Re: What so special about PostgreSQL and other RDBMS?

From: Edward Lloyd Hillman <edwardh_at_highstream.net>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 23:16:57 -0000
Message-ID: <109o67992jbs0c1@news.supernews.com>

In article <4e20d3f.0405070707.96af5a2_at_posting.google.com>,

        quirk_at_syntac.net (Quirk) writes:
> "Volker Hetzer" <volker.hetzer_at_ieee.org> wrote in message news:<c7fl8s$bjo$1_at_nntp.fujitsu-siemens.com>...
>

>> "Quirk" <quirk_at_syntac.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:4e20d3f.0405070046.50c2d5dd_at_posting.google.com...

[stuff snipped]

>> > if you contract an
>> > outside developer or licence an existing product, fine, as long as you
>> > have perpetual access to the source code and the *right* to modify it,
>> > or contract someone else to. If you do not, than you can not gaurantee
>> > the permenance of your application.

>

>> When will you get it, I don't *need* the right to modify it as long as I
>> have the right to have it modified by the guys who wrote it in the first plac
>> and are competent at it.

>  
> You have no such right, ever, the only right you _can_ have is the
> right to modify it yourself or contract someone to do it. Please read
> your licence.

Got a news flash for ya...

If you have a maintenance contract with a vendor and something of theirs' is broken, they must fix it if you need it. I know this because it happend to us recently at work. We found something broken it a version of a prticular commercial RDBMS that had been fixed in a later release, but due to customer requirements we cannot yet upgrade to that version (i.e., the customer is unwilling to pay for it at this time). The vendor didn't want to fix it but because the customer is paying them beaucoup bucks for a maintance contract we demanded that they do so. They did and supplied us with the necessary patch.

The only way you can get that kind of support is with a maintance contract. With Open Source we'd have had to spend many extra man-hours trying to find where the problem was and how to fix it without breaking anything else. And we didn't hace the time to fool with such nonsense as this occurred in a production application that had to be up 24x7x365.

-- 
Ed. Hillman
Signature?!?  I don't need no stinking signature!!

Received on Fri May 07 2004 - 18:16:57 CDT