Closed front, open back (was Re: ...Encouraging open code...)

[Rod Gammon]

-----Original Message-----
From: cpaul at telemetrybox.org [mailto:cpaul at telemetrybox.org]
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 1:52 AM
To: Linux & Unix Advocates & Users
Subject: [luau] Re: Closed front, open back (was Re: ...Encouraging open
code...)


On Sun, Feb 10, 2002 at 10:50:16PM -1000, Rod Gammon wrote:
> Aloha-
>
> Please stash away obvious inopportune comments from the title...
>
> What do you all think about 'stealth' intro of open source?  Also open
> infrastructure and closed content?
>
> 1. I'm working (still) on an open dictionary server.  Post Nuke, Apache,
> Java, MySql & Postgres server for educational communities.  But the people
> making the educational content [have |are used to] Access.  So I'm rigging
> it so they can develop content in Access, dump to delimited text and then
> load to the open sourced server.  Any comments on this?  Part of my
approach
> is the conception that MS Office is highly entrenched and also a pretty
good
> tool for this development content.

I am having MS Access use ODBC to dump rows onto a Python/MySQL "staging
server", from there it's processed/scrubbed by a Python script and inserted
into the database proper.  The reason for the staging server is because
(from what I have seen and heard) MS Access does not have support for
database cursors, so atomic inserts can't be guaranteed (ie, getting the
last auto_increment ID for indexing the other table entries).  Delimited
text would be easier (in the context of my workload), but it would put the
data entry folks in a bad way.


> 1a. How far to go with open source?  For example I have a bunch of Java
> interfaces for representing dictionaries in a linguistically proper
context.
> But I want to be able to sell something.  So I'm considering LGPL for the
> interfaces.  This will allow PHP access to the interfaces for all.  But
then
> a proprietary implementation of an enterprise Java bean that actually
> persists and serves the lexicon.  Heresy? Expectably profitable? (In my
own
> defense I'll also provide full GPL default, in memory implementations).

I have always wondered about GPL "GuiltWare" (ie, "Send the developer money
or in 15 Days we shoot this Puppy.", "14", "13", "...", "1", "New Puppy.").
To my knowledge no Free Software coder aside from the author of Vim uses
that model succesfully.  Are you in a position to sell support for your
software?  Or is your software that good, so support will never be needed?

Good luck,
Charles

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