We started making plans to migrate away to PostgreSQL when Oracle embarked on a clear strategy to buy/control MySQL by purchasing InnoDB, and then Sleepycat.
There were already plenty of technical justifications to abandon MySQL, but the potential of dealing with Oracle sealed the business case. From past experience, Oracle was not a company whose licensing, development, or business strategy we wanted to be beholden to.
With Oracle now (nearly) owning MySQL proper, the move seems correct. There's the potential that they'll improve on MySQL, but any significant improvements will eat at Oracle sales unless they're also countered with licensing changes or other revenue-boosting strategies -- such as splitting into enterprise/open source open/closed versions.
Better to use PostgreSQL where we don't need to pay client library licensing fees, and aren't locked to a vendor.
You don't need to license the client library anymore now that the BSD licensed libdrizzle exists. It's a clean room implementation of the client library written by Eric Day at Sun and is compatible with MySQL server versions >= 4.1.
You also had the option of using the very old public domain licensed version of the client library, provided you could find it. I believe that RedHat shipped it at one point.
There were already plenty of technical justifications to abandon MySQL, but the potential of dealing with Oracle sealed the business case. From past experience, Oracle was not a company whose licensing, development, or business strategy we wanted to be beholden to.
With Oracle now (nearly) owning MySQL proper, the move seems correct. There's the potential that they'll improve on MySQL, but any significant improvements will eat at Oracle sales unless they're also countered with licensing changes or other revenue-boosting strategies -- such as splitting into enterprise/open source open/closed versions.
Better to use PostgreSQL where we don't need to pay client library licensing fees, and aren't locked to a vendor.