Re: PGSQL wins Linux Journal Awards...

Keith wrote:

> Does Larry Ellison's offensive comments against competitors not matter?
> How about the seemingly comedic threat to shoot the PeoplsSoft CEO, last
> week? Does that not matter? Learn to abstract comments of an individual
> person from the technical merits of a product.
>

Getting attention is part of every CEO's job. Regardless of how offensive they may appear on the surface, Larry's comments are effective at getting attention. Larry's style may not be to your liking, but that is truly irrelevant - what is relevant is that the press follows his comments.

In a similar way, your style has made us listen to - and freedom of choice has made some of us reject - your comments. Like it or not, other than financial status, you are no better that you deem him to be.

> Cost of doing business and the freedom to instantiate 1000 instances of
> a database on 1000 machines without ever having to worry about staying
> in compliance with an Oracle licence matters to me.

1. Have you checked the license that comes with PostgreSQL? While it is generally a very nice and flexible license, are you sure it is valid and applicable to every situation or corporation?
2. The license is advocating "freedom of choice", not "free of cost".
3. The day may come when you find the cost of doing business does not stop at the initial purchase price.

I recommend Linux as an OS, not because it's initial price is low but because the total cost of ownership over 2+ years is low (in part because of it's unix-like heritage.) In the future, I may recommend an open source RDBMS for a similar reason. But IMO, they ain't there yet.

d) Freedom to instantiate 1000 instances, in many situations implies freedom to be stupid enough to need 1000 instances. Cost of management may be a consideration. But you knew that already, didn't you. Received on Sun Jul 13 2003 - 17:07:52 CDT