SPAM-LOW: Re:Semi-OT: Database for "average" users

[Christopher Browne]

On 5/3/05, David Mayerlen <dmz-yBkl/NpmZwtWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> > Windows is good enough for the vast majority of computer users. If you
> > don't know what to expect out of a database then it's not suprising that
> > you'd be willing to settle for something as inferior as MySQL.
> >
> 
>  Here here!!! I totally agree. MySQL is the classic example of "its gonna
> be great someday". And when that day comes cool! For now I do use it but
> only for simple things. Can't wait until it finally has "views" which will
> be the coming version and that will finally make it somewhat useful! Sure
> is expensive free software however if you happen to care about support and
> stuff :-)

It seems totally erroneous to me to describe MySQL(tm) as "free software."

The only way to be "safe" from paying thousands of dollars for lawyer
evaluation time to ascertain if it is usable "gratis" or not is to pay
licensing fees of on the order of $400/cpu USD.

Look at their web site.  They do NOT bill it as "the leading free
software database."  The word "free" never enters in, and if it comes
up in discussion, their marketing staff denigrate it as some notion of
"freeloaders misunderstanding free beer."

<http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.databases/browse_thread/thread/62f31702ec556cee/f8467883b431df33?q=mysql+free+beer&rnum=1#f8467883b431df33>

It is worth pointing out that nobody expects you to send Linus
Torvalds $400/CPU for using Linux, regardless of whether you use it
for "commercial" purposes or not.

When they denigrate the "free as in beer" side of the notion of "free
software," I most certainly do get my back up about it.

One of the VITAL reasons why Linux (and FreeBSD and others) emerged in
the early 1990s and became of interest was the fact that it leave you
FREE OF LICENSING FEES.  There are numerous forms of freedom out
there, and neither "free speech" nor "free beer" were incidental in
the development of Linux.  Both were vital aspects.

If Linus had licensed Linux in the fashion that certain European
companies have come to license their databases, it would have been
nothing more than a curiosity.

If the same principles that evidently hold for database products ought
to apply all around, then we might be able to play as hobbyists with
Linux for free at home, but if we used it for any sort of commercial
purpose, we'd be expected to pay tens of thousands of dollars per host
in order to do "commercial deployment."  After all, the typical Linux
system consists of scores of applications, so it would be necessary to
multiply $400 by "scores," which rapidly gets you to the $10K/box
range.
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