Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Licensing
About two months after Oracle bought MySQL, they announced a plan that divided
the development into two camps. There would now be a MySQL community edition
and a professional version. The community edition would no longer gain any new fea-
tures, and the professional version would become a commercial product.
There was a vast and thunderous sucking sound in the open source community, as
they thrashed wildly about to find a new platform for Free and Open Source (FOSS)
development.
Oracle immediately (in about 2 weeks) countermanded the order, and declared that
things would stay as they were for the indefinite future. Those with short memories,
forgiving hearts, or who just weren't paying attention went on about their business.
Many other open source projects either switched to PostgreSQL or suddenly grew
PostgreSQL database support.
Today we have MySQL and MySQL Enterprise Edition. If you want "backup, high
availability, enterprise scalability, and the MySQL Enterprise monitor", you now have
to pony up some dough. Capitalism is fine, and corporations have a right to charge
money for their services and products in order to exist. But why should you as a pro-
ject manager or developer have to pay for something that you can get for free?
Licensing is all about continued product availability and distribution. The PostgreSQL
licensing model specifically states that you can have the source code, do anything
with it that you want, redistribute it however you jolly well please, and those rights ex-
tend indefinitely. Try to get that deal with a commercial vendor.
As a corporate developer, PostgreSQL wins the legal battle for risk management
hands down. I have heard the argument "I want to go with a commercial vendor in
case I need someone to sue." I would encourage anyone who considers that a good
argument to do a little research about how often these vendors have been sued, how
often those suits were successful, and what the cost of court was for that success. I
think you'll find that the only viable option is not to have that battle.
