Open Source Ingres for Linux

[Christopher Browne]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:50:05 -0500, Leigh Honeywell <leigh-9JL22WV9E8YEaWwO4Jh2dQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Quoting Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>:
> 
> > SAP-DB is "open source," but there is certainly no public community
> > around it.  Just like with MySQL(tm), OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and
> > other such products, they are _really_ commercial products with some
> > veneer of "try it for free."
> 
> I'm not sure if you meant that to come across as dissmissive as it did to me,
> but I think that a lot of users of OpenOffice, MySQL, and the various Mozilla
> products would disagree with your assessment that we're just getting a "veneer"
> of free use.
> 
> We're getting the full shebang, and the average home user is getting support
> from the community, on IRC, messageboards, or email lists like this, whereas
> enterprises can pay the vendors the big bucks to have someone to call.

But reality is nonetheless that these products belong to someone else,
and the day they decide to change strategies, or the day their venture
capitalists tell them to do so, everyone that has built up dependancy
on it will suffer the results.

The same is NOT true for Linux, Emacs, TeX, GNOME, any number of
systems that are developed by open source communities.
 
> And while I know that these projects have varying degrees of "openness" in terms
> of development process, the communities around OO.o and Mozilla (not just
> developpers!) are nothing to scoff at :-)

Those "communities" don't control what code is in the applications, so
there is a pretty vital sense in which yes, indeed, they can be
scoffed at.  They don't produce the software; they merely "grease the
way" for the owners.

It's eminently _convenient_ that OpenOffice.org is as successful as it
is at loading MS Office documents, but where I can trust that Gnumeric
will continue to be free and continue to be developed by the community
that surrounds it, I can not safely treat OO.o as other than a Sun
ploy against Microsoft that happens to be conveniently available.

> Just wanted to chip in, because I think that it's important to recognize the
> value that both the user-driven communities and the commercial professional
> services having to do with OSS are to the eventual success of the model.

I can only see such scenarios outlining examples of what are,
ultimately, failures, popular though they may appear.

OSS projects that cannot attract sufficient developers from their
communities sure don't look like OSS "successes."

Or perhaps it is more precise to say that they may be "Open Source"
successes for their corporate owners.
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