I suspect this is very bad news for Postgresql. Sun is a major backer, but that will likely end. Postgresql's target market already overlaps with the low-mid end of Oracle's, and Postgresql 8.x has been largely about scaling up.
Actually, that's incorrect; Sun is a backer, but hardly a major one.
A quick glance at Ohloh's contribution metrics for PostgreSQL (http://www.ohloh.net/p/postgres/contributors/) shows 17 committers with over 100 commits. If you start matching nicks up to the PostgreSQL contributor profiles (http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/), you'll quickly see that only one, Peter Eisentraut, works for Sun.
Actually, it's interesting to note that of those 17 top contributors not a single company employs more that one top contributor.
If anything this is good news for PostgreSQL, then: Oracle can easily acquire and steer the course of MySQL development, but shifting PostgreSQL priorities by financial means would take the acquisition of Sun, IBM, UC Berkeley, and over a dozen more companies.
True, but Josh Berkus also worked for Sun until last summer. So maybe it's correct to say Sun has been a major backer.
It's true that Josh is an extremely vital figure in PostgreSQL's community, but he doesn't contribute code as much as he advocates and interacts with the user community. Those roles are extremely important, but the people who hold them are pretty much beyond outside influence: Josh will always act in the best interests of PostgreSQL regardless of who signs his paychecks.
On top of that, these types of evangelists don't usually play a part in the technical direction of a project. I'm not sure exactly how closely involved Josh is personally with PostgreSQL's technical direction, but I can tell you for a fact that any attempts a company might make to steer a project through its evangelist are misguided.
Either way, though, there's no question that Josh is incredibly important to PostgreSQL. But, still, that's a whopping two contributors out of over two dozen.
We can go back and forth about what level constitutes "major backing", and that's fine. But at least now we're talking about some data instead of just hand-waving; that was my point in posting the initial correction.
PG said in one of his rants, "Do you know of any start ups choosing to go with Oracle? I don't either."
A whole new generation of companies (like RoR dev shops) are using Postgre/MySQL as clusters/shards and have no intention to ever moving to Oracle. This way, Oracle still captures revenue from them. (If they are paying for support).
http://petereisentraut.blogspot.com/2009/03/sun-set-part-2.h...
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/6606-0-0-225-121....
Anyone at the MySQL conference today (April 20)?