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To Support, or Not Support Oracle?
knuckles79 wonders: "The suggestion to drop Oracle support has divided the OpenACS community. OpenACS is a toolkit for building community websites. It was derived from Ars Digita's ACS code base which originally supported Oracle. When Ars Digita went bust after the tech crash, the ACS code was released as open source, and a community of developers continued to maintain and extend the code base. Up until now, OpenACS has supported both PostgreSQL and Oracle. However, the only active development within the project supports PostgreSQL. Now, those with an interest in Oracle support are threatening to divide the community, as they want the community to continue to support Oracle, even though they themselves aren't actively contributing financial or development support for their favoured database. They have essentially been given a 'free ride' all this time. Should OpenACS continue to support Oracle, or drop it in favour of a full open source stack?"
That's the beauty of the evolution of open source software. Unneeded features that slow development can be dropped just as easily (if not easier) as new features can be added. If there is a strong enough demand for that particular feature, the users can maintain their own fork or pay someone to do it for them. No one should expect a free ride, let alone make demands on the developers.
One thing the users of the feature might consider is contacting Oracle. Let them know that the reason they are using their database is because of application X, and application X will soon no longer support Oracle. If this happens, they will no longer be able to continue to use Oracle. See if Oracle can devote some man-hours to contributing patches for their database.
If not, remember that you get what you pay for. You are shelling out $$$ for Oracle, but not spending any on your app. Consider an appropriately-sized "donation" to a project developer to keep the feature that keeps you in business.
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This issue isn't necessarily that the application "requires the strength of Oracle".
There will be many places where a particular organisation has invested time, money and resources to their Oracle installation for other requirements. If they already have Oracle and Oracle resources why not take advantage of that support in an application rather than learning PostgreSQL, MySQL or some other RDBMS and committing more, possibly stretched or unavailable, resources to another system.
How can a group of users who contribute nothing "divide the community"? They can go off by themselves, and nothing will happen.
Why is it people think that others are taking advantage (in a negative way) when someone uses Open Source, but doesn't have the skills to provide code back?
Ok, I admit that if the audience is big enough, and monetary donations are relevent that code is not the only way to contribute.
At the end of the day isn't it the idea that people are using it that matters?
As for supporting Oracle there are long-term advantages to supporting multiple databases; focusing on a single database allows for taking advantage of it's features, but at the expense of future compatibility with other databases, possibly tying the new versions to too many proprietary features making it diffiicult to support alternatives.
Isn't that the argument generally used when supporting multiple browsers. Supporting multiple browsers, and working towards standards has long term benefits.
Why is this being asked on Slashdot? If OpenACS is "a toolkit for building community websites," then the community at OpenACS's website should answer this. The link to the OpenACS forums shows there is already a large discussion happening people who actually use the system.
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