MySchadenfreude

I don't really take great joy in the turmoil in the MySQL world, but it's very tempting every time that Richard Stallman or Monty Widenius open their mouths on the subject not to cheer on the opposition.

This tragedy was eminently foreseeable (and indeed, was foreseen, by those not blinded by interest or ideology). Monty and Richard and a few others have laid the grounds for this to occur, so I'm not much impressed by their bleatings now.

And I don't appreciate misrepresentations and FUD concerning Postgres in Monty's latest rant. To buy up most of the major developers of Postgres, someone would have to acquire about six companies, all but one of which are closely held. Saying that the possibility of this makes Postgres vulnerable to the fate MySQL is now suffering is like saying that the possibility that the moon is made of green cheese means that all we know of astronomy might not be true. It's not going to happen, so raising it as a fear is just silly. And even if they did it would not put them in the position regarding Postgres that Richard and Monty have guaranteed to Oracle with their wretched dual licensing model.

Call me cynical, but maybe Monty has some interest in spreading some FUD regarding Postgres.

Also, it's not as hard to migrate MySQL apps to Postgres as he makes out. I have some experience in that area (e.g. see work I did on Bugzilla). Going the other way is much harder, because Postgres has a much richer, and extensible, type system.

I don't think Oracle will do MySQL much good, and I wouldn't trust them as far as I could kick them. But that doesn't mean we should just embrace any bad argument against the acquisition that comes along.