I'm an Oracle professional. I don't see any free software close to as good as their database software.
By using Oracle, you're giving up your freedom. It may be convenient, or even profitable, but it isn't right. Its a fairly easy argument to make that if all software were free, Oracle wouldn't be in business, therefore nobody would be able to use a database as good as Oracle's is today. Someone else pointed out that you can't be sure of that conclusion. In that other world, users could have made other arrangements to develop a free data base that is as good or better. The lack of today's easy-way-out could have motivated them to do so. That is not inevitable. Perhaps there would not be such a powerful data base system. If so, so what? Freedom is more important than technical progress. In that world, I would tell those users, "If you care enough about having a more powerful data base system, get together and fund improvements in free data bases. Or, if you don't think it's really so important, then don't." My argument for free software has always been how great the software is that is free. That's a side issue. The argument for free software is that we must have freedom. In some areas, free software is technically better than proprietary software, but not always. However, free software is always ethically better, and that is what really matters anyway. _______________________________________________ gnu-emacs-sources mailing list gnu-emacs-sources@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources