Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source

I've since gotten an email from Stephen in response to his comments, and I
think that when he wrote his original, he needed his morning cup of coffee
(or equivalent), since it came over alot heavier then what he email'd
me...

A quick summary:

They didn't report the memory leaks...they fixed them and uploaded
patches, which have been accepted and commit'd

A few problems couldn't be reproduced, and, therefore, left
unreported. I wish ppl would report anyway, as someone else might be
coming across this, finding it also non-reproducable and might have some
data to add :(

The only one that is left outstanding right now has to do with:

"However, the biggest problem was reported recently, see "HEAP_MOVED_IN during
vacuum" posted on Saturday, no replies" ...

Anyone have any comments on that last one?

On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Jan Wieck wrote:

> The Hermit Hacker wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:
> >
> > > I wish this announcement had been made a few months ago!! We have
> > > several developers porting our server software to PostgreSQL.
> > > Although we like PostgreSQL, we have run into a number of memory leaks
> > > and bugs - something we never encountered with Interbase.
> >
> > What version of PostgreSQL? Did the problem reports you sent in not
> > improve the situation?
>
> I haven't seen that many. And what kind of a project leader must it be,
> that a simple announcement causes the work of several programmers over
> months (sounds at least like a man-year) to be thrown away? IMHO the
> kind of PL, companies like M$ are targeting with their huge amount of
> announcements.
>
>
> > > Now Interbase is going open source, we will discontinue the PostgreSQL
> > > development effort. Interbase is such a well written DBMS, it doesn't
> > > make sense to continue.
> >
> > Two points...when will Interbase go open source? Right now they've
> > announced the intention to do so, and even given a very brood time
> > frame...but, when is it going to happen. two...what says Interbase will
> > continue to be "as good" when becomes open source and they are no longer
> > making any money on it?
>
> Since it's the toplevel story on www.borland.com, I think it'll really
> happen soon. And I also think they intend to continue making money on
> it, just not by selling DB-licenses any more. They have a rich set of
> development tools etc. they can sell anyway. And in many projects I've
> seen that it's never a bad choice not to mixup too many
> hardware/software vendors (they'll all point to each other as soon as
> problems arise). So it's a big PRO for their applications and tools, if
> you'll get the DB they use for free. And it's your decision to spend
> money when going into production to buy commercial support (what I
> expect they'll offer).
>
> Another point is this. As long as I know Postgres, a couple of features
> had been added just because some user needed it. And they are supported
> and kept alive. Do they have some proposal on that? How will they deal
> with some feature-patch sent in?
>
>
> Jan
>
> --
>
> #======================================================================#
> # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
> # Let's break this rule - forgive me. #
> #========================================= wieck(at)debis(dot)com (Jan Wieck) #
>
>
>

Marc G. Fournier ICQ#7615664 IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy(at)hub(dot)org secondary: scrappy(at){freebsd|postgresql}.org