why can't XPS 8.x be opensourced

My understanding is,that Informix is now an OLTP engine. I don't think they sell a significant number of XPS licences anymore. So if they opensource XPS like Cloudscape they will not lose much licence revenue. On the other hand they would attract a lot of interst from developers and analysts and this could help to push IDS. Otherwise I can't imagine that Informix will get much attention from analysts, developers and potential buyers in the future. I think XPS is still better than the other open source BI offerings (bizgres, postgres, etc.). Or is the DB2 lab afraid of an open source XPS ?

Just some clarification... "Informix is now an OLTP engine" - well, IDS has always targeted the OLTP marketplace. But - we have many clients that use IDS for all of their data warehouses, and one whose company founder is a frequent writer on this group. Many clients are also considering using IDS for their data warehousing now as the hardware continues to improve in the marketplace and the potential IDS footprint (mem & proc) is much larger than in the past. IDS 10.0 can address > 4G of shmem if applicable, and the maximum disk addressing in v9.4 is 128 PB. Many data warehouses will fit in this configuration. "I don't think they sell a significant number of XPS licenses anymore" - we are in fact selling XPS licenses, albeit a small number. This has never bothered me in my 11 years at Informix - the price point for XPS is significantly greater than IDS, so I always expected less license sales but larger revenue per sale. In the Informix World Tour this year, a small number of significant clients are continuing to buy XPS as they are heavily invested in the product, both in terms of people, hardware, and topology. So yes, we would lose license revenue. "Is the DB2 lab afraid of an open source XPS" - don't think it's even been considered, so no, they aren't. Thanks - Mark Scranton Worldwide Informix Technical Strategist www.markscranton.com mark.scranton@us.ibm.com Jürgen Buck wrote: > My understanding is,that Informix is now an OLTP engine. I don't think > they sell a significant number of XPS licences anymore. > So if they opensource XPS like Cloudscape they will not lose much > licence revenue. > On the other hand they would attract a lot of interst from developers > and analysts and this could help to push IDS. Otherwise I can't > imagine that Informix will get much attention from analysts, developers > and potential buyers in the future. > I think XPS is still better than the other open source BI offerings > (bizgres, postgres, etc.). > Or is the DB2 lab afraid of an open source XPS ?