Author: FB Community News

IBM is today expected to release a near-ready version of its latest database server, code-named Viper, a product designed to snatch market share from rival Oracle and fend off open source challengers. Bob Picciano said "Viper is really aimed at taking [Oracle] out of the market," noting that about 40 per cent of the world's data is in an XML format. He added that DB2 Express-C is helping IBM to maintain customers using open source databases.

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Florian Mueller said a new anti-software patents campaign is currently being driven by a deadline Friday for companies to submit answers to the EU on the future of the European patent system; the deadline is focusing the issue once again. Coupled with the RIM Blackberry case was a recent magazine interview in which Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer hinted that the company could institute patent litigation against open source firms, said Mueller.

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iSCSI is making network shared storage an increasingly popular choice in the midmarket. A $15K device can offer 2.5TB shared storage to 6 servers. Now that looks remarkably like the architecture of the VAX clusters of old. Perhaps it is time to resurrect the Firebird VAX clustering code.

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Firebird's Oracle-mode will be a keynote speech at the Software Development GigaCon in Warsaw, Poland. It is the largest software conference in that part of the world.

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Andrew Hudson has a review of open source database companies over on OSNews. "IBPhoenix employs 6 people, grossed $50k its first year, and has nearly doubled revenue each year since. Beach formed InterBase Software to commercialize the existing and mature code base that Borland had taken open source after several years of closed source development. Borland continues to sell InterBase as a closed source product. InterBase is a relatively small company but it is profitable, it has a solid international presence, and it is growing rapidly."

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Neil McAllister has an insightful article on the relative position of proprietary and closed source databases. He argues that "free to develop, pay to deploy" is becoming the norm in both worlds.

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Business Week Online writes: "Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives."

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