Oracle Wastes Their Time On A Free Version

I’m sure the techies among you saw/heard about this already.

Oracle To Offer A Free Database
“By introducing a free entry-level product, Oracle intends to get more developers and students familiar with its namesake database, Mendelsohn said. Those customers, Oracle hopes, will eventually upgrade to a higher-end version.”

Look… I’m all for free versions for learning technologies (Macromedia is excellent at slinging digital crack in this fashion), but Oracle? I can already see the conversation now:

Young Programmer:“I’ve learned to use Oracle on the free version in school and at home. Now I’d like to launch my small software business using the paid-for version.”

Oracle: “That’ll be $10,000,000,000,000, please.”

Young Programmer: “Oh look! MySQL For Dummies is on sale!”