Okay, so you don't buy that MySQL couldn't survive as a strictly open-source project without the ability to sell proprietary/closed-source licenses (like they currently can). I wouldn't argue that.

How do you respond to this scenario?:

Oracle owns MySQL. Oracle shapes MySQL's development very slowly over the course of a decade or two, cementing it in its current niche (and, thus, it will never be a threat to Oracle's ridiculously fat profit margins).

In this scenario, do you think there will sufficient impetus to fork and grow an open-source-only MySQL project (with a different brand and basically a new community starting from scratch)?

Surely you can agree that the desire for such will be radically reduced, possibly to the point that it's not feasible?

Even if it is feasible, surely you can agree that it would almost certainly slow down MySQL's developments in this direction by years? (For many years MySQL has been growing more and more feature-rich, arguable to expand the roles that it can play. I would say pretty much all of their current momentum is in this direction.)

"MySql is a low-end [DB]" ... "[some] companies replacing their Oracle database with a MySql one, but those are very few and far between"

And you can be pretty bloody sure that if Oracle owns MySQL, that'll never change. :)

You're a moron.

"People should have the freedom to hold on to their money if they wish if they feel it is to their benefit to do so. Especially the poor who are usually not the ones who invest in stocks for one reason or another and the only way to mitigate the erosion of their wealth is to spend that cash on something and the poor are the most in need of developing a safety net of cash that they can use to drag themselves up in the world."

The poor don't invest in stocks because THEY DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO.

They don't lose money (directly) from inflation, because they HAVE NO MONEY TO LOSE.

They (must) spend it on the necessities - food, clothing, shelter. THIS IS THE DEFINITION OF POOR.

You're welcome.

Something you should consider is "perfect market" vs. "real world".

In a perfect market, outsourcing is the main way of taking advantage of economies of scale. You don't run your own national telecommunications network, you outsource it to the national network. You end up paying (cost - economies of scale + profit). The trick is, if you can reach those economies of scale with your datacenter, and you're a competent bunch, you end up paying (cost - economies of scale). So you can save money. There are obvious security and accountability advantages too.

That's the perfect market. In the real world, these folk charge far more than (cost - economies of scale + profit). They cater to inept organisations who couldn't collaboratively tie their shoes up without a contractor to show them how to do it. So you end up paying (cost_of_incompetents_doing_the_job - economies of scale + profit). The profit part of the equation is miniscule compared to the differences between "cost" and "cost of incompetents doing the job". If the home-grown data center would be big enough (I don't know that it would be, given the brief description in the post), and if it was competently-run, then you can save huge amounts of money by doing it in-house (again, aside from all other benefits).

This post has dealt exclusively with cost. Personally I would consider the other factors (security, accountability) to be the deciding factors, assuming that both options implemented services competently.