databases [was: Re: Ruby Active Record]

[Alex Tweedly]

Ruslan Zasukhin wrote:

>On 4/20/06 9:42 PM, "Russ McBride" <russmcb at tsw.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Yeah, it seems crazy these days to actually have to *pay* for a
>>database.  
>>    
>>
>
>Wow. What an interesting point of view !!!  :-)
>Hmm, why not say:
>    it seems crazy to pay for Revolution or other RAD tools
>    it seems crazy to pay for compilers
>    it seems crazy to pay for MS Office
>    it seems crazy to pay for Adobe products.
>
>  
>
The difference is that there exist a number of (more or less) adequate 
DBs which are free (in one sense or another). You, or I, may or may not 
like that fact - but it is a fact  nevertheless. Therefore it can be 
viewed as "crazy"to choose to pay for one - UNLESS the one you pay for 
provides significant benefits (as we already heard, Frontbase does for 
some people, we know Valentina does for some people, etc.)

There is nothing resembling Rev which is free, nor some of the Adobe 
products.
Personally, I do thinks it's crazy to pay for Office products :-)
compilers are perhaps more varied and specialized - but I ran a 2000+ 
developer organization on free compilers, producing very large software 
products. (though we paid a lot of money for a support contract for 
those "free" compilers :-)

>People. You ARE developers.
>Please stop this evil and crazy ideas of free software!
>
>It will throw programming industry into death.
>Believe you into this or no.
>
>I am related to universities, and I know that last 5 years many smart guys
>which COULD be good and cool programmers (by their school activity) have
>choose other specialty. Reasons? Simple:
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>A) They listen SUCH danger discussions about free software...
>And they make conclusions...They do not want work in future for free.
>So - NOT PROFITABLE.
>
>B) today all major software exists. No chances invent and implement
>something really new and cool. So - NOT INTERESTING.
>  
>
I think a major, additional reason is
C. They read in the press about software jobs being off-shored, and 
think there will be no jobs.

They didn't read the small print that said that the number of software 
jobs in the US is still growing even during the off-shoring fad. IMO 
off-shoring is a fad - it will settle down into a successful long term 
strategy, but at a much lower impact than the last few years of "gold 
rush" activity.

<rest of my reply snipped - too contentious, too OT>

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net

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