The latest issue of PC Magazine, which now is no longer in print but can be browsed in digital via Zinio brings some interesting thoughts to chew a Thursday’s soccer gum.
It has drawn my attention a theme that in Spanish is translated as what’s on with LAMP? Referring to (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP), systems from which relies much of the success of Internet.
The article is written by John C. Dvorak and makes a chewing among the risks that runs MySQL after the acquisition from Sun / Oracle and the changes of tendency that GNU GPL license is going to. Inline the author ensures that free licenses’ problem is not ethical but commercial, suggesting that it may not be sustainable over time. Although extreme, he is not without reason if we remember that our preferred engine for spatial databases (PostGIS), which is an adaptation of functionalities to the GIS environment was a Postgres failed abortion for 8 years but now is very promising as PostgreSQL (but BSD licensed).
Some studious (‘egeomate’) friends, whenever I mention GPL look at me as if they were in front of “the unborn” image because of their disappointment that everything they could make will become public domain; but if they support the BSD license, which they call “full freedom” because the author of an hallucinated study (‘smoke’) has enough freedom so as to donate it to the community or sell their effort through a private license. For many the issue could be ridiculous, at this point there have been serious demands and their lawyers have had learnt a lot of technology in order to read and understand well the risks of a mix between the public domain and the proprietary one.
Dvorak throws some unhealthy decisions to Oracle, who could if they want to, tease (Spanish Idiom:’jorobar’ to annoy one’s patience) the lives of many who have already invested money in the most popular database on the web. Then he ensures that PostgreSQL would be the replace and that its BSD license favors wherever you want to see. Apart from making a slight error (he named it PostgrSQL), I found it interesting, perhaps to us from the spatial side benefits us after our interest in PostGIS that has already walked a lot.
The magazine can be browsed in Zinio. Apart, In addition it brings some items of interest like:
- The risks of Twitter
- When a netbook is not enough
- The Craiglist’s risks on its classified sex advices
- The iPad from Apple, could kill Amazon’s Kindle
- Facebook vs. Twitter
- The Gmail’s non official guide
- In the Hispanic version Nadia talks about Match, very cool.