Why Oracle Won't Kill MySQL

One smart thing Oracle could do is make their database talk the MySQL protocol and SQL dialect. They already support pretty much all of MySQL's features, so offering an instant upgrade path might get them a lot of business. A cheaper Web edition of their database will help, too.

I am not a DBA, so don't listen to me, but:

Because MySQL is free?

There have been a number of apps (scripts, rather) that I have written at work that require databases to function. Mostly report, some contact management stuff for the marketing dorks, etc. etc.

I would never ever even DREAM of using anything that costs money for this stuff, why would I? For an app that gets used by 10 people, that has MAYBE 100,000 records (that is the largest I could realistically see it growing to), mysql more than meets my needs...

The scripts run on OpenBSD. They're python (with its CGI and MySQLdb modules) running on Apache with MySQL.

All 100% free of cost to us.

That's your problem, Oracle/IIS, you cost money.

edit: Just to clarify...I'm talking about using databases for little in-house projects.

Because they can't? It's open source regardless of the "corporate nest" it may reside in.

How about "because they can't".

And don't give me some tripe about special non-GPL features. What matters about MySQL, ALL that matters about MySQL... IS GPL!

I dare you, kill it, there is still Postgres, SQLite, and others to replace MySql.

So no, Oracle can't kill MySql, it is like the RIAA trying to kill file sharing.