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September 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Ellison pans open source databases

TAGS: Data Management

MySQL and PostgreSQL database adherents may beg to differ, but Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is not sold on the enterprise-readiness of open source databases.

Asked for his take on open source rivals to his own commercial database platform at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Ellison was quick to pan them.

"As of right now, the open source databases do not have a lot of industrial-strength support. We'll see how it all plays out," Ellison said. Open source databases have limited uses such as for Internet caching, according to Oracle's brash CEO.

While the open source Linux operating platform has benifitted from investments from companies such as IBM and Novell, open source databases have not had this kind of support, Ellison contended.

"One of the myths around open source is open source is built by a bunch of guys who work at Radio Shack and when they go home at night, they log onto the Internet and write code," Ellison said. But this has not been the case with Linux, he said.

Ellison also commented on software pricing formats, saying he preferred prices based on the volume of revenue per employee at a user site as opposed to per-processor or multicore pricing formats.

"I think that licensing model works better for most people than what we currently have," Ellison said.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 21, 2005 03:57 PM

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