Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Oracle buys Innobase

"Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com> writes:
> Of course, Oracle could tank the market by offering support at
> un-competitive prices, but I can't think of a reason for them to do that
> off the top of my head.

They might hope that they could drive the existing support companies out
of business (assuming they didn't get convicted of antitrust violations
first --- which would be an open-and-shut case, but with the Republicans
in office they probably wouldn't get prosecuted :-(). Then they raise
their rates to make lotsa money, or maybe they'd think they could drop
support at that point and the project would die for lack of commercial
support. (They seem to understand open-source poorly enough that they
might think that would happen.)

I don't see any of this happening though. As suggested upthread,
the very *last* thing Oracle wants is to raise the visibility and
credibility of Postgres by a couple of orders of magnitude --- which
is exactly what they'd be doing by offering support for it, even if
the support was only temporary. The effects of getting the word out
would persist long afterwards.

regards, tom lane