And did you know that Oracle has the Oracle Database Personal Edition which is designed to provide software developers a cost effective, yet full featured Oracle Database environment on which to develop, test and run custom or packaged applications?
https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=dstore:product:0::NO:...
History tells us why. And there are good reasons:
[1] Oracle tells Open Document founders to leave the project
[2] Oracle takes over KSplice and stops providing it for free to competitors of Oracles Linux Distribution.
[3] Oracle suing to maintain the position that APIs are copyrightable.
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[1] https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council_Log_20101...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksplice
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google....
Elsewhere on this thread, somebody posted a link to a DB use survey which showed PostgreSQL as the #4 DB, behind Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server. Can't let that leak out, though.
What changes is when those startups become mature business, and they realize they don't need Oracle as much as "Mammoth" companies do.
It is the reason a company that disrespect geeks has not a good future.
When years ago I went to a geek convention and everybody had a mac, I instantly thought: Microsoft future is not good and bought Apple stock, even when people doubt about the company. It was a great decision.
Oracle has this attitude of "You are shit if you don't bring me a million dollars". They are not even neutral, they are hostile to startups. But startups grow and they don't forget how Oracle treated them.