Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Windows is to Linux as MySQL is to PostgreSQL ?

I just read the first "Open Source Barometer" report from Alfresco, written by Dr. Ian Howells, their Chief Marketing Officer. The report analyzes market and usage trends in operating systems, application servers, databases, portals, and browsers. It's a terrific read for anyone in the open source world. Concise and well-organized, it presents useful information in a straightforward way.

What makes the report really stand out, though, is that it differentiates between usage scenarios. In other words, it recognizes that different products are used for (a) casual community use, (b) commercial evaluation situations, and (c) production deployment. The statistics are enlightening.

In operating systems, Windows is widely preferred over Linux for casual use, while Linux is the preferred deployment platform. Specifically:

Community Usage: 60% Windows; 35% Linux
Evaluation Usage: 42% Windows; 43% Linux
Deployment Usage:29% Windows; 52% Linux

No big surprise here. We certainly see the same trends with our customers.

But the interesting insight for me is that the same trend exists between MySQL and PostgreSQL...

Community Usage: 62% MySQL; 9% PostgreSQL
Evaluation Usage: 50% MySQL; 23% PostgreSQL
Deployment Usage:40% MySQL; 28% PostgreSQL

In other words, PostgreSQL is 1/6 of MySQL’s size for casual use. But in deployment, PostgreSQL rivals MySQL for the top spot.

Interesting stuff...