> Excellent point, I have rewritten this slightly and sent
> a copy to Robin Bloor, a friend of mine who actually is the
> CEO of Bloor Research. It will be interesting to see what
> the response is :-)

Robin's Response:

<<Philip may not have been hoodwinked by anyone. What much of the analyst
world has yet to understand is that open source changes the fundamental
dynamics of the industry in ways that are not easy to see unless you are
close to what's happening at the coal face. You are quite right (from my
observation). Open Source products can indeed die, but they don't die in
the same way as a commercial product dies. An Open Source product will
die if the surrounding community (users and developers) becomes too
small for it to continue to have cohesion. Commercial products die much
more easily than that and much faster. Open Source products can also be
still-born - failing to gather a large enough community to become viable.
This reality is going to confuse an awful lot of people because they are
used to a software market where a few products dominate and all the
others gradually die. Such markets may cease to exist in time.
There are, apparently 300/400 open source databases. Some will die, but
it is entirely possible that somewhere in the region of 50/100 will
persist. As for Ingres, it will survive. However the hybrid business
model of Open Source/Commercial vendor has yet to be proven solid. It
should work.>>

Regards
Paul