Re: FW: [kidsgames] word familiarity

[Ben Armstrong <synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca>]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2000, Kidsgames Project Coordinator - Jeff Waddell wrote:
> -->Why not PostgresSQL?
> 
> The obvious reason being that he has Starbase handy and it appears to
> work for him and postgres doesn't :)

Ah, but I meant instead of MySQL, not instead of StarBase.  Since he
has Starbase and is using it, but wants to aim for something that
will "work with" a free db, after looking at MySQL's license, I was
just a bit concerned.

> I would not characterize mySql's release of two minor revisions back as
> "lip-service-only", they have actually RELEASED CODE under GPL, this is
> more than I can say for ORACLE, Informix, or Sun.

Well ... where is the GPL'd MySQL server in Debian, then?  I see
mysql-gpl-client, mysql-gpl-doc, but only a (non-free) mysql-server,
no mysql-gpl-server.  Anyone know the reason for this?  (Or perhaps
I should be asking Debian.)

> -->  This is reason enough, I think, to choose Postgres. 
> 
> It occurs to me that the database will probably end up either in multiple
> formats or with the ability to be dumped into multiple different backends,
> but that is a technicality to deal with later.
> 
> I agree with Ben in that I think Starbase is a poor overall choice due to
> it NOT being an OPEN format.  However Ben can you tell Brian how to use
> Postgress as easily as he is using Starbase?

Actually, I was concerned only about the freeness of Brian's project.  If
he's moving towards an open format, he's moving in the right direction.
If it turns out that moving to MySQL makes Brian's project depend on a
non-free server, that would be the wrong direction (at least, wrt Debian).
And no, I'm sorry, I cannot help with Postgres.  I merely speak as a
Debian developer with concerns about freeness, not as one with any depth
of experience with SQL databases.

Ben
-- 
    nSLUG       http://www.nslug.ns.ca      synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
    Debian      http://www.debian.org       synrg@debian.org
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