Gábor's blog

I always used PostgreSQL, never MySQL. The reason was simply that at work first i had to work with PostgreSQL, and later i simply saw no reason to switch to MySQL. For me they both seem to offer pretty much the same functionality/performance these days.

But what i’d like to talk about here, is their home pages: MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Most of time i work with open-source/free software, and i got used to the way their home pages are created/behave. and let me tell you this: if i would have to choose today between MySQL and PostgreSQL purely based on their home pages, i would never ever choose MySQL. Their web page is just similar to the usual full-of-bullshit commercial-product web pages, which i learned to hate. The only missing thing is the photo of some happy-guy-in-a-suit holding a copy of MySQL.

Or, let’s try a simple test: How fast can you find the download-link for the latest version of MySQL?

• with Postgresql, it’s right there on the home page, on the right side of the page.
• with MySQL, the first download-like-thing you find is some 30-day-trial… (WHAT? A TRIAL? ISN’T THIS GPL???) . below i can either DISCOVER it, or TEST DRIVE it or LEARN it or read the WHAT’S NEW section… but no DOWNLOAD. well, but if you check more, you can find the small ‘download’ link in the TEST DRIVE section. now you get to a new page, where they try very much to persuade me to buy a commercial version. but, if i prefer to do everything by myself, and accept that there will be no binary builds after every update/bugfix, i can download the free version

i understand the reason for the piece-of-shit web page. MySQL is dual-licensed, there is a commercial version, and there is a company behind it that is trying to sell it. but the problem is that because of this, the “free” version is basically shown as a worse version. and that’s not the best way to look good to programmers using free/open-source software.