TheOpenAnalyst

A comment by frequent contributor JesperFrimann last week caused me to take a closer look at licensing practices among major commercial database vendors other than Microsoft.

All three of the big guys (Oracle, IBM, and Sybase) follow the same basic sales model:

1. publish nominal list pricing only;

2. obfuscate package names, functionality, discounts, and prerequisites to the point that no customer can reasonably understand what’s where;

3. frown severely on anyone who even thinks about publishing pricing, performance, and/or functional information; and,

4. give the sales crew lots of leeway in dealing with customers who pass credit check.

RDBMS license costs and Open Source | Paul Murphy | ZDNet.com

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