Civicspace, mysql, and owning your data

In addition to using Civicspace for biohabit.org and two non-profit organizations, I'm now using Civicspace at work as an inventory database using flexinode and the wonderful table view. An upshot of using civicspace at work is I'm now using mysql and for the first time in an admin role, and by extension supporting php and apache which is a direction I have been wanting to go for a while.

I have been an Oracle DBA for two years and while Oracle is very stable and can handle massive amounts of data, I have been finding that the massive abilities of Oracle sometimes get in the way. As I've pointed out to the senior DBA at work many times, for a few tasks mysql is a much better tool for the job then Oracle is. Having said this it would be really, really nice if Civicspace/Drupal supported Oracle but I know there are many conflicts with Civicspace/Drupal tables and column headers and Oracle reserved words. For that matter, I wonder if anyone is running Civicspace on Postgres? ...

Anyway, back to wanting to go the direction of mysql (and postgres), php and apache for while. I big motivating factor is wanting to work with non-profit organizations and simply put the expense of Oracle is a non-starter. Whereas using free software like mysql, postgres, php and apache clearly is an option for obvious
reasons (being free), but also because I have a fundamental problem with using software from some of the biggest corporations on earth, with some of the most restrictive licenses and for all intents and purposes at a non-profit once your data is in their applications they pretty much own you.

However in the free software world, the pathways to pull your data out of one application and plug it into another application are usually fairly well developed and the free software world rarely looks for tricks to lock you in to using any specific application.