From: Brian Candler Date: 2005-07-08T01:59:31+09:00 Subject: Re: Marketing a system that relies on a component that is alpha version 0.1 On Thu, Jul 07, 2005 at 12:30:47PM +0900, Jenjhiz wrote: > Oh, i'm not advocating the use of Oracle. I'm trying to find a way to > get Ruby in our corporate door. No matter how great the Ruby > application I develop for my company, if it uses a critical component > that is *alpha* and *version 0.1* for many years, it will never ever > get pass the door. Then your management seems to have missed the point. This is Open Source software. This means that what you get is what you get. You get NO WARRANTY (in big capitals in all the licence agreements I've seen). If it works for you, then great; if it doesn't, it doesn't. But it doesn't cost you anything either. If an Open Source person releases a version 1.0, or a version 0.1, you cannot infer anything from that about the quality of the software. You can *ask* the author how good he or she *thinks* the software is, if you like. You can ask other users. You can test and evaluate the software yourself. You can look at the quality of the coding itself and the documentation. But the version number is totally meaningless. FWIW: I used ruby OCI8 *heavily* in production at the place I left two years ago. It's still working solidly there. I found the program author to be extremely helpful, and when I managed to find a couple of bugs he promptly fixed them (even though he said he wasn't really working on OCI8 much any more) Generally, you will find open source software authors err on the side of caution and humility when asked to say how good their software is. OCI8 is marked "alpha, but usable". In fact, I've found it to be completely solid. If it were being sold as a commercial product, then of course the marketing people would tell you it's wonderful (even if it were bug-ridden). Would you rather hear that? Version numbers like 1.0, 2.0 are marketing, nothing more. Perhaps your company won't use OpenSSL, because it's version 0.9.8, but will use OpenLDAP 2.3.4 ?? What about OpenLDAP 2.2.26, which is marked "stable" by the OpenLDAP team? Does their definition of 'stable' match with your definition of 'stable', and is this true for every other software project? > No matter how well that component works. If you work > for a company with strict standards, that's the reality. Then it sounds like your company's policy will *only* allow you to deal with commercial software vendors - those who will offer you a guarantee (at a price). In which case, you don't need to engage the open source community at all. > My point is > that it's time for the Ruby community to move away from the hacker's > lair and into, well, an office if not the boardroom. You need to dress > the dress, mate. I can't speak for the author of OCI8. But I can speak for myself: I enjoy releasing software, and it's nice to know that other people might benefit from it, the same way as I've benefited from the huge amount of other open software out there. It's nice to know that other people may find bugs (which may save me time finding them myself), and even fix bugs for me. I don't mind offering some support to those who need a hand-hold to start using it; I have benefitted hugely from such support myself over the years. But I care very little for commercial entities who wish to use my work for free, *and* then denegrate me for the way I choose to release or number my software - without actually taking the trouble to participate in its development themselves. Sounds to me like they just want to take, and not give. Well, why should I care about them? > < ... so they will with dbms as money gets tighter. ...> > And a mass exodus to MySQL and Postgres will ensue? I've seen it happen, although clearly it doesn't happen in every industry. Regards, Brian.