if an Oracle clone RDBMS was developed that provided an RDBMS software platform that would transparently support software developed written with Oracle development tools, no doubt, Oracle would successfully pursue legal remedies that would put that firm out of business
Yes and no. Leaving aside the administration portion, which I do not believe would need to be a clone (in fact, it would be better if it wasn't), applications access Oracle and any other database at a number of different levels. If those applications use generic SQL, which many try to do for the bulk of their access, then any standard SQL database can be substituted. To the extent that those applications make use of Oracle-specific SQL extensions, one may not be able to drop in another database today, but I do not believe that those extensions are copyright ... in fact, most companies that develop SQL extensions make an effort to get them adopted as optional extensions to the standard because they don't want to be in the position of pushing non-standard product. The place where Oracle apps tend to get really locked, though, is in the use of stored procedures using Oracle's proprietary language. That probably is copyright and has only a limited connection with SQL standards. One can make a strong argument against the use of stored procedures, but they are very common among shops that don't mind being tied to Oracle since they were historically one way to achieve performance in client/server. With N-tier applications, the reason for them has been largely eliminated.
Not to mention that I would guess that a minority of applications running against an Oracle database used Oracle tools in development. |
