Open Source Ingres Swings At Oracle, SQL Server

Rob Westervelt writes "Computer Associates is making its open sourced Ingres DBMS widely available today on Windows and Linux, pitching its mature features and 64-bit support at Oracle and SQL Server customers."

Comments

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously skimmed through it to pull out that quote, but did you actually RTFA? From the paragraph preceding your excerpt:

"...said Noel Yuhanna, a senior analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc.

So, it was not a VP of Ingres development talking about their own product.

I recommend looking elsewhere for an RDBMS.

[jbn-o]

The Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License (CATOSL) apparently qualifies as an "open source" license, but it would probably not qualify as a "free software" license. The focus on user's software freedom found in the free software movement is important in interpreting what powers the license grants and what the license claims to regulate.

Section 10.1 tries to control use of the program--if one's rights under the license terminates, the license claims that that user's rights to use the program terminate as well. But the FSF tells us that US copyright law doesn't permit setting conditions on merely running a computer program (outside of a license or encryption manager) and that if this were to become accepted, would extend copyright law in a dangerous way. This was part of the rationale for saying the first and second revisions of the Apple Public Source License were not free software licenses.

Section 11.4 of the CATOSL claims that no licensee will bring a legal action under the license more than once a year. When one does bring a legal action, one is supposed to waive a jury trial and hold the trial in the state of New York. Licensees in other districts may enjoy rights which the state of New York does not recognize or grant, including the right to bring suit more than once a year; rights licensees would want to retain should they need to go to court.

I'm sure a more thorough examination of the CATOSL would reveal more problems for users. I don't recommend getting involved with programs licensed under the CATOSL. This shouldn't pose a practical problem for anyone because there are excellent database programs under more amenable licenses, including PostgreSQL (licensed under the new BSD license) and MySQL (licensed under the GNU GPL). I also don't recommend licensing one's own programs under the CATOSL.

Re:Whats the relation to Postgres?

[AndyElf]

Google and you will find: http://opensource.ca.com/projects/ingres/forum/30/ 671168450779