Comment by koko775 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by koko775 | Hacker News Reader

So basically, the Java strategy. Killing the alternatives through creating compatibility uncertainty. Oh, man. This doesn't bode well.

I hope this drives developers towards using and improving Postgres, but, well, who knows. One can dream!

More likely is that it may drive people towards Percona, which I have on good word is a solid professional MySQL branch...or, like Java, people will just stick with the brand. :/

EDIT: adding links for the curious.

Percona: http://www.percona.com/

Background on the Java stuff: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/12/apache... (the difference is that MySQL never did have open governance, so there was nobody to quit in a justified huff)

I would think one would need to look no further than the Oracle/Google lawsuit and its outcome with respect to Java to see how Oracle will move forward with MySQL.

Java has been greatly improved since Oracle took over the helm. Major improvements to the JVM, an exciting yet stable roadmap, better platform support (in particular on OSX) and a lot more confidence about its future.

Oracle has been nothing but a huge positive for the Java platform.

> Oracle has been nothing but a huge positive for the Java platform. For the OpenJDK Java implementation, definitely. For free and open alternatives? No, not at all.

While it has been positive indeed, I wouldn't say it "has been nothing but a huge positive".

The closing down (of the JCP, the lawsuits, etc) in particular has been a little worrisome.

For the majority of developers, it's whatever database server that control panels like cPanel and Plesk choose, and they aren't the sort to switch on a whim.

For anyone interested: cPanel doesn't officially support PgSQL, and Plesk charges $6-15/mo for their "Power Pack" addon which adds PgSQL support.

No one involved with mySQL needs pgsql to improve, they just need a couple of days to learn pg config. Pgsql is already a much more sophisticated and debugged database.

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