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Re: What so special about PostgreSQL and other RDBMS?

From: Quirk <quirk_at_syntac.net>
Date: 10 May 2004 01:25:59 -0700
Message-ID: <4e20d3f.0405100025.fd32875@posting.google.com>


edwardh_at_highstream.net (Edward Lloyd Hillman) wrote in message news:<109o67992jbs0c1_at_news.supernews.com>...

> > You have no such right, ever, the only right you _can_ have is the
> > right to modify it yourself or contract someone to do it. Please read
> > your licence.
>
>
> Got a news flash for ya...

Oh boy, it's Seseme Street News, OK Kermit, keep talking.  

> If you have a maintenance contract with a vendor and something of
> theirs' is broken, they must fix it if you need it.

Perhaps, but when the product in question is proprietary you have no recourse when they fail, because no one else has any right to modify the source code.

When you have a right to the source code you can sign such a contarct with any firm you like, and fire their ass and hire another when they fail.

> I know this
> because it happend to us recently at work. We found something broken
> it a version of a prticular commercial RDBMS that had been fixed in a
> later release, but due to customer requirements we cannot yet upgrade
> to that version (i.e., the customer is unwilling to pay for it at this
> time). The vendor didn't want to fix it but because the customer is
> paying them beaucoup bucks for a maintance contract we demanded that
> they do so. They did and supplied us with the necessary patch.

I'm not sure what this example is supposed to illustrate. The vendor failed to fix the bug originaly and ony did so under dures, which only shows how vulnerable you where to begin with, if you had the right to say 'OK, were going to fire you and give someone else the contract' they would have fixed your bug pronto with no back talk. In anycase, you were lucky the vendor did decide to support you, other folks in the same situatuion have not been so lucky.  

> The only way you can get that kind of support is with a maintance
> contract. With Open Source we'd have had to spend many extra
> man-hours trying to find where the problem was and how to fix it
> without breaking anything else.

Why? You could have the exact same contarct with a vendor supporting an open source product, or negotiate access to source for the vendors product, the only difference being that you then have leverage. Or failing that, your application could have been designed to to give you alternatives,

You programmed yourself into a corner, and are now trying to use your folly, which nearly cost you a customer, as a positive example. Interesting.

It is people like you that warm the hearts of confidence men everywhere.

> And we didn't hace the time to fool
> with such nonsense as this occurred in a production application that
> had to be up 24x7x365.

But you put yourself in a position were you may have been unable you support your own customer _AT_ALL_ except for the good graces of your vendor. I pitty your customers if they really do expect to get 24x7x365 under such an arrangement.

Cheers. Received on Mon May 10 2004 - 03:25:59 CDT

Original text of this message

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