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Re: What so special about PostgreSQL and other RDBMS?

From: Dusan Bolek <pagesflames_at_usa.net>
Date: 24 May 2004 09:50:21 -0700
Message-ID: <1e8276d6.0405240850.6528ed09@posting.google.com>


quirk_at_syntac.net (Quirk) wrote in message news:<4e20d3f.0405240218.6eedf26e_at_posting.google.com>...
> Noons <wizofoz2k_at_yahoo.com.au.nospam> wrote in message news:<40af7768$0$3038$afc38c87_at_news.optusnet.com.au>...
> However, there is clear zealotry in your post, for example:
>
> You said: "It's with freeware that you need a STACK of wrappers to
> protect you from sudden underlying code changes! Not with commercial
> software!"
>
> See: no other reasoning is given why underlying code may suddenly
> change other than in one case it is _free_, in the other case it is
> _commercial_. This is not a reasoned argument, but rather the faith of
> a zealot.
>
> Since neither freeness nor commercialness has a direct impact on code
> stability, but rather the release management practices of the
> development group has.
>
> There are badly managed free software projects, and badly managed
> nonfree ones, your argument is therefore a fallacy, although your
> english, like Volker's is great!

Sorry for interrupting your flame, but I must step in. This statement is simply not true. In fact a problematic release management is probably the biggest single problem of free software projects in general. Even a big projects like Squid, Apache or even Linux itself have serious problems in this area and the behaviour of smaller ones is just unacceptable from a point of view of real production implementations.
Typical for this is a lack of backward compatibility, a huge (and often unnecessary) changes in config files (thus the need to rewrite all configs after upgrade) and releasing unfinished code (too many hacks used, no documentation ...).
I'm using a lot of both commercial and free softs, but I must admit that these problems are much more frequent on the free ones.

--
Dusan Bolek
Received on Mon May 24 2004 - 11:50:21 CDT

Original text of this message

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