Re: beta testing version

At 09:29 PM 12/2/00 -0800, Adam Haberlach wrote:
>> Red herring, and you know it. The question isn't whether or not your business
>> generates income, but how it generates income.
>
> So far, Open Source doesn't. The VA Linux IPO made ME some income,
>but I'm not sure that was part of their plan...

VA Linux is a HARDWARE COMPANY. They sell servers. "We've engineered 2U
performance into a 1U box" is their current line.

Dell probably makes more money on their Linux server offerings (I have to
admit that donb.photo.net is running on one of their PowerEdge servers) than
VA Linux does.

If I can show you a HARDWARE COMPANY that is diving on selling MS NT servers,
will you agree that this proves that the closed source and open source models
both must be wrong, because HARDWARE COMPANIES based on each paradigm are
losing money???
>> > The .com'ers are trying it at the moment, and there seems to be
>> >a few flaws... ;)
>>
>> That's a horrible analogy, and I suspect you know it, but at least it is
>> original.

> It wasn't an analogy.

Sure it is. Read, damn it. First he makes the statement that a business
based on open source is, by definition, a zero-revenue company then he
raises the spectre of .com companies (how many of them are open source?)
as support for his argument.

OK, it's not an analogy, it's a disassociation with reality. Feel better?

> In any case, can we create pgsql-politics so we don't have to go over
>this issue every three months?

Maybe you don't care about the open source aspect of this, but as a user
with about 1500 Open Source advocates using my code, I do. If IB comes
forth in a fully Open Source state my user base will insist I switch.

And I will.

And I'll stop telling the world that MySQL sucks, too. Or at least that
they suck worse than the PG world :)

There is risk here. It isn't so much in the fact that PostgreSQL, Inc
is doing a couple of modest closed-source things with the code. After
all, the PG community has long acknowleged that the BSD license would
allow others to co-op the code and commercialize it with no obligations.

It is rather sad to see PG, Inc. take the first step in this direction.

How long until the entire code base gets co-opted?

(Yeah, that's extremist, but seeing PG, Inc. lay down the formal foundation
for such co-opting by taking the first step might well make the potential
reality become real. It certainly puts some of the long-term developers
in no position to argue against such a co-opted snitch of the code).

I have to say I'm feeling pretty silly about raising such an effort to
increase PG awareness in mindshare vs. MySQL. I mean, if PG, Inc's
efforts somehow delineate the hopes and goals of the PG community, I'm
fairly disgusted.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.