phd64
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:...
According to the leading analysts, Oracle has grown software revenues by over ~2.5% in 2014 vs 2013 and Oracle has grown Database revenue as well having a world wide DBMS share above 40% with growth of over 4% in 2014. If you look at who's got the most popular database(s) in the world, by ranking, Oracle Database is ranked #1 and Oracle MySQL is ranked #2. http://db-engines.com/en/ranking
While the article infers fewer licenses sold means Oracle is eroding, article doesn’t mention that Oracle is showing growth in software upgrades, DBAAS, and overall, growth in cloud- private, hybrid and public. The “c” in “Oracle DB 12c” stands for “cloud”. Oracle has over 400,000 customers, where over 310,000 are Database customers according to the Oracle Fact sheet http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/oracle-fact-sheet-079219....
You say Oracle Database is expensive-compared to what? Its all about what level of business value you require? Oracle sells several editions of Oracle DB from Oracle Database Personal Edition that starts at $92 per named user license to Oracle Database Standard Edition One with License costing as little as US$180.00 to the Oracle Database Standard Edition version starting at $350 per User license. Not everyone requires the enterprise features of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/product?p1=Database&p2=Or...
Theres no such thing as free software unless you consider peoples time free, from administration, patching, management, support, upgrading, etc. You can surely download any open source Database but no ones going to support it for free. If you’re an enterprise, you're surely seeing your OPEX budgets sky-rocket, and a lot of that is due to "free" software and commodity hardware and the integration and management of a very complex, multi-vendor stack requiring armies of people to get it and keep it running.