Author: JT Smith
Here’s what Fortune had to say:
“Great Bridge
HQ: Norfolk, Va.
Address: www.greatbridge.com
Great Bridge is on a quixotic quest with its product: an open-source database. The company hopes PostgreSQL can be as successful as Linux, the open-source operating system that was developed and is maintained by volunteers, and remains a pain in Microsoft’s side. To succeed, founder Frank Batten Jr. must woo users from both Oracle’s dominant industrial-strength database and Microsoft’s SQL Server, the top choice for more mundane information storage. He is undaunted: “If you think of open source as a rising flood, our goal is to bury most of the Oracle mountain. But the reality is that the Microsoft foothills will get flooded first.” Great Bridge, of Norfolk, Va., doesn’t actually sell PostgreSQL–it helps the community of developers who build it and sells support services for users. This is Batten’s second anti-Gates foray: He was the first investor in Linux champion Red Hat Software and remains its largest individual shareholder.”
