Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:
> e_arizon_benito@yahoo.com (Enrique Ariz�n) commented:
>> Is there any OBJETIVE reason not to change to Ingres?
> Back to the Ingres question, it is _possible_ that the Ingres code
> base may be usable / maintainable / improvable. It is by no means
> guaranteed that this is so.
We were asked exactly this question when Borland tossed Firebird (nee
Interbase) over the fence. I mind at least one prediction that Postgres
and MySQL would soon be, er, toast. Curiously enough, we're still here,
and Firebird has had only the most marginal uptake among those who
weren't already users of the commercial version.
Maybe the story for Ingres will be different, but I bet not. Keep in
mind that Ingres is a commercial derivative of the system that Prof.
Stonebraker abandoned when he decided to create Postgres. Sure, CA put
lots of development effort into what they got from Berkeley ... but a
lot of development effort has gone into Postgres since it left Berkeley,
too. There isn't any credible reason to assume that Ingres is a better
development foundation than Postgres, nor that it will attract more
development manpower than Postgres has.
> It seems much more likely that CA has concluded that they can't make
> any more money off of Ingres,
This is the absolute, undisputable, unvarnished bottom line. If they
thought they could still make a dime off it, they'd have kept it.
Since they don't think they can, what is a rational assumption about
the value of the code to the rest of us?
regards, tom lane