On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 01:02:11PM -0400, Will French wrote: > >> So they gave you all the details they could. > > Did they? That was my whole argument. Over the past 6 months I have read > no fewer than 10 responses from the team which have, in effect, said "we > don't know, quit bugging us."
I believe that they've given details and referred folks to their "standard practices" for releases more than once in the last few months. And it's certainly in the archives--I know it has come up a few times in the last few years. > During the same period, they have found time to name the dolphin and > get venture funding and write about the booths they are setting up > at various trades shows. The developers write code. The marketing and sales folks do their jobs. The President, CTO, CEO, and Board do their things. Now here's the key: They do this in parallel. > All of this is important. I strongly support their efforts to be > financially successful. I just think that it would be good (and in > their economic interest) to more prominently feature news that > summarized the development efforts, how they are going, and what the > latest thinking is about the timing of milestones. Fair enough. > >> But the analogy does not fit. These guys are cutting new ground. > > The analogy absolutely fits. They are not cutting new ground! Does > their work involve innovation? Absolutely! But they are not > building the super-collider or mapping the human genome here. They > are writing business software, and that, my friend, is a > well-traveled road. Well, they are one of the ONLY companies in the world that does it in an Open Source model. That certainly is new ground. They have to balance the needs of their paying customers and their Open Source fans in ways that virtually no other company does. That's hard. They folks at MySQL make no secret of it. > >> Otherwise, you'd have gone with Microsoft or Oracle... > > Actually, you have this backwards. I have been a Microsoft SQL > Server developer for years and find it to be an incredibly good > tool. I explored MySQL because I like the open source model and I > am interested in offering my clients a choice. While I know that > many in this group will consider this blastphamous, at this stage, > SQL Server is a vastly superior product in many ways. I don't know. My experience is that 99% of the folks on this list are reasonable people who understand that every product has its strengths and weaknesses. > A discussion of why I feel this would require a separate thread all > its own, and frankly I am not interested in a pissing match with the > MS haters. I use MS products when I feel they are the best solution > to my clients business problems. And that makes you a good engineer/developer/programmer. > I would like to reccomend and use MySQL in a similar fashion and I > feel that when 4.1 is released, I will be able to do so without > reservation. I am not so much interested in re-engineering every > system I ever wrote to use MySQL. > > >> [you feel that] since you've spent that money you are entitled > > Actually, no. My two points are that 1) being free isn't enough, by > itself, to make it a good buy -and- 2) their for-pay business model > might well benefit from the improved communications I have > suggested. Then I suggest this exercise. Contact someone on the MySQL Sales staff. Ask them about the development roadmap. Explain why you're interested. I'm sure they'll be glad to talk with you. I know for a fact that they have at leats one potential [large] customer who is testing the 4.1 code. Why? Because they think that 4.1 is the product they want to buy. So they want to evaluate it and make sure it does what they need. In return they're also providng MySQL some feedback about 4.1. (Hopefully I don't get in hot water for saying so.) A lot of that doesn't normally come up on this list, and I'm not sure it needs to. Jeremy -- Jeremy D. Zawodny | Perl, Web, MySQL, Linux Magazine, Yahoo! <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | http://jeremy.zawodny.com/ MySQL 3.23.51: up 22 days, processed 466,798,594 queries (236/sec. avg) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
