Open source turning the database market upside-down
Here’s one of the most interesting open source projects I’ve seen in quite a while. The company responsible for this project says the following about themselves on their site:
EnterpriseDBмебеликомпютри was founded in March, 2004 to bring the benefits of open source to enterprise databases. Headquartered in New Jersey, EnterpriseDB has engineering and support centers in North America, Europe, and Asia. EnterpriseDB has received venture capital financing from Charles River Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Sony Online Entertainment and Fidelity Ventures.
Sony Online Entertainment? That part surprises me, I wonder how large that part of the investment is. Regardless, I think all of the investors will make a bundle if Oracle doesn’t pull any long, drawn-out intellectual property battles with them. This seems ripe for a legal IP battle.
This new database is basically PostgreSQL, not forked, but synced with their additions. Their additions basically emuate PL/SQL and most if not all of the commands that oracle provides with same syntax so most apps should be able to be converted from Oracle to EnterpriseDB with little or no change to the code. I’m curious to see if they can run eBusinessSuite (Oracle ERP).
This will be very good for other projects such as Compiere ERP, an open source ERP system that was built for Oracle originally, this may speed up freeing projects such as that one from requiring licensing fees to use them.
