Re: IBM Gives Away DB2
Obnoxio The Clown wrote: > To a business person, "free" means something, "open source" means > nothing. Only until it's properly explained to them. > The only reason there has been any acceptance of open source in the > business community is the sticker price. By focusing on the price tag, you're completely missing the point of Open Source/Free Software. The point is freedom. The freedom to inspect the software, the freedom to hire whoever you want to support it. The freedom to make it do whatever you need it to do to run your business. Freedom gives you flexibility, which allows you to run your business better than by using shrink-wrapped proprietary software. Free-of-charge proprietary software is still proprietary software, and it doesn't come with the freedoms that Open Source software allows. Any businessman understands that it wouldn't make a lot of business sense to buy a car that requires a special key to unlock the hood and that can only be fixed by the guy that sold it to you. When put in those terms, Open Source software means something very real beyond the price tag to someone running a business. Just my two cents, Carsten.
carsten@uniqsys.com said: > > By focusing on the price tag, you're completely missing the point of > Open Source/Free Software. The point is freedom. The freedom to inspect > the software, the freedom to hire whoever you want to support it. The > freedom to make it do whatever you need it to do to run your business. > Freedom gives you flexibility, which allows you to run your business > better than by using shrink-wrapped proprietary software. The fundamental flaw in your reasoning can be summed up in two words: "core competence". In theory, yes, it's nice that you can do all those things, but most businesspeople couldn't give a shit. They want to get out there and sell their widgets or find some way of differentiating their products or skills from the rest of the market. They really couldn't care less about whether they are running on AIX or Linux, as long as it's cost-effective and it does the job. Bespoke applications are how you get competitive advantage out of IT, NOT from bespoke infrastructure. -- Bye now, Obnoxio "C'est pas parce qu'on n'a rien ' dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule" - Coluche did i mention i like nulls? heck, i even go so far as to say that all columns in a table except the primary key could/should be nullable. this has certain advantages, for example, if you need to insert a child record and you don't have a parent row for it, just do an insert into the parent table with the primary key value (everything else null), and voila, relational integrity is preserved. but this is, admittedly, a bit controversial among modellers. --r937, dbforums.com
carsten@uniqsys.com wrote: > By focusing on the price tag, you're completely missing the point of > Open Source/Free Software. The point is freedom. The freedom to inspect > the software, the freedom to hire whoever you want to support it. The > freedom to make it do whatever you need it to do to run your business. > Freedom gives you flexibility, which allows you to run your business > better than by using shrink-wrapped proprietary software. And the freedom that comes with knowing that it will require full and comprehensive testing of every single variant before anyone would risk a law violation using it with SAP, eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Baan, etc. Given the testing would cost more than the commercial software license I think pretty much everyone will pass. -- Daniel A. Morgan http://www.psoug.org damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)
carsten@uniqsys.com wrote: > Obnoxio The Clown wrote: > >>To a business person, "free" means something, "open source" means >>nothing. > > > Only until it's properly explained to them. > > >>The only reason there has been any acceptance of open source in the >>business community is the sticker price. > > > By focusing on the price tag, you're completely missing the point of > Open Source/Free Software. The point is freedom. The freedom to inspect > the software, the freedom to hire whoever you want to support it. The > freedom to make it do whatever you need it to do to run your business. > Freedom gives you flexibility, which allows you to run your business > better than by using shrink-wrapped proprietary software. > > Free-of-charge proprietary software is still proprietary software, and > it doesn't come with the freedoms that Open Source software allows. Any > businessman understands that it wouldn't make a lot of business sense > to buy a car that requires a special key to unlock the hood and that > can only be fixed by the guy that sold it to you. When put in those > terms, Open Source software means something very real beyond the price > tag to someone running a business. > > Just my two cents, > > Carsten. > Audits, TrueUps, renewals, this too is a lot of overhead that is not always as visible on the surface. Then add to that, the support contract, and it gets really time consuming, because support in most cases is based on how old the license is, the version, etc etc etc. What will probably happen in the future is some kind of sliding scale for support over time, but without the license cost up front or renewal license. Open Source helps to negate the need to manage licensing, which if you have ever had to deal with licensing on a larger, corporate scale, it is a full time job. 'Free' gets you closer, as a free-to-use license, and will greatly reduce the overhead associated with licensing. It reduces too a lot of barriers to using the software. For example, corporate users of Linux are less concerned about the license and more about the support. This will be a welcome change for the full-feature db versions when that comes about. It will make less of a headache for management concerned about those damn licenses. ;-) I will be curious to see how well these 'lite' versions are adopted in the corporate space, but in looking at what features are NOT included it looks like IBM is testing the water to see what kind of response it will get. http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/udb/edition-express.html There is more "N/A" than not, that I'd still be inclined to go hunting for what MySQL has, which includes replication and clustering without the upgrade cost. As far as small to mid-size systems go, MySQL doesn't leave anything out but support. When 'the big three' get to this model then it will be interesting.