Re: Ammunition

acc(at)anthonychavez(dot)org writes:
> The main reason that I chose PostgreSQL as my focus all these years
> is a simple (and important) one: ACID compliance. But beyond that,
> I'm clueless. I don't have as much exposure to MySQL as I should.
> So any pointers and ammo that you can offer would certainly be
> appreciated.

I think the idea is to instead ask pointed questions.

A good start is to ask about what is going on with the licensing
changes, and whether this is really compatible with "free software."

After all, the makers of Linux don't expect that you buy a commercial
license to Linux in order to use it in commercial contexts. Nor do
the makers of OpenOffice.org, GNOME, KDE, GTk, or GCC. Nor do the
makers of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.

What is it that makes MySQL AB so special that they should _expect_ to
be paid $450/box for "commercial use" when all these other prominent
free software projects don't make such demands?

The other place to be pointed is in asking what's up with the SAP-DB
"integration" effort. Some interesting things there:

-> Some users of SAP-DB are very concerned about the licensing
changes, as their business model involved using SAP-DB as
licensing-fee-free software, just like Linux and other free
software.

-> Some SAP-DB users have considered developing their own ODBC/JDBC
drivers and licensing them under the LGPL so that client software
would not have to be licensed under the GPL. What do they think
of that idea?

-> In what way will SAP-DB be likely to replace any or all of the
existing MySQL code base?

My suspicion is that this integration project might easily be the
death of the company, as it seems quite risky. The code base for
SAP-DB is quite scary; lots of old legacy mainframe code in there.
Changing the SAP-DB code to conform with what MySQL needs strikes me
as being a potentially huge morass. And if they get into any sort of
"morass," that'll eat the $19.5M of capital pretty quick.

I just can't see what would get "integrated." Pulling in chunks of
SAP-DB code to provide implementations of things that MySQL is missing
seems just supremely unlikely. The only way for it to _actually_ work
is for them to (say) replace the whole MySQL backend with SAP-DB.

Of course, if they do _that_, it begs the question of why. Why, if
MySQL AB's engine is good, would MySQL AB want to throw away their own
engine in favor of someone else's?

I'm quite honestly curious as to what the "endgame" is supposed to be
with MySQL+SAP-DB. All the ones I can imagine seem strange.

I'm intentionally suggesting that you ask questions, as opposed to
"Here's why PostgreSQL is better!" arguments. It's likely NOT in good
taste to try to steal thunder by doing direct PG advocacy.

I have been at LUG meetings where someone (who shall remain nameless,
since his name resembles that of a regular participant here, and the
confusion would just cause grief, especially since that participant
signs my expense and vacation forms :-)) heckled assorted speakers who
spoke on Java and Python, because he's immensely excited about some of
the upcoming Perl 6 technology. The heckler irritated practically
everyone by virtually trying to hijack the talk. Don't be him :-).
--
"cbbrowne","@","cbbrowne.com"
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/advocacy.html
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