On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 04:37:23PM +0100, Alex Stapleton wrote:
> Release a cheaper / free alternative and people will use it because
> they will have almost no reason not to. This means that cheaper and
> as good as does have a place in the market even if it's not a
> conventional solution. It just needs evidence and evangelism. The
> current market should not be the principal target.
I agree with this; but I'm always concerned about something that's
_almost_ as good as the competition, but not quite there, being
pointed at as being "as good as" the competition. That way lies an
invitation to the point-and-laugh responses that MySQL's so-called
cluster system has garnered: it's too dangerous to use for many
systems where the data is important enough, because the failure mode
is "near-complete catastrophe". See another thread, where I talk
about the strategy some companies may be using of lumping PostgreSQL
in with other products, and then attacking the other product.
Irrelevance may be fallacious, but it makes for depressingly
successful marketing.
A
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Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
A certain description of men are for getting out of debt, yet are
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--Alexander Hamilton