Re: off to the farm to start new career ...
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:05:17 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <7f5a6517-152e-4b2f-9bc4-89dfb5baad66_at_i4g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 14, 6:22 am, Tuomas <ho..._at_lut.fi> wrote:
> On 10/09/10 20:19, joel garry wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Sep 10, 3:28 am, Tuomas<ho..._at_lut.fi> wrote:
> >> (This is mostly about corporate politics, i.e.. off topic, please bear with me.)
>
> >> On 09/09/10 18:32, Mladen Gogala wrote:
> >> ....
>
> >>> As a matter of fact, I tried pushing for DB2 because I am still
> >>> suspicious of open source databases, especially after the MySQL story.
>
> >> On the other hand licensing is such that you may use your existing DBs
> >> forever and most of the support is community driven anyway (applies, in
> >> reality, to MS or Oracle, too), so the impact of the owner changes aren't so
> >> major as in the case of a commercial product. If MySQL were a commercial
> >> product (actually: closed source), I'd be really worried and new projects
> >> would search alternatives.
>
> > What do you do when the community goes away?
>
> Even then you have the option to learn it yourself, i.e. increase knowledge.
> It's a real PITA, I have admit that. But it's possible. ;)
I maintain that possibility is highly arguable. When was the last time you saw an application programmer delve into database internals? Even if they figure it out, they're likely to do more damage than help.
>
> Regarding to MySQL (or forks of it), I don't find it very probable option,
> the developers have already started a new product, MariaDB and it seems that
> it will replace MySQL in many distributions as Oracle isn't considered as
> reliable partner.
I worked on a bastardized DMS-500 (hierachical dbms) once - it would corrupt record pointers under certain obscure situations, and you'd have to manually figure them out and write a program to reset them. Good experience, no way to run an accounting department, certainly not reliable. Anything to avoid going back to those days!
>
> Currently it also seems that it will be a drop-in replacement of MySQL, so
> it sholdn't generate any problems.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh............. HAHAHAHAHAHA!
At least you didn't say nosql. (I haven't had a chance to see the OP link yet).
>
> We'll see, this is a topic which generates a lot of discussion everywhere,
> also here. (Sorry, but I didn't find c.d.o.s.discussion -group, does one exist?)
c.d.o.misc according to the group charter, though here is fine, most regulars look at both since they split off the same group years ago.
>
> --snipp--
>
> >> On the other hand, the amount of experience and knowledge needed to operate
> >> is somewhat higher than commercial products, many products do the job but
> >> aren't very user friendly or fine-tuned. That's a major cost sometimes,
> >> fortunately not too often. Most of this is internal, our clients have no
> >> idea what tools we are using and we are not advertising those either, unless
> >> someone asks.
>
> > Maybe my view is too skewed, but I see an order of magnitude greater
> > costs.
>
> From the experience or as a vision?
Experience. I work on some closed-source stuff that supplies the source of the apps, and has a pool of experienced programmers and analysts about. Even so, after some period of time, the programmers and analysts go do something else. Just now I'm working on such a program, from 9 years ago. If it wasn't me fixing it, who would it be? The vendor still provides support, but actual maintenance work would be charged 10x my salary, plus additional offshoring communication issues. The people who did it 9 years ago? They've all moved on, gotten real jobs or retired, with no fresh blood coming into that community in this country.
With open source database or OS, the issues are more technical and obscure. Sure, plenty of people now, but ten years on? Even the current people working on current stuff, it's just unrealistic to think any given end-user company is going to find someone to go deep in a timely manner.
I've seen a number of companies toss out bespoke systems that take a dozen programmers years to not complete, in favor of COTS. This usually happens when they realize they're spending a million bucks a year, to reinvent a $200K wheel.
>
> Our company is now about 10 years old (most people have much longer
> experience) and we haven't had such yet. Maybe it will come, who knows.
As with anything, it depends. If you are in Finland, the situation may be better for open source than here in the US. More than 10 years ago I was an open source advocate, now not so much. It appeals to me on an intellectual level, but like so many things, how it works in the real world varies.
jg
-- _at_home.com is bogus. Congratulations, Linus! http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/66241Received on Tue Sep 14 2010 - 12:05:17 CDT