SearchEnterpriseLinux.com recently caught up with Sleepycat Software Inc. CEO Mike Olson to find out what’s new with open source Berkeley DB. In these excerpts from that conversation, Olsen talks about where Berkeley DB is positioned in the marketplace, and where it’s going in terms of features and functionality. Also, Olson discusses why he thinks ever-evolving attitudes toward open source will make hybrid offerings lucrative. He then runs through an interesting “thought experimentation” to show what would happen if Microsoft ever decided to embrace open source.
Sleepycat CEO Talks About Everything
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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If you’ve ever administered Subversion w/ berkeleydb, you know it’s not the dog’s bollocks. FSFS is your friend. http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/fsfs
The one thing you don’t want to do… is use Sleepycat for your closed source product. Mike Ol$on and his crew will shred your bank account into tatters. The guy is greedy like Micro$oft greedy. And the product quality is about the same as Micro$oft — it works, but just barely well enough to ship. Nothing compelling.
There are many other alternatives to GreedyCat. Do your research and do not get scammed and shredded by Mike Ol$on and the rest of the fat cats at Greedycat.
What [better] alternatives exist? In Java too? Thanks…
If you’ve ever administered Subversion w/ berkeleydb, you know it’s not the dog’s bollocks. FSFS is your friend. http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/fsfs
That is a very specific document. It just does not say much about the merits or problems of BDB in general. Subversion needs to store data that looks much like a filesystem /directory-tree. It is just natural that a storage engine which is tailored to this usage pattern performs better than a multi-purpose database engine.
BerkleyDB is licensed under the GPL and comes with many linux and BSD distibutions. SleepyCat are simply extending the software and providing it for free (GPL), you only have to pay if you want a license other than GPL. I dont see how that is greedy.
I have used DBD in many projects and prefer it to MySQL or other SQL implementations. Its much faster and simpler to programme for (in C and perl). Many internet applications that have a very high reliability use BDB (postfix is the first that comes to mind)
If you buy Berkeley DB for a closed source project, you will see what I mean. The cost is very high. Do your homework and find out about licensing and you will see what I am talking about.
In my years of experiences with databases, Sleepycat offers the worst value, by far, that I’ve ever seen.
There are of course many ramifications to Sleepycat’s greed. For one, it means if you want to use their technology in a product that is dual licensed, it is economically unfeasible. Secondly, it means that many small companies — the lifeblood of innovation — cannot use their product in closed source projects.
Overall, I cannot recommend this company’s products to anyone. There are better choices, many of which offer a value proposition orders of magnitude better than what Greedycat.
that’s because I can’t recommend making “closed source” software. WTF is that term anyway? Say what you mean: proprietary software. Software where you demand users give up their freedom for a copy, and where you prohibit your users from giving a copy of that software to anyone else.
So what are the alternatives? Can’t google out anything.
So what are the alternatives? Can’t google out anything.
Faircom is an alternative. But I do not know if it offers more value for money than BDB does. As far as I know, Faircom does not have any free-software licensing. In all honesty, I do not believe that BDB is as bad as GreedWatch 2005 suggests. Many businesses in addition to many free-software projets use it.