Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How Real Is The Open Source Database Fever?

Posted by timothy on from the something-to-sell-you dept.

J. Misael G. points out a NewsForge article on recent moves by some database vendors to loudly release (some of) their products as open source, asking the vital question "How much open source beer are these newcomers bringing to the database bash, or are they simply coming in and asking where the cups are?" (Slashdot and NewsForge are both part of OSTG.)

3 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... by SIGALRM · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Oracle Vice President of Technology Marketing Robert Shimp, whose company is among the only database providers not trending toward open source in some way, was critical of some open source moves by database makers
    Of course he would say that--but the typical consumer interested in F/OSS databases are definitely not the handful of big companies that Oracle sends a team of slick salesmen to do 4 months of PowerPoint just to get one > $100,000 sale. Of what use is the "Oracle model" to the rest of us?

    Mr. Shimp, get a clue... we're simply not going to buy your pitch without looking at other decent (free!) alternatives.
    --
    Sigs cause cancer.
    1. Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Let's be honest, some products that are OSS'd may be an old pile of junk making nothing for the company. And they see that releasing it gives them some kudos in the OSS community.

      So what? There's still some more source code added to the big pot marked OSS. Someone, somewhere may be able to take it and do something else imaginative with it.

  2. As I said on newsforge by suso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think a lot of it is PR. If you take a look at a lot of the advertisements that include the words open source, they use it like a buzzword. It gives me a kinda woozy feeling that I don't like.