Oracle without Larry Ellison

Ah, the power of coincidence, I happened to be researching this quote today :

> "Our idea of the most aggressive sales vice president is Genghis Khan," he [Mr. Ellison] said. Paraphrasing the Mongol leader’s philosophy, he added: "It is not sufficient that I succeed – all others must fail."

http://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/genghis-khan/

Then there is the quip about Oracle :

One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

At many computer science courses, students begin learning SQL and database fundamentals on Oracle database. Is it the right choice for the beginning? Commonly students work on Postgres or MySQL...