Comments on: The demise of the open source fanatic http://freedb2.com/2008/08/03/the-demise-of-the-open-source-fanatic/ Big Data, Hadoop, free databases and a whole lot of Cloud Computing Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:31:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Lightway http://freedb2.com/2008/08/03/the-demise-of-the-open-source-fanatic/comment-page-1/#comment-1182 Lightway Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:42:16 +0000 http://freedb2.com/?p=61#comment-1182 Great article Leon, and I'm glad you touched on the Open Source fanatic culture. You've pretty much summed up my own feelings and analysis of Open Source software, so I won't touch on that since you described it really well. For me personally, I recommend to my boss the best tool for the job. That may be Open Source, or that may be a commercial, enterprise level product. In house, 9-5, portal content management system? You want to use MySQL? Yeah, we can take a look at that. Your 9-5 application code and support is optimized for SQL Server? Okay, we can look at that too. You want to install Open Source on my 24/7 ERP system? I don't think so, no way, no how, no chance. Wait, okay, I'll agree to do it, but you have to carry my Blackberry around now and answer any calls that come in. :-) Pick the best tool for the job, not by ideology. Patrick, A big part of the success of Linux is because of IBM's tremendous investment into it. At one point we joked that it was IBMinux, because of the large amount of contributions IBM made, not only with functionality and coding, but with a huge marketing push. If I could have picked a "dream" open source platform, it would have been Postgres on FreeBSD. This is an enterprise level combination, though getting vendor support for it would be a nightmare. Both systems offer a very mature codebase, and rock solid stability. Scalability has slowed down a bit, compared with commercial offerings, but these are still two very well engineered, blue-collar Open Source tools that you can throw everyone and the kitchen sink at and they will still stay up and running. Great article Leon, and I’m glad you touched on the Open Source fanatic culture. You’ve pretty much summed up my own feelings and analysis of Open Source software, so I won’t touch on that since you described it really well.

For me personally, I recommend to my boss the best tool for the job. That may be Open Source, or that may be a commercial, enterprise level product.

In house, 9-5, portal content management system? You want to use MySQL? Yeah, we can take a look at that. Your 9-5 application code and support is optimized for SQL Server? Okay, we can look at that too.

You want to install Open Source on my 24/7 ERP system? I don’t think so, no way, no how, no chance. Wait, okay, I’ll agree to do it, but you have to carry my Blackberry around now and answer any calls that come in. :-)

Pick the best tool for the job, not by ideology.

Patrick,

A big part of the success of Linux is because of IBM’s tremendous investment into it. At one point we joked that it was IBMinux, because of the large amount of contributions IBM made, not only with functionality and coding, but with a huge marketing push.

If I could have picked a “dream” open source platform, it would have been Postgres on FreeBSD. This is an enterprise level combination, though getting vendor support for it would be a nightmare. Both systems offer a very mature codebase, and rock solid stability. Scalability has slowed down a bit, compared with commercial offerings, but these are still two very well engineered, blue-collar Open Source tools that you can throw everyone and the kitchen sink at and they will still stay up and running.

]]> By: Leon http://freedb2.com/2008/08/03/the-demise-of-the-open-source-fanatic/comment-page-1/#comment-1157 Leon Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:58:52 +0000 http://freedb2.com/?p=61#comment-1157 Patrick, there is no question that Open Source movement has had a huge impact on the way commercial software developers like IBM operate. You are absolutely correct, if there was no MySQL there would not have been DB2 Express-C. Patrick, there is no question that Open Source movement has had a huge impact on the way commercial software developers like IBM operate. You are absolutely correct, if there was no MySQL there would not have been DB2 Express-C.

]]> By: Patrick http://freedb2.com/2008/08/03/the-demise-of-the-open-source-fanatic/comment-page-1/#comment-1151 Patrick Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:27:43 +0000 http://freedb2.com/?p=61#comment-1151 Well, at least open source has had very innovative in terms of customer relationship. Without the Open Source products success, IBM (and others) would NEVER have given such a product for free... Well, at least open source has had very innovative in terms of customer relationship.
Without the Open Source products success, IBM (and others) would NEVER have given such a product for free…

]]> By: Fred Sobotka http://freedb2.com/2008/08/03/the-demise-of-the-open-source-fanatic/comment-page-1/#comment-28 Fred Sobotka Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:26:17 +0000 http://freedb2.com/?p=61#comment-28 Hi Leon, I'm glad you made it out to OSCON this year. I was in town, but I was busy with a big roll-out for a client and could not make it out to the conference. I was hoping you'd call me to meet up for a beverage, but you were probably too busy spreading the word about DB2 Express-C. See you in Warsaw, Fred Hi Leon,

I’m glad you made it out to OSCON this year. I was in town, but I was busy with a big roll-out for a client and could not make it out to the conference. I was hoping you’d call me to meet up for a beverage, but you were probably too busy spreading the word about DB2 Express-C.

See you in Warsaw,

Fred

]]> By: leon http://freedb2.com/2008/08/03/the-demise-of-the-open-source-fanatic/comment-page-1/#comment-27 leon Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:30:19 +0000 http://freedb2.com/?p=61#comment-27 Robert, too bad you did not get to talk to us at OSCON. We are not at all intimidated by Ingres shirts. We have had a number of Ingres employees stop by the booth and we do have very good relationships with all of the open source databases. Not sure if you heard but IBM even funded EnterpriseDB to the tune of $10M. I have to admit that open source databases are quite a bit different than most other open source projects. If one was to look at the most well known open source databases like MySQL, PosgreSQL, Ingres etc. only PostgreSQL, EnterpriseDB etc. really accepts any significant volume of contributions. The others simply publish the source and it is way too difficult to contribute even patches never mind any sizable chunks of function. This was one of persistent complaints at the MySQL conference and believe it or not it came from Yahoo and Google employees. On the innovation. I completely agree that is tons of innovation in the open source community. I just disagree with the general tone that the icons of the open source are putting out there. I think there is a heck of a lot more innovation done by the startups and commercial developers. Granted, commercial developers may use a bit of the fruits of labour of the open source guys (they'd use a heck of a lot more if it was not for the lawyers and viral licensing issues). And unlike the pre-bubble era, startups use a lot of open source now but they still add a ton of innovative technologies and business models on top. Yes, Apple based Mac OS X on BSD Unix but there is really no comparison between the seed and the fruit (sorry, I know it is cheesy but I just couldn't resits). Robert, too bad you did not get to talk to us at OSCON. We are not at all intimidated by Ingres shirts. We have had a number of Ingres employees stop by the booth and we do have very good relationships with all of the open source databases. Not sure if you heard but IBM even funded EnterpriseDB to the tune of $10M.
I have to admit that open source databases are quite a bit different than most other open source projects. If one was to look at the most well known open source databases like MySQL, PosgreSQL, Ingres etc. only PostgreSQL, EnterpriseDB etc. really accepts any significant volume of contributions. The others simply publish the source and it is way too difficult to contribute even patches never mind any sizable chunks of function. This was one of persistent complaints at the MySQL conference and believe it or not it came from Yahoo and Google employees.
On the innovation. I completely agree that is tons of innovation in the open source community. I just disagree with the general tone that the icons of the open source are putting out there. I think there is a heck of a lot more innovation done by the startups and commercial developers. Granted, commercial developers may use a bit of the fruits of labour of the open source guys (they’d use a heck of a lot more if it was not for the lawyers and viral licensing issues). And unlike the pre-bubble era, startups use a lot of open source now but they still add a ton of innovative technologies and business models on top. Yes, Apple based Mac OS X on BSD Unix but there is really no comparison between the seed and the fruit (sorry, I know it is cheesy but I just couldn’t resits).

]]> By: Robert Treat http://freedb2.com/2008/08/03/the-demise-of-the-open-source-fanatic/comment-page-1/#comment-26 Robert Treat Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:52:52 +0000 http://freedb2.com/?p=61#comment-26 Sorry I didn't bump into you at OSCon, the guys I did bump into at the IBM wasn't terribly approachable (in fairness, I was sporting a postgres shirt, so that may have been intimidating). Anyway, couple thoughts: First, the database market gives you a very weird perception of open source, where open source is not simply access to the code, but also involves open community development. That's actually a big part of what people think of when they talk about open source, but its gets summarized as access to the code, which is misleading. Yes, MySQL (and Ingres, and many others) gets very little community development, but much of this is because MySQL is not a community developed project, but a corporately developed product. If you want to see community development in progress, you have to look at Postgres, which does have a number of commercial contributors, but everyone approaches it as a community developer (ie. working for Sun gets you no special rights compared to a guy who just rolls in off the street, it's all about the code) Second, while I would agree that much of Open Source development is re-inventing existing wheels, you're own example of Apple shows you are overlooking the contributions that open source made to Apple. Consider the difference between MacOS 9 and OSX... without the open source underpinnings, I don't think Apple would have ever been able to push the desktop in the direction it has. Another example might be Google, which has clearly done innovative things in the search and systems management areas, but they have also said it would not have been possible without the open source toolset. I think that's typically what we see from most open source development now days... it doesn't necessarily innovate itself, but it enables innovation that just couldn't happen otherwise. Maybe that just means it depends on what you mean by the "real innovators" are... if it is the specific people who push something that next step, the whole open/closed thing is pretty irrelevant to innovation in general... what really innovators are smart programmers who can dedicate themselves to a task without having to worry about paying their mortgage, once you have that the rest is just details. Sorry I didn’t bump into you at OSCon, the guys I did bump into at the IBM wasn’t terribly approachable (in fairness, I was sporting a postgres shirt, so that may have been intimidating). Anyway, couple thoughts:

First, the database market gives you a very weird perception of open source, where open source is not simply access to the code, but also involves open community development. That’s actually a big part of what people think of when they talk about open source, but its gets summarized as access to the code, which is misleading. Yes, MySQL (and Ingres, and many others) gets very little community development, but much of this is because MySQL is not a community developed project, but a corporately developed product. If you want to see community development in progress, you have to look at Postgres, which does have a number of commercial contributors, but everyone approaches it as a community developer (ie. working for Sun gets you no special rights compared to a guy who just rolls in off the street, it’s all about the code)

Second, while I would agree that much of Open Source development is re-inventing existing wheels, you’re own example of Apple shows you are overlooking the contributions that open source made to Apple. Consider the difference between MacOS 9 and OSX… without the open source underpinnings, I don’t think Apple would have ever been able to push the desktop in the direction it has. Another example might be Google, which has clearly done innovative things in the search and systems management areas, but they have also said it would not have been possible without the open source toolset. I think that’s typically what we see from most open source development now days… it doesn’t necessarily innovate itself, but it enables innovation that just couldn’t happen otherwise.

Maybe that just means it depends on what you mean by the “real innovators” are… if it is the specific people who push something that next step, the whole open/closed thing is pretty irrelevant to innovation in general… what really innovators are smart programmers who can dedicate themselves to a task without having to worry about paying their mortgage, once you have that the rest is just details.

]]>