True statement – Microsoft is now one of PostgreSQL’s largest users.
Last week it was announced that Microsoft is buying Skype for a reported $8.5 billion in cash. What was not reported in this recent acquisition news cycle is an interesting fact — Skype runs on the open source database PostgreSQL. Since Microsoft has a SQL database of its own – SQL Server – it’s a fair question to ask if this is the beginning of the end of Skype on PostgreSQL?
There’s more than a few ways to speculate on what Microsoft plans to do with the database infrastructure of Skype. Some argue that the prospects for generating revenue off Skype far outweigh having Skype be a poster-child deployment for SQL Server. With making money as the first priority, Microsoft may never be motivated to migrate from PostgreSQL to SQL Server.
Another valid argument is that most users will never know nor care what database is behind Skype as long as it works well. Just look at the current news cycle – there are thousands of articles, blogs, radio and TV outlets reporting on this story. I could not find a single report that mentions PostgreSQL in the context of the Skype acquisition news. Given the low public profile of PostgreSQL at Skype, Microsoft doesn’t need to answer yet about the irony of their new purchase running on open source PostgreSQL and not on Microsoft SQL Server.
What do you think? Is this the beginning of the end of Skype running on PostgreSQL?
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Is this the Beginning of the End of Skype on PostgreSQL?
Taling this one step further, Skype’s backend was probably not written in C#, doesn’t use the .NET framework and most likely doesn’t run on MS servers either.
If they were to replace that all, what did they actually buy? A brand name and a customer base? I guess MS is smarter than that…
Considering the fact that Skype had to develop tools to support it’s infrastructure on PostgreSQL it is hard to say that Skype will abandon it’s PostgreSQL infrastructure in s short time. Personally I do not think Skype can migrate itself to MSSQL. First, it won’t be financially feasible. Second, it will basically mean the loss of Skype know-how and M$ wont do that that easy. It is not a little firm like Multimap. It is Skype we talking. And it is not bunch of little projects you can migrate piece by piece. It is a huge project to migrate.
Ouch – That might end up being a huge hot-potato (potatoe?) political issue going forward – might be under the radar now but you found out about it and others will no doubt follow. The anti-love between M$ and the Open Sores community is if nothing very entertaining.
Oracle hasn’t killed MySQL (yet) but the GPL style licensing is on the right side of the fence for then – pay out or put out (your source code).
Oddly enough the BSD licensing on PostgreSQL actually slants things in M$’s favour in the case of Skype. They can just grab the source code – say fork it – and go – and then there is nothing to report. It’s just another M$ product at that point. If memory serves me correctly they did something similar with the TCP/IP stack in and around the early days of NT.
That not withstanding I’m sure the Open Source community will make adequate noise so this milestone does not in fact go unnoticed. Not sure if anyone is paying attention to them these days however – we just love the free stuff!
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