> Also, even though Oracle engages in horrible unethical business practices, I hear that their database product isn't bad.

It's not a terrible DB to work with. I'd go with something like Postgres > Oracle > MSSQL > MYSQL.

And, mind you, if you care about ease of use/maintenance rather than performance, I'd swap Oracle and MSSQL on that list in a heartbeat.

But also need to say... Every year when the Oracle folks came by, all of the managers would get super antsy/nervous. They would always find 'something' that we had done wrong to warrant an additional payment on our contract. Their shenanigans were so bad that we weren't allowed to install ANYTHING downloaded from Oracle without checking with someone first.

I laughed when I saw MongoDB on the stock ticker the other day - "They're publicly traded?", I said, "that explains everything!".

How many more businesses, if financially strained by Oracle licensing fees, would be tempted to sell data about their users to make up the difference?

I have to sell user data because my dB licensing fees are too high.... is one hell of a take. Has that happened like ever?

It's a big world. A lot of businesses are only marginally viable already, and a lot of business owners are only marginally ethical. Many already sell user data. I think it likely that squeezing such businesses even harder from the top might have negative consequences for the people at the bottom.