Competition in the database space

I have argued here and elsewhere that Microsoft’s pathological competitiveness has created exactly the kind of competition it can’t deal with, in the same way casual antibiotic use creates super-bugs in the hospital. That would give MySQL an edge, but it doesn’t mean they will win.

John O’Sullivan in NewsForge: Database deathmatch?

It’s interesting to follow MySQL’s on-march, and their dual-licensing policy, which is definitely a different approach from how we do things in the OpenACS community.

I couldn’t easily find the article(s) referenced above, but it’s an obviously plausible explanation. Every would-be IT business entrepreneur over the past half decade have had to decide how to deal with Microsoft, either getting in their slipstream, while avoiding getting in their way and getting squashed, or by competing in ways that make you immune to their competition – open source being one obvious way to accomplish that.