Re: GT.M database open sourced

On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Adam Lang wrote:

> Actually, I liked this quote: ""By making our database technology and
> programming language available on the GNU/Linux platform, we inherit a
> worldwide group of programming and testing resources that will cooperate
> with us, while working on their own behalf to enhance the software.
> Potentially, this opens a new revenue stream for Sanchez," said K.S.
> Bhaskar, vice president of Sanchez' Greystone Group."
>
> Basically they are looking for the community to code and test the x86
> version, and they will port code and fixes to their other platforms to sell.
> It seems like an attempt at downsizing the development team. ;)

Nonetheless it represents a major challenge to Intersystems and their
flagship product Cache (sic: Ca$he) which _dominates_ the M/Mumps market.
Intersystems is more than happy to write proprietary extensions to the
published ANSI M std - in fact they refuse to comply with the standard.
It is their aim to establish a monopoly in the medical arena where many
of us still use the M(assachusetts General Hospital) Utility Multi
Programming System.

The Mumps community is very excited about Sanchez open sourcing GT.M as
it makes available valuable code which will get integrated into existing
OSS projects like FreeM (http://freem.vmth.ucdavis.edu) and Kevin O'Kane's
MumpsVM (www.cs.uni.edu) which boasts a SQL interface: using libpq it
runs queries against a pg database and loads the data into mumps globals
which can then be accessed using M.

GT.M is a mature product and Sanchez open sourcing their code offers
FreeM and MumpsVM developers a opportunity to speed up development by
an order of magnitude.

For those of us who are trying to get the non Open Source elements of
our IT/IS shops into the OSS world this is a godsend. In my shop we
run Postgres and Cache. It is my job to integrate these systems.
I am pleased to have an alternative to writing interfaces for Cache
and the Creative Socio Medics GUI frontend.

What's more, the US government was forced to publish the VistA src code
(after litigation based on the Freedom of Information act: see
http://www.va.gov.vista/Software) some time ago. This code runs *only*
on Cache. But not for long. Leading elements of the Free Mumps movement
(Jim Self of UC Davis being one of them) are looking into porting VistA
to GT.M.

While the Sanchez press release and projects section at Source Forge
fail (in my view) to fully articulate their goals and the current state
of the project, it has sparked renewed optimism in the Mumps community.
I suggest you follow the ongoing discussion about these issues at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sanchez-gtm/ if you are interested in
learning more. Bhaskar is an ally - this much is clear from his posts
on the subject of clarifying the Sanchez position. And, I suspect that
their position on other platforms is negotiable. They only recently
decided to get back into the M market...I *suspect* the press release was
issued prematurely (as no src is ready for release yet - they are still
preparing tarballs and rpms) in response to the all of the rumours and
excitement generated by the rumours.

> > Ned Lilly <ned(at)greatbridge(dot)com> writes:
> > > Is anybody familiar with this?
> > > http://news.excite.com:80/news/bw/001107/pa-sanchez

> > : GT.M is currently available on the IBM RS/6000 AIX, Compaq Alpha/AXP
> Tru64
> > : UNIX and Open VMS, HP Series 9000 HP-UX, Sun SPARC Solaris and x86
> > : GNU/Linux. The release of GT.M as open source freeware applies only
> > : to the x86 GNU/Linux platform.

Bhaskar seemed very excited when I told him I am trying to run the binaries
on FBSD under Linux compat mode...he wants this to happen.

> > Aside from pissing off those of us who use one of those other platforms
> > ;-), there's the question of whether Sanchez actually thinks that people
> > are not going to be able to figure out how to port the code to non-x86-
> > Linux platforms... or does their "open source" license say you're not
> > allowed to do that?

Their licence is the GPL...you may extrapolate from that Thomas.
I expect they will come around to our way of thinking...but that is
subjective - not a 'certified' result. ;-)

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