Re: I want to use postresql for this app, but... - Mailing list pgsql-general
From | Andrew Sullivan |
---|---|
Subject | Re: I want to use postresql for this app, but... |
Date | |
Msg-id | 20040210160142.GA28540@phlogiston.dyndns.org Whole thread Raw |
In response to | Re: I want to use postresql for this app, but... (Claudio Cicali <c.cicali@mclink.it>) |
List | pgsql-general |
I'm pretty sure this belongs, if anywhere, on -advocacy, so I've set Reply-To accordingly. Of course, if you're munging the Reply-To, that won't work, which is why this little note is here. On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 10:59:24AM +0100, Claudio Cicali wrote: > MySQL, as a *product*, it's not free as you argue. Ok. But MySQL as simple > "software", is free. You can get the whole source and begin "forking" as you > like. This is enough for me, and for anyone pondering "licensing" problems > while choosing a dbms for her company. Are you quite sure about that? Cause I can say for sure that both my managers and our customers would think long and hard about my committal if I suggested that we just fork Postgres and try to sell things with a proprietary DBMS underneath it. I'd also have to think pretty hard about whether I'd want to use such a product. Consider the disadvantages, from the point of view of a customer, of such a proprietary system. They don't know how stable it is. They have no point of reference about its stability. They don't know how many bugs might be lurking in there. Most importantly, if you go bankrupt, they may not be able to get their data out _at all_. I know, and probably you know too, that all of those limitations are also problems for something based on Oracle, or MySQL, or Berkeley DB, or PostgreSQL: the truth is that most users of an application don't need to care about the guts underlying it. But they _do_ need to be able to justify their decisions in case something goes wrong. When something _does_ go wrong, you can bet that the person who made the decision to buy the proprietary system will be in trouble unless that proprietary system comes with a long list of satisfied customers. And the last point is the rub: if you fork MySQL, you can't use the MySQL name. So you can't talk about your satisfied customers who are using MySQL, because you've forked. I'm not pretending that any of this is rational behaviour, but I'd think that the last 50 (anyway) years of research in sociology and economics would convince everyone that the myth of the rational consumer is handy for economic models, but several degrees removed from a description of actual human behaviour. Having access to the source is indeed a protection that proprietary systems don't usually offer, but only in case there is an active community supporting the product. If not, the source is a liability, because you have to support it yourself. This is why fostering an active community is in the interests of PostgreSQL users, and why I would be somewhat anxious about the GPLd version of MySQL, even if MySQL AB was not asserting rather broad application of the GPL beyond its seeming purpose. A -- Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca This work was visionary and imaginative, and goes to show that visionary and imaginative work need not end up well. --Dennis Ritchie
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