On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 01:59 -0500, Robert Treat wrote:
> On Thursday 29 November 2007 21:12, Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> > Ingress is also an open source RDBM (and DataWarehouseing) and I'm
> > wondering if anyone here has anything to say about it. They also offer
> > community editions but I've not gone to see how much it differs/offers
> > compared to PG.
> >
>
> From a technology standpoint, Ingres is top notch, but it suffers from the
> same problem as most of the database solutions available; it is corporate
> owned/controlled rather than community owned/controlled.
I would agree with you on this perhaps 50% rather than 90%.
Being Corporate owned is not a bad thing(tm) for they present themselves
with these differences.
1. Roadmap
--> It's unfortunate, but enterprise customers or even large SMBs want
to see pretty pictures of where/when the features will come in with all
the bling.
--> It provides a feel-good feeling knowing that a big company, after
having paid XXX amount on it, the solution will not die in X number of
years leaving the customer stranded.
----> I've seen this happen and which is what steer the choice
2. Accountability
--> Community Owned/Control = no specific person to sue. (and we all
know how enterprises are sue-happy
--> The want a scapegoat. With Community, who's to be sued? (unless of
course they buy from a company such as MySQL or EnterpriseDB, they can
most certainly sue them for moolah)
I'm fine with it being corporate. It gives me a view of what's there to
come(but I care not about having someone to sue). What I don't like is
the the paid support which I've heard is not up to mark. (and no access
to developers via mailing lists which gets the job done in half the time
it takes to get a support ticket.)