Slashdot Mirror
Why Oracle Isn't Part of the OSDL
darthcamaro writes "Some may wonder why OSDL, the self-proclaimed center of gravity for the Linux Universe and employer of Linus Torvalds, does not include Oracle as a member. Well, in a recent interview Wim Coekaerts, Director of Linux Engineering at Oracle has spelled it out in no uncertain terms. From the article: 'The thing that was really kind of revolting is that OSDL goes out and basically says that they represent the Linux community while there is no direct feedback line back to the community.'"
I also wonder, why isn't Apple or Microsoft in?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
or six words :)
living the dream
Why are you insulting the innocent amphibians?
It should be "Because we are Larry Ellison clones".
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
No need to join because:
Oracle Still Diggs Linux
They're in competition with MySQL.
Isn't Linus a direct feedback line to the Linux community? Does it get any more direct?
Many people, as also I, don't know much of OSDL beside Linus Torvalds is there employed or they care for Carrier Grade Linux (whatever that means). Yet I know OSDL has done a survey about why the Linux desktop isn't a success (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf).
t s/2005-December/000349.html).
But now what? Even if the reasons now are more than obvious does the OSDL take the next needed steps? Sure OSDL has created the Portland initiative, unfortunately these people aren't able to do anything about the most pressing matter, the first top inhibitor for the Linux desktop adoption. It might be these people simply don't know how to fix this problem albeit I've shown them one possible solution (http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop_architec
OSDL might say that "they represent the Linux community", yet OSDL isn't able to bring Linux to success, to increase its market share to a significant amount. So I would think twice if to participate in such an organization. It's sad when even the self proclaimed speaker of the Linux community can't do better.
To say it once more, without agreeing on a single set of application guidelines, guidelines which enhance the usability and the look&feel, there's no hope. All one can say is "Yet another year without a Linux desktop".
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Depends on how much money you lose if your web site is down becuase of lack af a serious professional solution, as you call it.
I think money is not the main issue here.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
What he's saying is that they're fine on their own, and that they're trying to avoid some of the problems that the OSDL has.
Summary put a bit of spin on that one.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
This article is pretty frustrating, as it still gives no answers why Oracle is not a member of ODSL and why they should be? As far as I know Oracle makes database and middleware tools, wich is pretty distinct from operating system kernels. Maybe they require some specific kernel modules to get some better performance in some instances, but does that require them to be a memberof ODSL?
So in the end i think the PR department scored another media exposure without any news.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Yeah, with that mentality, I'm sure my post will show up in a day or two, eh buddy? =)
The big three database manufacturers all charge pretty much the same for the same feature set. Oracle costs the same are sql server and db/2 within a percent or two.
The second tier database manufacturers (openbase, frontbase, mimer etc) charge significantly less.
Finally there are the open source databases and companies that try to sell them.
Personally I don't see how anybody can charge for databases these except to the largest organizations. The killer feature seems to be real and reliable replication and clustering. Postgres as fine as it is lacks a decent replication schema (slony can not be used over unreliable links). Mysql replicates OK for must common scenarios but the replication does not honor foreign key relationships or transactional integrity.
So if you need clustering and replication then pay otherwise use a free one. If you are going to pay then at least pay for something that does not tie you to an operating system.
evil is as evil does
PostgreSQL is a serious professional solution, and it's open-source, and it's free of charge.
And although it apparently isn't as well known as it could be, it's not some niche or academic project -- it has a long track record of commercial use.
MySQL has excelled in both ease of installation and sheer speed, but Postgre has about caught up there. Whereas MySQL is catching up in Postgre's "real database" features, especially on reliability of data. It's an interesting situation -- keep an eye on both!
(Personally I'd bite the nowadays fairly soft bullet and go Postgre from the beginning, as it keeps up better when business grows. But Oracle it is not, I wouldn't push it on some Fortune 500 operation...)
There are others as well, InnoDB and whatnot. I'm not at all familiar with them, but I'm sure they each have their strengths.
From the post:
>Have you looked at what oracle costs these days?
Yes, I have. There is this Oracle XE thing which is free as in free beer. It is not open source and limited to 4GB of data (the Oracle internal stuff not adding up to the 4GB limit). But it is free.
Postgress lack advanced integrity constraints and assertions.
MySQL isn't ACID out of the box.
Ohh, and the big three DB vendors have all put out a free version of their respective DB.
Some may wonder why OSDL, [...] does not include Oracle as a member.
...
Really? No, I don't wonder. Because I certainly don't care.
Next interesting Slashdot topic : "Some may wonder why Intel never went in the screwdriver business"
RIP Slashdot. I used to love you. dead account - but slashdot wont let me delete it.
Seriously, more like PostgreSQL or FireBird.
I don't want to get into an argument about the advancedness of postgres integrity or acidness of Mysql. I will simply point out that those are just two of the many open source databases on the market. Some of them such as SAPdb, firebird/interbase and openingress have been in use in some of the largest companies in the world in real world applications.
Yes all threee manufacturers have put out a free version and if you are happy living their restrictions then you should try them. The only thing you have to worry about is if your needs ever exceed their limitations then you will have to pay. Personally I just don't see the point. Either your needs are light and you don't need one of the big three or your needs are heavy and you must fork out the bucks.
The way things are going in three to five years nobody will be able to charge for a database. Look how fast mysql and postgres are gaining features.
evil is as evil does
too bad your pet peeves dont matter only mine And only mine.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you are running a web site then you should consider that some of the world busiest sites including /. run on mysql. Apparently there is a way to run websites with mysql and still get high availability.
evil is as evil does
I've found it able to handle all I've wanted to do, and I'm curious at what the cases that aren't possible to handle are.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Why do you think that?
You still have to pay for Windows 2003 Server, even though you'll get perfectly functional competing operating systems for free.
You still have to pay for your MacOS X upgrade, even though you'll get
Similar examples in software abound.
Businesses like paying for their software.
No, it isn't.
Spelling nazi, meet grammar nazi. Now you two go out and play something nice.
;)
It's 'it's' instead of 'its', isn't it? Actually, would have been funny if someone had modded grandparent in-sight-ful. No, of course it would not, but anyway...
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
It would be hard to have an organization that "represents the Linux community." That'd almost be like herding cats because it's so diverse and anarchaic. Better to stay out, leave their motives as a business clear as they do now and work with those they need to while assuaging the fears of others. Seems that they regard OSDL almost like a rat regards a ship that is starting to have trouble at sea.
Nobody likes paying for software. Business pay for software because they think they get a better product. The difference between databases and operating systems is that open source databases are being used by thousands of businesses all over the world in real life applications. Businesses people are basically herd animals. They follow the crowd. Once you get a large enough following then all the business people sitting on the fence jump on your side.
Business people are always afraid that their competiion is spending less then them and making more then them. If you pay for SQL server and you competitor doesn't pay for their database then they have an advantage over you.
evil is as evil does
My understanding of MySQL licensing is that unless you're non-commercial (or non-profit?), MySQL is in fact _not_ free. You can "beat the price" with, say, PostgreSQL. I'm currently working in an organization that's beginning to use MySQL for new web sites and applications and some of the other posts on this issue are correct: MySQL is still not fully-featured, high-availability features have a long way to go, etc.
Also, I would love to be able to say "that'll get 'er done" and finish up my work. Unfortunately, if you can't sell management on the fact that it'll get the job done _and_ get it done to the desired specifications, the "get 'er done" part isn't all that's important.
"...now would be a good time to switch over to a "real" database. "Real" is one of those words that Doug ought to add to his list of words. It means "expensive". Many managers seem to have this idea that it is invariably true that you get what you pay for, and that therefore nothing that is available for free can possibly be any good."
l e-decided-to-stay-with-mysql.html
http://googleplanet.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-goog
"The moral of the story is that sometimes, and in particular with free software, you get more than what you pay for."
Rich
They also like the fact that there is a legal entity to sue if things go pear-shaped.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
The problem with MySQL certainly isn't availability as such, it's more with the availability of functions ant tools. To run most websites it's fine despite what database maniacs say. OTOH to run a country's social security database, it wouldn't be my first choice ;).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
were you aiming for 'funny' ? :)
no, really. eulas for all big softare vendors will shake off all the responsibility they can.
has there ever been a case when a software supplier like ms or oracle has been sued for losses to businesses - and had to pay ?
if that would be the case, ms would have shelled out insane amounts of money after each worm/virus outbreak - they were massive.
of course, it is also possible that you didn't add "... but in reality it's only to comfort them morally"
Rich
Microsoft spent most of the 90s looking the other way when it came even to business piracy, while talking tough through the BSA. Even now, when they have ramped up their aggresiveness, (AFAIK) they have yet to sue a single home-user, still only targeting businesses.
Enter Vista
This will severely limit* Joe Average's ability to pirate Windows.
Faced with being either unable to pirate, or an unwillingness to divulge the personal info (I know people switching now as Genuine Advantage is rolling out), people will look for alternatives.
So, I suggest that Vista will be the single biggest event in Linux desktop adoption.
I suspect Apple knows it, and that is the reason for their current ads doing a Mac/Windows comparison - because they also see Vista as a possible catalyst ... 'look for alternatives' is really Mac and Linux at this point.
*limit != eliminate, and the less 'average' Joe's will also be less limited.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
"The way things are going in three to five years nobody will be able to charge for a database. Look how fast mysql and postgres are gaining features."
People out there believe the FUD and lack practicle experience, so they pay up, no matter.
Why UNIX?
Businesses like paying for their software.... and let the vendor be accountable if the system goes down.
If you are running a web site then you should consider that some of the world busiest sites including /. run on mysql. Apparently there is a way to run websites with mysql and still get high availability.
So, we're all engineers here, right? That means that we should understand that a bird's wing is an elegant solution for lofting a sparrow, it's not necessarily the most efficient and reliable design for an airplane.
Or that a Bugatti Veyron may be the fastest production vehicle in the world (top speed 253 mph), but if you have to move 50,000 tons of banannas a hundred miles from port to a distribution center five hundred miles away, you're better off with semi-trailer (maybe 80mph?).
"Busiest sites" is almost meaningless with respect to the database tier.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> The big three database manufacturers all charge pretty much the same for the same feature set. Oracle costs the same are
> sql server and db/2 within a percent or two.
Not in my experience: db2 is often 50% the cost of Oracle, especially since partitioning is an extra $10k/cpu for oracle and a completely usable form of partitioning is included within the base db2 product.
Right now I've got a multi-terabyte data warehouse running on a db2 license that costs $1500/cpu. If I wanted it directly accessible on the internet then it would run $7500/cpu.
> Personally I don't see how anybody can charge for databases these except to the largest organizations. The killer feature
> seems to be real and reliable replication and clustering.
No, those are just the features that the open source community seems to want to target. But why? They're both typically used for failover, and the commercial products have far better failover solutions (and ones that actually work across geographical separated data centers).
Bi-directional replication is at best a pain in the butt and when used to actually consolidate data its lack of tranformation abilitities stinks.
Clustering can deliver either availability or speed. The oracle solution is geared towards availability, the informaix/db2 solution towards speed (it's like a beowulf architecture, but been around for ten years). The former is ok, but again doesn't work across data centers, the latter is ok - and ideal when you've got 20 TB, but otherwise overkill.
What about partitioning & parallelism? Why use a product like db2 or oracle? How about because they can save you huge dollars on hardware? Take this example: you've got a million rows of data a day for 365 days on a 4-way SMP with 8 gbytes of memory and four disk arrays. Users run a wide variety of queries for reporting & analysis. Assume that your hardware cost $88,000 (list) for high-end models of this type.
If you're using postgresql or mysql many of those queries are going to result in tablescans - in which the database has to read every single one of those 365 million rows. This is because btree indexes don't work if you're selecting more than 1-3% of the data. So, want to see all data for previous month for monthly reports? Fine, but you'll have to wait four minutes to scan all data.
On the other hand, if you're using db2 for example you'll probably want to partition (with MDC - available even in free product) on day. When you query on a month of data DB2 will scan just that one month - 1/12 of the table. Then when it does that it'll run the query in parallel - giving you 4x the performance of the single-threaded queries from mysql & postgresql. Then you've also got fine-grained memory tuning, a wide variety of optimizations and a fast optimizer - capacle of handling complex queries. Ignoring the performance benefits of the latter features (only because difficult to quantity) and just using the first two - you're going to get 48x faster performance from db2 than mysql or postgresql. That query that took 10 minutes on msyql? It'll run in four seconds on db2.
How much would you spend on hardware to try to get that mysql query to run in 4 seconds? Far more than the cost of oracle or db2!
Last time I looked, Oracle XE was free (as in beer).
Now there are plenty of limitations (one CPU only, max of 2 or 4Gb of data) but still sufficient for the type of solutions mySQL has traditionally been used for (and if you get to 2Gb of data you can probably afford standard edition). Plus you can always have multiple instances providing different services. However, if your architecture just requires an RDBMS I would go with something that is just that, rather than a heavy platform solution.
IMO - Oracle XE is actually targeting SQL Server's free edition, not mySQL. I've seen Oracle present on the issue and they don't think they would win any mySQL customers over, as mySQL users have already rejected a free proprietary database. SQL Server, on the other hand, is worrying them. What they said was along the lines of : Someone starts developing an application on SQL Server's free edition - it grows and then they need SQL Server enterprise edition. That's a lost sale for Oracle. But it's also how many apps grow, rather than people starting out with an enterprise app / database requirement.
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh
You've pretty much summed it up there. However, there is one other area that Oracle has a pretty clear advantage in and that's the row-level security. Many web sites don't need this type of architecture, but if you're working in the government or health-care spaces, it could be very important.
Oracle's row-level security allows government applications to host data of multiple clearance levels in a single database and be sure that only user's with the correct clearance level sees the data. Similar usage occurs in the health-care with the data regulations on their end (HIPAA).
Sure, there are many other ways to support this in code or off the shelf software, but that won't necessarily stop someone whose determined enough to get around the application code itself.
I am anything but an Oracle fanboy, by the way. I actually can't stand the majority of their products (that is, anything that's not the database), but their DB does provide some seriously needed features if you are dealing with particularly sensitive data. And I don't know of any other database (free or otherwise) that can support that kind of fine-grained access control without coding. (I'm sure someone will correct me, if I'm wrong here)
"Businesses like paying for their software."
Why, pay open-source developers to work on specific projects, then.
or donate to large free software projects and Foundations. or just contribute back code...
but no, let's pay compulsory taxes to this large marketing-drone just so we can be reassured that we can blame someone...
I don't feel like it...
You understand wrong. MySQL is GPL and has been since ~1995.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
It might be true, but I never heard this argument outside of OS (usually, Windows) advocates. Can you quote a CIO saying "I want someone to sue !"
:wq
TOAD is a smart insult for Oracle people. ;-)
That's not how it works.
This is how it works, more or less:
1. SIMPLE (OWN) USE: You can use MySQL *yourself* for whatever purpose without charge. If you make money from it, how nice for you.
2. REDISTRIBUTION: If your app using MySQL is GPL (or another approved licence), then you can redistribute at no charge. If your app isn't GPL (or another approved licence), then you need to buy a licence to distribute MySQL with your app.
See http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/faq.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Well, many organisation have a lot of ressources invested in Oracle and have large application built around Oracle-specific features. Oracle also have a lot of mindshare among DBA. They are not going to switch overnight. They will continue to pay Oracle for support and upgrade for along time to come, because it's cheaper and safer to do so.
I predict a very slow but steady decline for the big database vendors. It might take a decade or two before OSS database got a significant portion of the enterprise market. In the meantime, Oracle and cie will try to diversify into related markets : ERP, dev tools, etc.
Ho wait, that's already happening ! Too bad these segments are also being commoditized ...
:wq
So?
MySQL isn't a member either. On the other hand, Red Hat and Novell are, despite the fact that they're clearly competitors. So what does MySQL have to do with it?
I like Slashdot and all but it simply doesn't rate having a commercial RDBMS behind it.
You don't buy a "serious solution" because it will chug along and be invisible 99.9% of the time. You buy a "serious solution" because a planetary scale support apparatus will be at your disposal once you hit that nasty 0.1% . It's kind of like having the entire Linux developer community at your disposal but without their ability to blow you off if they really want to.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Businesses like paying for their software.
Actually, our business pays for Windows Server and Windows 2000 Pro because our important software is Windows-only.
If you submit a highest level support incident to Oracle, they will want you at their disposal until the problem is solved. They will work on it 24/7 handing it off to people in different countries and will expect the same commitment level from you AND your manager.
THAT is what you pay through the nose for.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They (MySQL) also argue that if you create the client libraries yourself and talk through the available sockets, you still need to either license your app under the GPL or buy a commercial license - essentially the protocol is enough to force the license on you and you dont need to use any of their code, or so they claim.
Would you hire a free electrician with the knowledge that if your electrical system broke down a day after he worked on it, he wouldn't be accountable?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Besides Oracle is much more polite when they tell you "RTFM".
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
He certainly wouldn't be the first Linux user to be at total fanboy when it comes to Linus. Not everyone treats Linus like he can walk on water. This is nothing really new. Linus is a systems programmer, not a CTO.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why is that a shame? Being opposed to proprietary software is just as ridiculous as being opposed to open source.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
I realize that the EULAs say "you can't sue us." I also realize that the big operators don't really want those tested in court... so if you have enough of a bank account to fund a lawsuit (remember, in the US, it isn't "loser pays"), then you can, perhaps, squeeze more out of a support contract than someone who doesn't.
IANAL, but so far as MS and viruses go, I think it doubtful that you'd get a jury to hold them liable for the malicious acts of others, and I also doubt that a jury would find them negligent for the overall design of Windows and VBA. Finding Oracle liable for your downtime because "Unbreakable" 9i segfaulted and corrupted a terabyte of your financial data is far more likely.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Just like how everyone sues Microsoft whenever Windows crashes or loses data or gets rooted or sends your personal information to Nigeria or whatever, right?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It was only back in February that people in the Linux community were pointing out that the OSDL organization wasn't actually particularly useful to the community, beyond funnelling corporate money to a few worthy individual developers. They had a list of requests for things OSDL could do to actually be useful, and they also, for the first time, got a community representative on the board of directors.
If you actually look at the OSDL's stated mission, it's all about attracting corporate interest to Linux, not about actually getting any open source development done directly. It's still a valuable function, but if Oracle wants to interact with the community (like, for example, pushing Ubuntu's kernel patches through the review process and into the mainline kernel), OSDL isn't going to be particularly useful, assuming that Oracle has employees who're active in the community (like, for example, Randy Dunlap).
Try suing them. It'll be funny. It'll be hillarious. In most cases, the legal disclaimers
they pile on your usage limit what you can and can't do in regards to a system failing and
doing financial damages or physical ones. Unless you can prove gross negligence on their
part with a flaw (and even then...it's hard to make it stick in the first place. Otherwise
we'd be seeing class-actions being fielded against Microsoft- and been seeing them some time
now...) you're not going to get very far with a lawsuit.
The "we can sue someone if we buy it" line has worn quite thin. Businesses may THINK that
they can sue someone over a failure in a system component, but in business, it's "you're on
your own"- if you get fubared over something that someone else did and you didn't do your
due dilligence it's your own damn fault things went south unless the other party can be proven
to have been criminally negligent. It's always been that way.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Good luck with that since the vast vast majority of Vista sales will be through new computer purchases. I don't think it will be a catalyst for anything despite all the hype in either direction.
If Microsoft didn't already have that market share you'd have a point but since the market is there's they no longer depend on piracy. Furthermore when they come across businesses pirating they always gives them the option to license properly before suing them. I'm not sure the number of times MS has ever sued a company for such practices. I know they would be targeting system builders selling pirated copies of Windows as authentic but MS recognizes that this happens which is why someone that falls victim to this get's Windows for $1 if report the company.
I'd say for the most part Microsof still looks away to this day. There token voice has just gotten a little louder in the last couple years.
Here's the reality of it.
In the case of contracting out the work to the OS developers, it would very likely
be a situation of them fixing the things because they're personally accountable.
In the case of a company like Oracle, it would very likely be a situation of them
trying to fix it, not because they're accountable but because it's a
potential customer loss situation. If your problem is the only one and you're
not looking to be costing them customers or money to NOT fix it- it plain flat
won't get fixed. If you end up getting financially damaged by the whole affair,
unless the company can be shown to be criminally negligent, you won't
be able to sue for anything because it's been disclaimed that the software isn't
really guaranteed to serve any purpose other than to part dollars from your
wallet. (Just read their licensing on the stuff sometime...)
A business that uses your thinking to justify all of this is not looking at
what they agree to when they buy their software and are foolishly thinking
they're "okay" when they buy Oracle's SQL DBMS or Microsoft's Office suite
or their OS products- that there'll be someone to fix it for them if it
breaks and if not, they can sue.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
XML causes global warming.
As well as queries over tables in several databases.
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
The only place I have EVER seen a company "want someone to sue" if something goes wrong is on Slashdot. In the real world, most businesses want to avoid lawsuits because only the lawyers win. The only times companies want legal battles is to establish barriers to entry... Where the cost of creating the barrier is less than the monopoly rents extracting, generate the lawsuit. Lawsuits are done to keep competition out, not as a reasonable way of recovering costs from a vendor.
Accountability is NOT the same as lawsuits. Microsoft is accountable for to me, because if I don't like their software, I don't buy it. OpenBSD is not accountable to me because they believe they are giving me something for free and therefore don't care about money coming in. Buying things (like RHEL, or OpenBSD CDs, etc.) creates some accountability, because they lose money if they don't keep customers happy.
Creating a financial incentive to make customers happy creates accountability. In Linux land, certain features get implemented because someone scratches an itch, or because a business needs a feature and pays someone to implement it. Those are advantages of the "open source model," but a drawback from accountability. I am a customer, I want to know that the aggregate of their customer base matters as well. The millions of $400-$500/year customers need to have their interests respected, and an environment where you have to be big enough to pay a programmer to implement the feature leaves us all out.
It's all about accountability, and a company that looks out for its customers. It's not about "someone to sue" if things go wrong.
Alex
They don't need to.
They have diagnostic tools that bypass that sort of shenanigan.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That would fall under assertions, check is for local table integrity, assertions is for database integrity.
The Check problems I've been faceing was back in 7.x so things might very well have changed since then, but I had trouble with basic check constraints, such as checking the number of certain keys wasn't kombined with any other keys more than x times.
The same could be said for pretty much every version since 95. Yet we still have seen a ton of piracy out there. How do you reconcile that?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
As for new computers, yes the Big Boys preload, but not all PC sales have Win preloaded. From http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5561113.html
The BSA says 1/3 of the world software is pirated, and about 1/4 in North America. All that market share is up for grabs. From http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121974,Estimations (can't find a quick link!) that I've seen put Linux around/under 5%. So even 10% of the available market share would be in the order of a 50% increase in Linux' current market share. It's taken near 15yrs to get here, so if in the next coupl'a years Linux was to get to 7% or 8% that would be a respectable increase.
Anyways, just think how much of an impact Linux has had on computers with only a sub-5% market share, and then just imagine how much more influential it will become as the numbers grow up to and over 10%...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
And I don't know of any other database (free or otherwise) that can support that kind of fine-grained access control without coding. (I'm sure someone will correct me, if I'm wrong here)
I'm curious as well. (Although I think I can meet my needs with customized views... maybe... I'm still thinking about the architecture / design.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
What about partitioning & parallelism? Why use a product like db2 or oracle? How about because they can save you huge dollars on hardware? Take this example: you've got a million rows of data a day for 365 days on a 4-way SMP with 8 gbytes of memory and four disk arrays. Users run a wide variety of queries for reporting & analysis. Assume that your hardware cost $88,000 (list) for high-end models of this type.
I love this feature of databases, and just thought I'd mention that this is available in the beta version of mysql now.
Does that include telling Larry to STFU?
Wil
wiki
Articulate he is not.
we will end no whine before its time
If you see your app growing later, then one of the big three will be useful. If you use one of the free versions for small-scale, it's an easy transition. Start off with one of the free ones, and you've got some growing pains coming.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Who told you that? You've been lied to like an Apple customer awaiting the arrival of a macbook with broken hinges.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, it is more than just that...
.... etc...
- Partitioning of data
- Oracle Cluster Filesystem for storage
- Automatic Storage Management, one instance handles all phsyical storage
- Spatial data
- Oracle text for handling of all types of text, any language, free text search
- Performance monitoring
- Diagnostics
The list is painfully long when you talk about features missing in Open Source databases and no, beeing a big hitter on the web does not mean you put a heavy load on the database, that is light weight work. Logging drilling data from your favourite oil rig is, storing and controlling Hubble Space Telescope data is, handling ATM transactions are. I have not seen any OSS database used for such operations.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
You wrote "alsoe" when you (probably) intended to write "also".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Slashdot is a business. The absolute only logistic reason not to use Oracle is if MySQL (or whatever else) can do the job. If it made more sense to use Oracle, then yes, it would rate it. This is an insanely popular website. Pretty funny that it came out of an ordinary blog - now it's an extraordinarily wacky blog :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They can claim that all they want, but even the DMCA guarantees the right to reverse-engineer for the purposes of interoperability, and MySQL can't say SHIT about a non-GPL client library. Well, they can say anything they want, but it won't make them right.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you make your money through support, are you going to spend more money on development, which isn't your primary revenue center, or on your support staff? Yeah, thanks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
remember you're not the only one hiring people to work on "our" electrical system. If there's a problem, its worries are shared by many and the solution likely to come quicker.
I don't feel like it...
So, I suggest that Vista will be the single biggest event in Linux desktop adoption.
People said that about XP before it was launched. Of course, GNU/Linux adoption did go up after XP's release, so maybe they were on to something...
Where I see the difference between XPs attempt at forcing the pirate to buy is that it remained uni-directional. In other words, if the OS was hacked and was told that everything was Ay-Oh-Kay! then the computer ran quite nicely, and totally beyond the control/reach of ms.com
Vista, on the otherhand (maybe more specifically Genuine Advantage, but I say Vista 'cause that's when it won't be optional in any way shape or form...) requires you to connect for updates. Not legit? no soup for you!
It's this mandatory registration that will make people move to something else. And yes some (maybe most?) will then buy a license, but there will be some who say f*sk them! and switch to something else, and for a lot of people, that something else is going to be Linux.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Is there any reason you're not also partitioning the PostgreSQL database, other than to make it look bad in the fictional benchmark? Maybe you can do more advanced partitioning with DB2 or Oracle - don't know, haven't used 'em - but PostgreSQL is certainly capable of the trivial example you mentioned.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I think the reasoning could be something like this: "Reverting to LGPL for the client libraries [which is where this sort of discussion almost invariably leads] would give people carte-blanche to write non-free-as-in-beer AND non-free-as-in-speech apps against MySQL, and we don't think that's a very nice thing to want to do with something we let you use for free".
;)
I'm not sure I agree with that 100%, but I do like the idea of promoting openness... as well as the idea of getting paid a little something for doing so.
Please bear in mind that I do NOT speak for MySQL AB in this or any other matter - this is just my take on the policy, and I could be dead wrong about the rationale behind it.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I talked to Wim Coekaerts the other day and he said that one of the things that frustrates him is the level to which Oracle is involved in Linux kernel development and promoting Linux in general, and yet they don't seem to get credit for it. Yes, Oracle is a database and applications vendor -- but Oracle is a pretty resource-intensive application, and a lot of people use it for some very heavy lifting, and as such it can demand a lot from the OS kernel it runs on. Oracle has put a lot of energy into making its database run better on Linux, and making Linux more stable in general.
For more info, check out the column I wrote about it -- Oracle: the biggest Linux vendor you've never heard of
Breakfast served all day!
And you would do this in Oracle how?
You must come from a Sybase or MS SQL or MySQL background.
It's a matter of design. In Oracle and Postgres, you would not put tables that need to see each other in different databases. You would put them in different schemas. That's without getting into the whole dblink thing, which is available with both Oracle and Postgres.
Before point in time recovery for Sybase and MS SQL, you would also - if you were a good DBA - not put related tables in different databases. But schema support sucked on those two (and continues to, excepting MS SQL 2005, where they've made improvements), so people often did it even though it meant backups weren't truly consistent (again, until PITR recovery was an available feature).
So I think you're comparing apples and oranges. It's not much different than saying Postgres lacks Oracle's varchar2 datatype. By name, yes, but it doesn't lack an equivalent way of doing this.
DB2 Express-C is an great option too. Furthermore, it is not limited to 4GB of data but 4GB of RAM.
i on-expressc.html
Extracted from the IBM DB2 Express-C product page:
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/udb/edit
----
DB2 Express-C, a version of DB2 Universal Database Express Edition (DB2 Express) for the community, is a no-charge data server for use in development and deployment.
Maximum processors: 2
Maximum addressable memory: 4GB
Business partners may choose to register for free redistribution of DB2 Express-C with their products and applications.
---
Considering that its a fairly painless process to become an IBM business parter, this should help a lot of people who want to use it with their own products.
DISCLOSURE: I work for IBM, but I copied this text from the product page linked above.
> Is there any reason you're not also partitioning the PostgreSQL database, other than to make it look bad in the fictional benchmark?
> Maybe you can do more advanced partitioning with DB2 or Oracle - don't know, haven't used 'em - but PostgreSQL is certainly capable of
> the trivial example you mentioned.
Nah, I usually don't consider approaches using inheritance or union alls, except in desparate conditions. It theoretically works, but in my experience is much more work to implement, can be a problem to alter within a transaction, often isn't 100% compatible with other sql operations(load?), doesn't support etc.
From the doc you provided:
"As we can see, a complex partitioning scheme could require a substantial amount of DDL. "
another comment ends with "So performance can be drastically worse if you use partitions."
So, yeah - this is like partitioning-lite. Enough to work in some narrowly-scoped situations, but not so well that you want to make it a part of your general solutions. You certainly wouldn't want to create 365 daily partitions this way: that would be 365 or 366 tables within a single ddl script (ugh). Plus, it still doesn't address parallelism - so your 4 or 8 way smp is stuck scanning the data with a single cpu.
Postgresql is a very cool database, but it still has a way to go with this kind of functionality. It's moving quickly, so it'll be cool to see a strong solution here within a couple of years. But until it has something bullet-proof I'm in no hurry to bet my career on it.
OSDL does not claim to be anything more than what is listed here:
http://www.osdl.org/about_osdl
You said "try wxWidgets". I did.I summarize my results:
Windows: Ok results. Application built with a wxWidgets builder.
Move application to Linux x86. Result: horrible. Faults all over. Back to cleaning up source code. Turns out that dialog window objects are somehow ok to use, even after they are out of scope with MS VC. Debugging is nasty. When I finally got it running, it looked reasonable (GNOME, Redhat 9). 5 hours.
Move application to Solaris (Sparc) 8. A few problems left. Go back, figure out wxWidgets issues. But... the application looks TERRIBLE. Fonts don't fit, dialogs don't fit, complete disaster visually. Manually modify to make it acceptable. But, notice that some UI paradigms that the original designer used didn't work (eg. Grayed out text being VITAL -- on the SUN grayed out meant drawn with a pattern, not legible). Modify application to fix these things. 25 hours.
Notice that HELP features don't work across platforms -- fix it up. 25 hours.
Test on AIX and HPUX. 20 hours.
Total time preparing a "cross platform" wxWidgets application: 75 hours. But then, I *may* not know what I am doing.
YMMV
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
BHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Yes there is a business man out there who thinks... Hey I'll buy sql server because I can sue MS if it crashes and I lose data.
BHAHAHAHAHAHA.
You funny!
evil is as evil does
"I like Slashdot and all but it simply doesn't rate having a commercial RDBMS behind it."
Why? Because you don't like the business? Because you don't like what the business does? Because you don't like who runs the business?
Anyway why should it matter what the business does ot how much you like the business. We are talking about technical issues here.
evil is as evil does
What I mean is that in five years Oracle will be giving away their database. Not that people stop using oracle. They have already slashed their prices and have made a free version available that's quite capabable. They already make a lot of money off of software that runs on the datatabase like financials and such. The database is on it's way to being a commoditiy. I give it five years and DB/2, SQL server and Oracle will be free to 90% of database users. They may charge for a few high end features like datacubes and whatnot but I doubt even that.
IBM and Oracle might be able charge for mainframe platforms and maybe 10+ CPUs but MS will SOL because they don't support either.
evil is as evil does
> Please bear in mind that I do NOT speak for MySQL AB in this or any other matter - this is just my take on the policy, and I
> could be dead wrong about the rationale behind it.
which is exactly what's wrong with mysql licensing: it's deliberately vague. And who exactly wants to consult with their lawyer before using a database product?
and of course, just like AT&T just changed their privacy policy to no one's surprise; who's going to be surprised when mysql gets sufficient market share to tighten up their licensing?
Perfectly valid points and I think they only support my claim that Vista won't drive more people to Linux in greater numbers. I think the success of Linux depends on its continued development and increases usage. As more people use it the more they tell their friends and so on and so forth. It'll grow slow but its like any type of small business. You start out doing small amounts of business and as you grow you take on proportionally more and more.
I think Linux will only become more and more influential as time goes by, but I don't think the success of Vista will be influenced in and measureable way by Linux. I think Linux growth is purely momentum but people need to keep in mind that Microsoft also has a lot of momentum and their products are becoming more and more complete in the corporate world which will only make it harder for Linux. I think its the corporate world Microsoft wants to keep and anything else is just gravy.
Most of the corporate improvements they've made to their products don't really help the home user but of course a lot of things that help business do ultimately affect home users so in the end everyone will be more satisfied with Windows. This is to be expected though, people weren't satisfied with Oracle 7 which is why we have Oracle 10g now. Linux will continue to improve so for now its pick the right product for the platform, neither of them are perfect which is why email blasts are done using Debian and sendmail while calendaring and collaboration are done with Exchange/Sharepoint.
At any rate, I don't doubt that Windows will continue to be pirated in the future but Microsoft could be a lot more restrictive given the tools that they already have in place. The BSA are at least as bad as the RIAA/MPAA. In either case I find it a rare case that people go with Linux because its free. There are instances but usually its because it does what they need it to do and won't get bogged down trying to do other things like a Windows box can.
The parent to my post replied with the answer to this. Today 1/3rd of new Windows machines are pirated. That means the majority of the growth is not pirated. There is nothing to reconcile, piracy in this day is not what it was back in 95. For whatever reason more people are buying. I don't know too many people switching to Linux because Windows is too expensive. The few times I've converted our servers to Linux its been because we didn't have a Windows license and it was easy to find a distribution fit for that function without a lot of effort.
That said, how many people pirated an upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP? I'll guesstimate not many. Most people leave the old operating system on the computer until the computer dies and then they buy a new one with the latest OS. That's why we still have so many 98/2k machines out there.
I'd argue that there isn't a ton of piracy except among technical circles which know that you can run alternate operating systems.
Agreed.
The Linux 'brand' is now almost a household word and many none techie people are at least receptive of the suggestion of trying it out. Some of these people are even converting for good. Sure they aren't fanboi's, in fact most of them are over 45 in my expirence, though at least they are also showing their children their nice easy to use computer that 'Just Works'(tm). Also with the addition of wine and cedega support for WoW every day not-so-geeky types are also dipping their feet in the water and enjoying what they find (mostly with ubuntu or some with suse).
So in reality the Linux Desktop is here, it has been for over a year, and the people have been coming.
I ate your fish.
Slashdot is unavailable quite a lot for posting due to DB maint, meaning that all pages are coming from the cache and not the DB. Commment/etc posting is disabled, and I'd estimate it's more than 30 minutes per day average lately. With an oracle cluster this would not be an issue.
It's installed by the vendor and the user buys it as part of the original purchase. Most home users aren't up to doing their own OS installs. By the time it's upgrade time, unless they've upgraded them, which means they're out of the "most" category, their machine is probably inadequate for the next-gen OS... and at this point, they've got a whole lot of legacy Windows software.
Tech Public Policy stuff
"Depends on how much money you lose if your web site is down becuase of lack af a serious professional solution, as you call it."
I don't know about any "non professional solution" going down when deployed and on hands of a knowledgeable systems administrator.
On the other hand, I see a full lot of "professional solutions" going down real hard on a daily basis due to substandard sysadmins (heck! substandard seems to be the standard nowadays).
Curiously enough, corporations still happen to prefer "professional solutions" to "knowledgeable sysadmins".
Let me emphasize that: NOTHING.
"Big databases" insert that many rows every time someone sneezes.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
- has cluster-aware multi-threaded hot backups.
- has the ability to to rolling upgrades.
- can bump a major version number without having to dump/restore the whole database
The "planetary scale support apparatus" is also damned useful. At 03:00 EDT when the database isn't acting like the docs say it's supposed to act like, there's someone awake/at work in Europe or Australia ready to help you."I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1