Dear Oracle please Kill the Dolphin (#mysql)

Monty is the new Mysql "saviour" and i got new spam about his issue.
Monty Widenius wants another billion dollars, should we help him?
I say no and neither should you

http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2010/01/05/monty-widenius-wants-another-billion-dollars-should-we-help-him/

here are some interesting responses around the web:

http://nathan.crause.name/entries/science-tech/mysql-being-saved

Monty's call to arms just seems bizarre and under-handed. MySQL was
never really free (unlike Postgres or Firebird or Sqlite). He sold
MySQL to Sun and became very rich. Now he wants to claim that Oracle
is a threat to free software, when MySQL was the least free of the
free databases. There are several equally good or better alternatives
to MySQL. There are several equally good or better commercial
alternatives to MySQL. Microsoft got away with it's 90+% dominance of
desktop computers and office software for the best part of twenty
years, and it wasn't the Competition Commission that reduced
Microsoft's market share.

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ide.revolution.user/132380/match=firebird+database

I certainly wouldn't consider developing a project now that was
dependent on future versions of MySQL being available with the current
(pseudo-)free licensing. Even if you are happy distributing the
current version of MySQL with your app (and on the server), and paying
the licenses costs, there is no saying what those costs might be in
the future. That is what was so underhand about the way in which
MySQL was marketed as free-in-some-circumstances.


another response from
From: Jon 'maddog' Hal

Yes, Oracle is a dominant database company, but there are other
databases out there that are FOSS which people could use:

o PostgreSQL
o Firebird

I just think that forcing Oracle to "sell off" something that Sun was
willing to pay 1 Billion dollars for just a year earlier on the premise
that Oracle would not manage it well is probably something that will not
fly.