[Info-Ingres] ingres janitors

[On Web]

"Karl & Betty Schendel" <schendel at kbcomputer.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.83.1195223532.18164.info-ingres at kettleriverconsulting.com...
> At 12:03 PM +0000 11/16/07, On Web wrote:
>>
>>If there was a clear trend that people are keen to board the ingres
>>development train, I'd support the programme, but without any evidence 
>>that
>>the demand exists (or can be built) then I think it will cost ingres money
>>and worse still divert effort away from initiatives that can make money or
>>build market share.
>
> I think you miss a crucial point:  this *IS* an initiative that
> can make money and/or build market share.  The Apprentices /
> Janitors project is a motivator to get the whole open source
> community thing going for real.

I don't see how it's going to help it get it going for real. It'll help 
Datallegro and Marty, but you guys are doing what you do even without the 
initiative. Will make submitting code changes and easing ingres dource 
development encourage people to develop for ingres?

What will motivate an open-source developer to hook up to ingres (besides 
ease of accessibility)? If ingres doesn't get a significant group of 
developers together then I don't see how it can be worthwhile.

> Ingres Corp has positioned itself as an Open Source provider.  From
> day one, the open source-ness has been a key marketing hook, and if
> you take that away or ignore it, it's very difficult for me to see
> what you replace it with.  And yet, Ingres Corp has done very little
> to date to demonstrate any level of openness or community building
> other than dumping snapshots of the source code into the public
> from time to time.

snip

>*BUT* if they are
> to be an Open Source company, they have to act like it,
> and this is the first belated step.  Trends or projections
> or potential developer counts have nothing to do with it.
> This, or something like it, is a MUST DO or Ingres has
> to find some other "hook" besides Open Source.  And the
> latter is going to be a *lot* harder and more expensive.

I tend to regard open-source a bit like thegreen movement. It's trendy to be 
green and it's trendy to be open-source. It's a badge. It makes for 
interesting press releases and company promotion at negligible cost.

In reality I think that most corporations get more benefit from announcing 
about open-source than they do in supposedly aquiring free development 
benefit. It attracts some third parties towards a product since they can now 
get involved with bundling technologies.

I think that the open-source projects that have been successful have come 
from development communities getting together to build a product/cool 
system, rather than from established companies with mature product who 
decide to go open-source.

snip

> I think Paul Mason said it well:  it's about lowering the barriers
> to entry.  If we make it easy for someone who's fooling with Cool
> New Technology X to pull an Ingres and plug it in, then everyone
> wins.  Otherwise we have to wait for X to succeed enough for
> Ingres Corp to devote resources to it, and that's not going to work.

At the moment ingres has to do that chasing - there are too many other 
alternatives for people to buy into. If I have some fantastic ruby package 
that requires a special database plug in to function am I going to invest my 
development effort in ingres or MySQL? Which will give me the best return on 
my investment?

Karl, I admit to knowing little about the open-source dynamic and to talking 
through a certain part of my anatomy. That said, this is my perception and I 
have seen evidence of companies (I don't mean ingres) adopting open source, 
expounding it's virtues then really not pushing that forward with any 
enthusiasm. It certainly has worked as a good way of publicising product for 
some companies.

In any  event, it's been an interesting discussion and I didn't want this 
janitors (ugh) initiative to not have any discussion about it's merit. I 
hope you guys prove me wrong (it won't be the first time). If I was behind 
the big desk it wouldn't happen!

I have to say my quick look around the ingres site today left me with a more 
positive impression of ingres than I've had in some time.

Paul

> -- 
> Karl R. Schendel, Jr.         schendel at kbcomputer.com
> DATAllegro Inc
> Ingres DBMS Server Development
>