After takin a swig o' Arrakan spice grog, bnichols@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Brad Nicholson) belched out: > On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 16:38 -0500, Philip Hallstrom wrote: >> > On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 10:10:56AM -0500, Tony Caduto wrote: >> >> For a high level corp manager all they ever hear about is MS SQL Server, >> >> Oracle and DB2, and the more it costs the more they think it is what >> >> they need :-) >> > >> > I think that description is false. At a certain point in the >> > management hierarchy, the only way anyone has the ability to evaluate >> > something is on the basis of reputation. >> >> I think that description is false. At a certain point in the management >> hierarchy, the only way anyone has the ability to evaluate something is on >> the basis of.... >> >> - if there is someone they can sue. > > Good luck attempting to sue Microsoft, Oracle or IBM for deficiencies in > their database products. Ah, but there *is* a value in this, as, if you buy licenses from these companies, they become anodynes to attract infringement lawsuits of one sort or another. If it were to turn out, for instance, that PostgreSQL were found to be using a patented algorithm that someone wanted to sue people about, that is fairly certain to hit users. In contrast, if a similar infringement were found with one of the products of, say, IBM, you might discover that you got some value for money out of those licensing fees in that the only folks sued are likely to be IBM... That's not an event we expect to see happen terribly frequently, but it's of non-zero value... -- (reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.liamg" "@" "enworbbc")) http://linuxdatabases.info/info/linuxdistributions.html "It's difficult to extract sense from strings, but they're the only communication coin we can count on." -- Alan Perlis
