Postgres creator Michael Stonebraker said Oracle inadvertently helped spread the PostgreSQL DBMS around the world, and the database is now supported by Microsoft, AWS and Google. Report Register. The acquisition of Sun Microsystems along with MySQL and subsequent mismanagement resulted in PostgreSQL’s worldwide dominance.
PostgreSQL was launched 30 years ago when SQL support was added to the Postgres system developed by Stonebraker a decade earlier. Thus, DBMSs have been slowly gaining popularity for decades, but the rapid growth in demand has only occurred in the last five years. According to Stack Overflow, it has become the most popular DBMS option among developers in 2023.
However, we’re not just talking about PostgreSQL itself – vendors including Cloud Hyperscale, CockroachDB, YugabyteDB, Postgres Professional Edition, tanto laboratory Other companies offer solutions with varying degrees of compatibility with the “original” product. According to Stonebraker, PostgreSQL is actually “conquering the world,” meaning all storage format-compatible DBMSs, while MySQL is “disappearing as a competitor.” Moreover, the latter has another successor, MariaDB.
Oracle acquired MySQL in 2010 as part of its acquisition of Sun, which acquired MySQL AB two years ago. For a time, MySQL was highly praised by many large companies and developers. However, over the past few years, the business community has questioned Oracle’s willingness to invest in developing this DBMS. Stonebreaker ironically emphasized that the popularity of PostgreSQL was due to Oracle’s actions.
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In the fall of 2025, Oracle made large-scale layoffs of its core MySQL development team. Summer 2026, a caring community of users and developers established OurSQL Foundation. Its purpose is to help form a united front against Oracle, which owns intellectual property rights related to MySQL. Response to Oracle declare This new phase of MySQL governance will allow community members to contribute to the ecosystem through code improvements, testing, bugs, documentation, comments, and technical discussions.
Stonebreaker emphasized that PostgreSQL is not controlled by a single vendor, but by a group of 20-30 “very smart super programmers.” Stonebraker hopes the project will never be controlled by any one vendor, calling it “open source at its best.”
Since founding Postgres, Stonebreaker himself has founded several database-related companies, including Illustra and Vertica. Three years ago, the retiree co-founded DBOS, a company specializing in agent-based artificial intelligence. DBOS is said to provide applications with the ability to automatically recover from failures while maintaining workflow state and execution history. The company’s technology uses Databricks and CockroachDB, the latter of which offers compatibility with PostgreSQL and uses DBOS technology when deploying AI agents.
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