Open Source Licensing - Cuts Both Ways?

shortscruffydave writes "The Register is running a piece Open source databases - a sword that cuts both ways? which mentions one of the potential pitfalls of open source databases: "Open source is just another licensing model: the more accepted it becomes, the more it is adopted at a strategic level, the more it plays back into the hands of the traditional behemoths that dominate the industry". " I couldn't disagree more with the author of this piece, since I think the success of Postgres & MySQL are already contra-proof positive, but the piece is still an interesting read.

Comments

This article has no point.

[Evro]

"Dude, you're giving IBM free shit... they're not going to return the favor."

Except they have? Article looks like flamebait/trolling to me, or else just ignorance.

Re:OpenSourcing a DB

[kevin_conaway]

You don't need open source for this. Merely publishing an API and an SDK would accomplish that.

Article is worthless.

[Lumpy]

Sorry but until the author of the article actually does something with FOSS in the corperate world and knows how it really works he's simply another idiot spewing worthless drivel on the street corner at cars passing by.

we hafe a few ATL tape library units here at the datacenter. upgrading PAST windows NT4 means we have to pull those units and throw them away. ATL refuses to release drivers for them for 2K or 2K3 and suggest "buy our new product".

great, over $180,000.00US investment in WORKING SDLT robotic tape libraries because the company wants to drive revinue by forcing new hardware purchases. yet Linux and a couple of other FOSS packages saved that and they are now working along happily in our datacenter.

So all that development we did to support the tape library robitic units was a waste? Programmer time is dirt fricking cheap right now compared to enterprise level hardware costs. we built the platform on FOSS parts, those were free to us, so why do we needto be greedy assholes and not give out what we coded that was BUILT UPON the work already done by others?

I reccomend that everyone ignore the article as a know nothing screaming about things he read in a trade magazine.... because it is missing huge pieces of the puzzle that many many of us use every single day to save money and INCREASE revinue of the company.

True, but

[einhverfr]

In certain circumstances, open source projects are very dependent on vendor support. For example, MySQL (because even the client libs are licensed under essentially the GPL, which prevents linking with many other open source projects), and to a lesser extent BerkelyDB. If MySQL AB went out of business today, MySQL (the open source database management system) IMO would likely be seriously wounded. Yes, it may continue, but I don't think it would continue with anywhere near the momentum it has today until such a time as a new version comes out with a new protocol.and completely rewritten client libs.

You can divide open source software into two groups. There are those which are dual licensed (esp. those which are restrictively dual-licensed, such as MySQL) and there are those which are real community projects. The first case could be effectively destroyed or at least set back a number of years by the vendor going out of business, while the second will continue without anyone.

The article makes the mistake of assuming that these are the same. They are not.