FOSS alternative to MySQL and hence Oracle should be allowed to pursue MySQL' is a specious argument, according to Monty Widenius. He fears that Oracle, or someone else, can easily squash PostgreSQL by just 'buying out' the top 20 developers. The Postgre community has fired back, calling that claim ridiculous. According to the article, 'PostgreSQL as a project is pretty healthy, and shows how vulnerable projects like MySQL are to the winds of change. PostgreSQL could die tomorrow, if a huge group of its contributors dropped out for one reason or another and the remainder of the community didn't take up the slack. But that's exceedingly unlikely. The existing model for PostgreSQL development ensures that no single entity can control it, it can't be purchased, and if someone decides to fork the project, the odds are that the remaining community would be strong enough to continue without a serious glitch.'"
Firebird (Score:2)
And if postgresql fails there is still firebird, and all the other open source database that kick ass but are less known than mysql and postgresql.
Re:Firebird (Score:5, Informative)
You forgot SQLite. It's small and good enough for most of what MySQL gets used for: simple web forms, stat counters etc.
SQLite is for local storage (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a multiuser database.
A web site is a classic multiuser scenario for an RDBMS; you have to have concurrency issues completely nailed down (ideally with row level locking and ACID).
It's also MySQL's sweet spot.
Re:SQLite is for local storage (Score:4, Interesting)
SQLite is not a multi-user database, but a web app is a single user. It does support arbitrary numbers of concurrent reads and in relatively recent versions supports concurrent writes, although the locking is not quite row granularity. Most web apps are very read-heavy, and this is where SQLite shines. Consider something like Slashdot. Loading this page required me to read over a hundred comments from the db. Each of the times I expand a hidden comment, an AJAX request handler performs another db read. I only need to write to the db when I post something (well, there may be some logging stuff, but I'm still reading a lot more than I'm writing).
For a lot of web sites, concurrent read speed is the bottleneck, and SQLite performs better than MySQL for concurrent reads by quite a large margin.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
you have to have concurrency issues completely nailed down (ideally with row level locking and ACID).
Even row-level locking ends up being a scalability issue eventually. This is why PostgreSQL uses MVCC [postgresql.org] for transaction isolation by default instead, which is one of the reasons it can scale upward well for some types of workloads.
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Trac also allows other RDBMS back-ends. If you had a highly loaded site (for example, a popular public project) you would not pick SQLite for the reasons I mentioned. In particular, it does not implement MVCC or row locking. Locking is coarse grained (like MyISAM) which soon limits scalability.
Yes, SQLite's basic locking is good enough for light demands (say internal company intranet), and I am happy to use Trac+SQLite myself in these situations. I suppose if you know your site won't ever be popular, and as
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I suspect that's a case of shrewed analysis of their target market, not a technical endorsement of SQLite as an enterprise platform.
Of course, you can architect around *anything*; ultimately when you build a reliably concurrent system it's on top of hardware which doesn't guarantee any logical consistency for your data when it manipulated concurrently. It's a matter of where in the software stack you make that magic happen. The database layer is very important, but there's more than one way to do it and
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know, but that also wasn't my point. My point was that he was claiming MySQL doesn't scale to a lot of users. Last I heard, Slashdot had a lot of users -- and it runs on MySQL.
Re:Firebird (Score:4, Insightful)
He's just pushing a straw-man argument, having unwisely made it for MySQL, and after embaressingly being caught twisting RMS's words (see groklaw, http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100108114314405 [groklaw.net]).
I fear he's strictly in this for himself and his friends, a certain well-know monopolist with a "Codeplex" Foundation...
Bother! I wanted this to be over months ago, so I could get more consulting from Sun's (Now Oracle's) customers.
--dave
Monty's just a greedy troll ... (Score:3, Insightful)
what a troll [trolltalk.com] - and that was lying about what Stallman said [groklaw.net]
Can we get him put on some terr'rist list or something?
Re: (Score:2)
Monty is the next SCOop.
Get the poor billionaire (who sold MySQL) his open source project back, as dual licensing because the GPL is crap. Sign here [helpmysql.org].
Re: Yep, I don't know why people forget about it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Every time I've gone looking for information on how to use FireBird with my favourite language (which changes frequently) I've come away unsatisfied. So I've gone with something that was easier to figure out how to use.
That's a part of why FireBird gets ignored. It was sort of like what Linux was in the late 90's. Probably quite capable, but the documentation seemed to assume that you knew someone to coach you over the undocumented spots. Or that you were familiar with something sufficiently similar. Over the last decade Linux has backfilled, but FireBird hasn't. In fact it seems to have retrogressed, just based upon the last time I considered using it. (I didn't want to use SQLite because I wanted a system that let me use integer keys, and the SQLite interface to the language I was then using didn't. But I wanted a DB that would allow me to pick the file I was using as my database and store it locally with the program. FireBird would seem to have been ideal...but I couldn't easily figure out hot to use it, so I used something else. [I think that time I packed the integers into byte strings with each byte using only 7 bits.])
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I've last used Firebird about two years ago, so this may not be true anymore... but anyway. I've had two major problems with it.
First is documentation. There's no single place to go for it. Effectively you end up with the original Interbase manual, and then various bits and pieces which explain what was added/removed/changed, and you have to piece it all together by yourself (and there's no way to tell if you even have all the pieces in the first place). This applies to admin docs, SQL reference, and langua
Widenius please move on... (Score:5, Insightful)
You got your money and now you want MySQL (or at least the spotlight) back.
By your argument, PostgreSQL is fragile because the top 20 developers could be bought out by Oracle. If you think that's a buyout target that can be easily squashed, just think what a SQL DB with only one copyright owner can be? Oh wait, that was MySQL and we already know what you did....
Re:Widenius please move on... (Score:5, Informative)
His argument is "I was bought, therefore anybody else can be bought".
If Oracle is willing to buy 20 developers at $1 billion each, then he may be right.
Re:Widenius please move on... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Widenius please move on... (Score:4, Insightful)
"there's nothing stopping these developers from giving $1m of this to pay for someone else to work full time on the project..."
Except the non-competing clause in their contracts, of course.
And of course too, Widenius has a point, a moot point but a point: buying out everyone that happens to compete with you is a tried and true strategy to get away competitors. It's only it is not a long time strategy against a strong and open market, it doesn't scale and it happens that open source projects with an open community backing them up (say, KDE, Debian... PostgreSQL) are the most resistant against such strategy.
So yes, Monty has a point... whatever.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
His argument is "I was bought, therefore anybody else can be bought".
If Oracle is willing to buy 20 developers at $1 billion each, then he may be right.
That would only lead to 20 million developers starting to learn the PostgreSQL code base, hoping to get a billion dollars as well. Developers can be replaced (not easily, but they can be).
Sun bought MySQL (and Oracle Sun) for the control, via the assigned copyright, of the sourcecode, and of the support structure. MySQL the company has always done everything it can to keep control over the MySQL product, making the GPL license just a part of a distribution model. A lot needs to be rebuild in organizing the
Open offer to Oracle (Score:2)
For $1 billion I'll become a PostgreSQL developer and then agree to stop developing for it.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Ladies and Gents please stop unfairly attacking Widenius, as TheRaven64 already mentioned, he absolutely positively did not get $1 billion for mysql he got about $16.6 million in 2008 which is nowhere near $1 billion. [ source wikipedia with 2 other sources providing confirmation ]
The whole company was bought for $1 billion and a very small portion, reportedly about 12% or less of that went to Widenius and the other mysql founder.
And keep in mind transactions like this are rarely done in cash and there are
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Ah, and different stock option scheme when it is sold within 4 years...
I see I see
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
None of your points are relevant...
Of course Monty doesn't have the money to buy MySQL. It doesn't change the fact that he stayed completely silent on this until he got his millions. Maybe he only understood the problems of Oracle ownership then?
If Oracle has patents they can use to kill MySQL, why on earth did they need to buy it first, and how would the situation improve if they were forced to sell it? That is an absurd idea.
Of course monopoly is not good for the public. However, there is no monopoly here
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Of course Monty doesn't have the money to buy MySQL. It doesn't change the fact that he stayed completely silent on this until he got his millions. Maybe he only understood the problems of Oracle ownership then?
He understood the problem long before. And he made an agreement with first investors (long before Sun deal) that MySQL, if sold, would be sold to a company which has more reasons to continue MySQL development than reasons to kill it. That's why Sun deal hadn't provoked his attention (and at the time he was only a member of MySQL board, not employed by MysQL AB anymore).
After ownership of MySQL went to Sun, obviously the investors changed too. Initial investors understood the value of MySQL and to whom i
Re:Widenius please move on... (Score:5, Insightful)
...PostgreSQL is fragile because the top 20 developers could be bought out by Oracle...
Sort of like how Monty's been trying to buy all the top MySQL devs away from Sun...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
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By your argument, PostgreSQL is fragile because the top 20 developers could be bought out by Oracle.
One thing about PostgreSQL is that the leadership have developed a lot of policies, standards, traditions, practices, style, tools, and other organized structures. In the recent past this has been much more conscious -- for instance the commit-fests are a great way for new developers to join in by submitting patches and reviewing others' patches.
This makes it easier for newer developers and leaders to step up
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it allows people behind pg to -on one side- give you for free a half-baked RDBMS but -on another side- ask money for the tools/etc to make it usable.
That what BSD license allows. And in past it was practiced by PostgreSQL core team most of whom were employed by the company which was offering all the extras to PosgreSQL.
But that is not per se BSD license weakness - it was pg business model in the past. It kind of feels f***ed up when somebody offers a patch but it gets rejected by pg core beca
Err... (Score:5, Insightful)
While buying out the top 20 developers (and I find it unlikely they could in the first place) wouldn't necessarily kill PostgreSQL, it would hamper development until the next 20 developers get up to speed with the code. Imagine what would happen if Microsoft were to buy out the top 20 Linux kernel developers - Linux wouldn't be dead, but it certainly would be stagnant for a while. There's also the real possibility of major changes, since the next group of developers would have a different way of doing things and different goals for the project.
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Re:Err... (Score:5, Insightful)
If somebody were willing to come up with a billion dollars in cash, they could buy the top 100 people in the PostgreSQL project, and that would cramp it severely for a couple of years.
That said, Monty took VC money, which is basically legalized loan sharking. Taking VC money results, in the overwhelming majority of cases, in the complete screwing of the borrower. Monty was one of the lucky few who managed to get a fortune out of that situation, which makes his whining utterly unseemly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone is willing to use a billion dollars in cash just to slow the development of a database program, they're unlikely to have a billion dollars to begin with.
Re:Err... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um....there's over 70 committers to PostgreSQL. And even the top 20 work for a wide range of companies. Buying them out would be virtually impossible.
And the whole concept seems to assume that there's a fixed pool of people. I'm guessing that if any of those companies lost their PostgreSQL guy, they'd be looking to hire another one and if it's anything like most open source software there's plenty unpaid or poorly paid people who'd love to take the position. Or with 10% unemployment, there would be soon enough if people knew they lacked developers. For that matter, I think it'd be hard to bury MySQL if just the entire community gathered on one fork and not a dozen.
Re:Err... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun spent $1bn on MySQL. Spending the same amount of money on PostgreSQL would involve paying the top 20 developers $50m each not to work on PostgreSQL anymore (or to work on a proprietary fork of it). If I were offered that much not to work on a particular open source project, then I'd consider it quite seriously. For one thing I could pay someone else to work on the project full time while I did other things...
The argument doesn't really make sense, because Oracle is vulnerable to the same tactic. What would happen if IBM offered even $1m to each of Oracle's top database programmers to quit? Would Oracle be able to survive? They'd have to hire a completely new team, but they'd probably manage it. The same is true of PostgreSQL (and other big hippyware projects). Most of the people who work on it are employed by companies which benefit from the project existing. If they all quit then these companies would hire other people to replace them. You'd see a little drop in productivity, but nothing permanent.
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In regards to IBM pulling the same against Oracle you forget one of the biggest reasons against it. Federal Action and Lawsuits. This would fall squarely under Anti-Competitive actions, thus the Feds (DOJ/Regulators) would all jump in and Oracle would have a Damn near ironclad suit against IBM for Lots more then 100M dollars. Even though the Nazgul would be out in droves, they still couldn't keep the ring bearer away from Mount Doom as the Armies of the 7 lands would be fighting them at the same time.
Re:Err... (Score:4, Interesting)
The argument doesn't really make sense, because Oracle is vulnerable to the same tactic. What would happen if IBM offered even $1m to each of Oracle's top database programmers to quit?
That would cause a problem for any organization, of course. But both Oracle and PostgreSQL have established policies and lots of historical precedent that guide new developers and project leaders while they are getting up to speed and filling empty roles. For instance, what happens when a significant patch hits the pgsql-hackers list that implements a new feature? Discussion begins, and then it goes on a public commit-fest page (http://commitfest.postgresql.org). When the commitfest begins, everyone stops work on their own patches, reviewers get assigned to patches, and after it passes review then a committer reviews it again and potentially commits it.
With policies like that in place, as a few developers are hired away it's much easier for new developers to take their place. You don't get lopsided efforts. How does postgresql find enough reviewers? Reviewing is that much fun? No. If you don't review at commit fest time, then your patch is either ignored or at the back of the line.
What happens when a patch hits the mysql list from a random contributor? Well, we don't really know, because MySQL isn't really a community project. They only know how to get patches committed and releases out the door from within MySQL AB (and that could obviously be questioned as well, seeing how long they went without a release, and the problems that happened when they did release, like Monty saying it wasn't ready).
It's much easier to cause major damage to a disorganized project like MySQL.
I believe MariaDB and Drizzle are both attempting to establish a real community project (notice I didn't say "re-establish"). I hope they succeed for the sake of MySQL users. But new users would be wise to count on a real organization like the PostgreSQL Global Development Group and it's established policies (or Oracle, for that matter).
Re: (Score:2)
PostgreSQL just works fine. Probably PostgreSQL does not need so many developer.
Stop quoting Monty (Score:4, Insightful)
Please stop quoting Monty in slashdot stories, you're giving him a bigger platform for his comments than he deserves. He sold MySQL to Sun and then left Sun. That should be the end of the story. Now he's making sounds like a regular cry baby. Someone please tell him to get some balls and grow up.
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Wrong (Score:2, Informative)
That is factually inaccurate. He was informed that the sale had taken place once it was done. The mistake Monty made was to sell MySQL to shareholders years ago. It probably wasn't a mistake either, although there should have been a clause in the shareholder agreement about the resale of MySQL.
Whatever! (Score:3, Funny)
Whatever!
The point is received gobs of money and now he's whining like a toddler. I think everybody's fucking sick of it by now.
If he signed a bad deal, THAT IS HIS FAULT AND HE SHOULD FUCKING COPE WITH IT LIKE AN ADULT! And stop spamming up this, and other, forums with his bullshit whining.
Let me say this as a developer, contributor, (Score:2)
webmaster, publisher, community leader, administrator.
if anything 'bad' happens to mysql, heads will roll.
Re:Let me say this as a developer, contributor, (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably yours...
Widenius is only using scare tactics to try to get MySQL back after enjoying the profits from selling it in the first place.
His constant whining will morph into a cautionary tale about using open source programs in a production environment.
Phrases like "You don't get fired for buying from Oracle, Microsoft, or IBM" will return to the IT workplace and all the work open source developers did to enter the workplace will be set back several years.
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But even in the worst case, mysql would turn into a type of legacy application, with support and bug fixes provided by 3rd parties. This would be not nearly as bad as the suffering of companies back in the day dealing with legacy systems
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That is a very good point indeed. mysql was the cat's meow in the internet's early days; everybody was doing a web portal and mysql is fast as hell with simple lookups. Just the ticket. Now even databases that were supposed to stay simple are morphing into who knows what. mysql's engine still can't even do transactions and they own nobody whose plugin can. Even if they're not a target they'll always be weak in their market no matter how popular they are. Postgresql (for example) has always kicked mysql's bu
rather uninformed, you are. (Score:2)
that bug in the ambler of simpler times is powering millions of sites servicing hundreds of millions of internet users worldwide. ranging from forums to portals, shopping sites to collaboration sites.
for hosting market LAMP hosting with cpanel is THE way to go. it is expected default server config. even the big players are offering lamp packages foremost, because request for other packages are nil, the only exception being a very tiny percentage of asp and mssql hosting. its to the extent that new startups
It would do fine (Score:4, Interesting)
Why trust Sun? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is precisely why people were concerned about letting ANY single company own it.
Any company can be bought out.
If a product can't be effectively forked, it's not completely open source.
If a GPL fork of MySQL isn't good enough, then whose fault is that? And what does that mean for other dual-licensed GPL+Proprietary products?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Any company can be bought out..
No, not really. As pointed out one of those 'top 20' works at NTT. Lets compare revenues.
NTT: $106.289 billion (2009)
Oracle: $ 23.252 billion (2009)
I think the buying out would go the other way.
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Oracle could just offer that one NTT employee, say, a "consulting" position at Oracle, for, oh, 50x his current salary. There would be some tiny little clause in his contract stating something along the lines of "you shall remain 50 yards from any computer that contains the source code for the postgresql database"
I'm not suggesting that Oracle can or should do this (see my other comment) but that the comparison between NTT and Oracle is n
Re:Why trust Sun? (Score:4, Interesting)
At which point NTT would promptly hire/promote someone else into the same position with the same level of resources necessary to be effective. For example, in addition to committer Itagaki Takahiro, they also have some major work on replication [postgresql.org] being led by Masao Fujii. The point of having a big company like NTT involved is that you can't just make their need for PostgreSQL to be successful go away so easily. There's not just "that one NTT employee"--he's one of a whole team there doing PostgreSQL related work.
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If a product can't be effectively forked, it's not completely open source.
If a GPL fork of MySQL isn't good enough, then whose fault is that? And what does that mean for other dual-licensed GPL+Proprietary products?
The only one that seems to be having trouble with this is Monty Widenius. And it seems his issue is being unable to re-create a proprietary fork. So if your goal is to maintain a proprietary product, and you don't own the copyright to the code, then big surprise... the GPL is an issue. But then, that's kind of the point of the GPL.
And Monty Widenius knows about being bought! (Score:5, Insightful)
no text necessary!
Not even Oracle is evil enough to try this (Score:5, Insightful)
While he is technically correct that Oracle could just bribe the key developers to abandon pgsql, this would likely backfire.
First, it assumes that the pgsql developers of importance can be bought. Our world is decadent, but not everyone has a price tag
Second, seems Monty has been dealing with mysql code for too long. The pgsql code base (at least the parts I've seen) is significantly more pleasant to work with than MySQL's, and the sheer number of projects building off of it, commercial or OSS (due to BSD licence) are a testament to how accessible it is. Even if all of the current developers were to be bribed and stopped working on postgresql, there would be a significant incentive for other parties to step in and pick up the slack, given that postgresql has a sizable user base, and especially since it is now widely seen as the heir-apparent to mysql as the open-source rdbms of choice for your run-of-the-mill applications.
Add on top of that the bad press from a failed attempt to use such questionable tactics, and I think not even Oracle is greedy or dumb enough to try anything.
Re:Not even Oracle is evil enough to try this (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. Hell, even PostgreSQL’s documentation is literally fun to read. It’s clean, it’s complete, it’s concise. Other projects should learn from them.
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I agree. Hell, even PostgreSQL’s documentation is literally fun to read. It’s clean, it’s complete, it’s concise. Other projects should learn from them.
Contrast this with the sad fact that most (all?) the MySQL forks lack almost all documentation because MySQL AB never received the documentation under a free license.
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> First, it assumes that the pgsql developers of importance can be bought.
No, first it assumes that Oracle has an interest in aquiring or stopping postgresql at all.
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First, it assumes that the pgsql developers of importance can be bought. Our world is decadent, but not everyone has a price tag.
Really? To quote Tom Lehrer:
"It's so nice to have integrity, I'll tell you why:
'Cause if you really have integrity, that means your price is very high."
While I'd probably be resistant to being bought out, if the price were high enough I would at least consider it. If I were in that position, I'd think about taking the big bucks, retiring from my day job, and working on and donating to other open source projects (and probably some other worthy causes as well) while enjoying my comfortable retirement.
And the
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First, it assumes that the pgsql developers of importance can be bought.
The biggest assumption is that Oracle wants to do this in the first place. Microsoft has SQL Server and IBM has DB2, neither of them have tried to buy out PostGRE... Sun's been around for decades and they've never tried it before...
It's just fear-mongoring from Monty.
A billion bucks... (Score:5, Funny)
...sure makes some people whiny.
Please name names (Score:4, Informative)
I would like to have a list of serious companies using PostgreSQL for serious stuff...and what stuff it is PostgreSQL is doing. In my world, all you hear is "...MySQL...MySQL...", even in cases where the back-end is being handled by PostgreSQL.
Our three major DBs have about 13.4 million records combined, with enormous amounts of data about clients. PostgreSQL has never failed us. I work in the insurance business.
Re:Please name names (Score:5, Informative)
I would like to have a list of serious companies using PostgreSQL for serious stuff
PostgreSQL Featured Users [postgresql.org]; Quotes [postgresql.org] has additional detail about the scope of some of those. Most people are probably familiar with names like Skype and Cisco on there, but less well known companies like NTT [google.com] are huge too--and they even sponsor a good chunk of PostgreSQL development [postgresql.org] because it's so heavily used there.
And those are just the public record. Because of its BSD license, PostgreSQL also gets used in plenty of places that don't talk about what they're doing with it. For example, I've worked with financial companies that are cutting loose Oracle for PostgreSQL whenever feasible, and with some US defense companies that use PostGIS [wikipedia.org] for geographic databases. (looks out window) I may have already said too much.
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Re:Please name names (Score:5, Funny)
I happen to know that right after the Columbia accident, all the telemetry data was loaded into a PG database and that is what was used for analysis. At one point tracking the entire .org domain was done with PG as well. I've always thought of MySQL as a racehorse, no other horses can compete for speed when running around a short track (IE read-mostly website). PG is more of a draft horse, able to plow the fields, or pull the wagon, or do a million other things that MySQL is not appropriate for. Oracle would be an Elephant, too huge and expensive to maintain for most things while SQL Server would be a mule, a hopefully sterile off-breed of a horse (Sybase) and a donkey (Windows).
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Not a serious company but thought I'd note that OpenStreetmap (http://openstreetmap.org) uses PostgreSQL to store data for their Mapnik rendering engine and PostGIS to query it. They're rendering user-contributed map data for the entire world, so that's a fairly serious operation.
Re:Please name names (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll be difficult to say who's using it because they download it, try it, run it.. all quietly without fuss. No-one at PostgreSQL website can say who's using the downloads because there's no licensing or even a 'email to get your registration' type stuff going on.
I can tell you that 3 large UK emergency service centres (the 911 callcentres) use PostgreSQL for handling the incoming 999 calls. Its been used for some time now and we've not had a major failure (I don't think we've had a single failure of any type come to that).
Taking calls for the emergency services is as serious as you can get. It's even more serious if you're the one who wants an ambulance!
Re:Please name names (Score:5, Informative)
It'll be difficult to say who's using it because they download it, try it, run it.. all quietly without fuss. No-one at PostgreSQL website can say who's using the downloads because there's no licensing or even a 'email to get your registration' type stuff going on.
We started with yum -y install postgresql-server and now, hundreds of busy clients later and a few updates later, Postgresql is still going stronger than ever...
And seriously, Postgres is the overachieving underdog of the database world. It has it all - replication, data integrity, legendarily stunning stability, MVCC, foreign keys, triggers, PLPGSQL, subselects, indexes, query scheduling, parameterized statements, DDBC, metatables, cross-database joins... I could go on, and on, and on. It holds up very nicely when Its security
model is excellent. Its organizational model is stable. It holds up well under very demanding loads and just basically doesn't crash. (In a decade of using it every single business day, I've NEVER HAD an instance of Postgres corrupt running on a RedHat/CentOS server) It costs nothing, it's available by default on any RedHat install CD, and most other distros.
If Oracle is scared, they should be scared of PostgreSQL, and if you're looking to database something, you should strongly consider Postgres!
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There's one thing it doesn't have - the developer mindshare. When someone's writing their PHP webapp, the first thing they think is "install MySql", not "install PostgreSQL".
Perhaps now they'll start to update the code and we'll get a LAPP stack instead of LAMP.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It does have developer mindshare, it just doesn't have PHP developer mindshare.
Then again, PHP and MySQL are a match made in heaven - both underfeatured and broadly outdated, but immensely popular because of (often misleading) marketing, and mostly just being in the right place at the right time.
They're also alike in that, if we could get rid of both, and have, say, Linux+Apache+Python+Postgres, that would make the lives of many developers and admins easier, and the world just a little bit better.
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PostgreSQL users tend to shut up and get on with it quietly and efficiently.
MySQL users tend to indulge in all sorts of public willy-waving.
Much like the databases they use, in fact.
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MXLogic uses PostgreSQL as their major production database. I know of some other luggage company in Denver that uses PostgreSQL, but I forget the name of the company.
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There's another angle (Score:2)
Even if all the pgsql developers quit today and nobody came in to continue, it would still be a better product than mysql will ever be.
Obviously, there is one thing Oracle did (Score:2)
They released free version XE for the department/small business server. If nothing else, that demonstrates the power of PostgreSQL to give the consumer a break in the marketplace. Up there with Apache and OO.org as one of the premiere open source display projects. I hope that excellence keeps them committed.
Sod Off Monty (Score:4, Interesting)
Before Sun bought MySQL Sun was heavily involved with Postgres (still is in many ways) and they could have quite easily tried to take that project over as opposed to buying MySQL. They didn't, and they would have found that very difficult because there are a lot of different interests in Postgres now.
Join! (Score:4, Funny)
EnterpriseDB (Score:2, Informative)
All 20 ? (Score:2)
according to Monty Widenius. He fears that Oracle, or someone else, can easily squash PostgreSQL by just 'buying out' the top 20 developers
Or in MySQL's case, just one ... right, Monty ?
Stallman also challenges Widenius (Score:5, Informative)
Richard Stallman has clarified that he believes the GPL is necessary and sufficient protection for MySQL, [groklaw.net] in direct contradiction to Widenius' call that the license should be changed and copyrights rest in some entity other than Oracle.
Eben Moglen and the Software Freedom Law Center [softwarefreedom.org] defend the GPL even more strongly:
I had the privilege... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem is less about Monty wailing about Oracle's calumny, and more about Monty's view of how FOSS works. He seems to think it needs heroes, and that the rest of us plebes need someone to follow before we can get anything useful done. I'll agree with him that projects need leadership, but like comments above have said, there's a difference between project leadership and making yourself indispensable. If Monty was indispensable when he left MySQL, then he was the one that killed it, not Sun, and not Oracle.
Re: (Score:2)
Monty needs that cup.
differences (Score:2)
Furthermore, the folks in #postgresql on irc.freenode.net are superb. David Fetter [planetpostgresql.org] is the man!
What I don't understand is... (Score:2)
...why this is such an issue. I know that MySQL is distributed (at least to some) under the terms of the GPL. I have received it only under GPL2, and never under their proprietary license.
The GPL has been applied to the MySQL code, and it cannot under any circumstances be removed. Sure Oracle could absorb whatever code they wanted into any proprietary product, but I still have GPL code, we all still have the original.
Development could continue in the community, we can still enjoy the benefit of the MySQL
The PostgreSQL project already ran that gauntlet (Score:5, Interesting)
I once worked for a company called Great Bridge, which attempted to make money selling a boxed version of PostgreSQL. We employed/contracted with several key PostgreSQL developers, and I distinctly remember discussions with management and at least one of those developers about this very topic. The developers had agreed amongst themselves and with Great Bridge management to limit the number of key committers who took money from Great Bridge in order to ensure the company didn't exert too much control over the project (I'm sure we would have been happy to have every one of them on the payroll). History proves Monty wrong on this one.
Oh yeah... (Score:2)
Yeah... keep telling yourself that...
Widenius - What is his game? (Score:2)
Why is he all in a wad over this? He alleged concerns make no sense when his past actions are taken into account - unless he has some hidden agenda. He sees no problem with selling mysql to Sun, and then has a hissy fit about mysql being sold to oracle. Something is not adding up.
Some have suggested that he wants to double-dip. How would he do this? And why would mysql being sold to oracle make any difference?
His present hysteria about the future of postgresql does not make sense to me either. Is there not
This is like bad chess. (Score:2)
You know, the kind that plans gambits with the assumption the opposition isn't paying attention to what you're up to.
Suppose Oracle decides to kill PostGres by hiring *all* of the top developers. Getting 40% or 50% of them is probably feasible at a reasonable price, but not the nail-in-the-coffin Evil Ellison is looking for. He needs 100% of the key developers or as-near-as-dammit. The closer you need to get to 100%, the higher the cost goes, and it's not linear.
It'd be easy to hire four or five of the to
I see his point re buy-out (Score:2)
As we know, the initial success of the invasion wasn't due to military excellence such as the African Desert Tank Battles between General Mongomery and the German Panzer Divisions.
It was due to middle ranked officers - tank commander, platoon leaders being paid money by the US Govt, CIA. When they didnt show up to work on the specified day, the ordinary soldier fled.
In this case Monty is right, its not hard, for orgs with the know-how and resource
Re: (Score:2)
Nope... one major thing PostgreSQL sucks at is replication. You have to buy a commercial add on to get a decent implementation.
I would rather pay for replication then transactions.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope... one major thing PostgreSQL sucks at is replication. You have to buy a commercial add on to get a decent implementation.
I would rather pay for replication then transactions.
Ah, quick... witty... and about 7 years out of date [wikipedia.org].
Re:Sour grapes? (Score:5, Informative)
What? The open source replication alternatives are good enough
You have:
* PGCluster
* Slony-I
* DBBalancer
* pgpool
* PostgreSQL table comparator
* SkyTools
* Sequoia
* Bucardo
* Mammoth Replicator
* Cybercluster
* GridSQL (shared-nothing)
All are open source and some even offer additional commercial support.
Re: (Score:2)
If not chewing gum is one of your principles, you've got some issues.
Re: (Score:2)
He'll just have to kick ass instead.
Some people don't do money for the money (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people don't do it for the money. You can't buy them. Ever.
I don't know. I mean, I know what you're talking about: I've turned down a well-paying job with equity that would have set me up pretty good because I felt there was something more important than the money.
But here's the thing: at a certain level, once people offer you enough money (the mark starts somewhere around a million bucks) they're not just offering you money anymore, they're offering you freedom to do whatever you'd like to with your time. If the top 20 Postgres devs would rather do nothing else than work on Postgres, then you're right, this wouldn't happen. But if enough of them have other interests, then it's entirely possible someone could buy their non-participation -- with the ability to spend all the time they like on something else.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
PostgreSQL languished from 1993-1996. Then the developers who looked at the code decided it was best to rewrite everything from scratch. This slowdown in development is why MySQL became more popular in the late 1990's. Plus, it was the database used in almost PHP book published. PostgreSQL in the late 1990's through early 2000's had a very solid codebase but very little work had been done on it from a performance perspective. Work throughout the 2000's has improved the performance tremendously and now
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
PostgreSQL did not exist in 1993-1995. It was Postgres, and Postgres95 in that timeframe. It had its own query language. It was re-written to use SQL, and then became PostgreSQL.
I doubt that oracle will do that (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, once Oracle creates that kind of ill will, how fast will MS move MS-SQL to Linux/Unix? It would happen within 3 months. They would KILL to have all those OSS coders switch DBs.
Finally, Oracle will not go after Postgres with patents. Right now, postgres has many similarities to Oracle. As such, it is increasingly being used for lower end work, and the
Re: (Score:2)
Also, once Oracle creates that kind of ill will, how fast will MS move MS-SQL to Linux/Unix? It would happen within 3 months. They would KILL to have all those OSS coders switch DBs.
I have my doubts about that, because it would also make it easier for MS-SQL users to switch to Linux.
My impression of Microsoft is that they really want to keep their customers on the combination of Windows/MS Office/SQL Server. Anything that makes it easier to "unbundle" those is probably seen as a threat by MS.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)