[kbenson]

> There is going to come a point where Postgres passes Oracle in terms of features and performance.

I wouldn't be so sure. Oracle has deep pockets, and I'm not sure there's a reason why anything PostgreSQL wants to roll out they can't pay to prioritize and have done sooner.

> There is also a point that Postgres will perform with enough features needed by most businesses that they'll choose it even though it doesn't match Oracle on a feature by feature basis.

No argument there.

[chris_wot]

Oh, I'm not saying this is an overnight thing or that Oracle will be destroyed. In fact, I don't want to see them destroyed, but what I am interested in is that their market power and influence wanes over time. Ironically, this will be good for Oracle - they will be forced to dump immoral and illegal business practices.

The problem commercial businesses have when it comes to open source is that you might be able to reduce customer take up, by you can't compete with it like you would other businesses. In the closed source world you can purchase a company and shut down its product and thus kill off the competition.

As Microsoft have found, with open source software, that's not possible.

The other unfortunate thing for Oracle is that when they attack Postgres they have to publish lists of competitive advantages. All this does is give Postgres developers a todo list, and they then work towards implementing the features that matter.

[kbenson]

Yes, in a way open source acts as a vibrant market of competitors forcing proprietary products to innovate where they may have been willing to stagnate, and in a way immune to some of the more anti-capitalistic ways of preventing innovation (e.g. buying out the main competitors). As unions worked to combat some of the major criticisms of capitalism by Marx (as I understand it), open source works to combat some of the major criticisms of companies in the software market (patents are put in an interesting light in this theory).

[chris_wot]

It's funny, I really feel until open source became widely known as a viable thing that patent reform was dead and non-existent. Not only that, but things like the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act passed just before the start of the true mainstreaming of open source culture, but wouldn't fly now.