Re: free vs non-free or commercial
On Thursday 14 September 2006 19:17, Patrick Albuquerque wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 10:06:26AM +0100, A J Stiles wrote:
> > You should *never* install *any* software which does not come with source
> > code -- you don't know where it's been. If the software vendor isn't
> > prepared to show you the source code, that's a clear sign that there is
> > something in there that they don't want you to see.
> >
> > You wouldn't buy a cake that didn't have a list of ingredients on the
> > box, would you?
I had missed this suggestion. I agree to the extent that it is possible to
agree. I mean that during my career of organic chemist I found extremely
useful to have a free-form database, which can be used as a notebook, while
the powerful boolean search engine allows me to retrieve quickly any piece of
information that was loosely stored in.
As most of us, I had tried structured relational databases: unsuitable for the
above task, too time consuming and not allowing to store a whole article (or
a book!) in a single record. Structured databases come from organizations and
can be accessed, although through our institutions because time there comes
extremely expensive. There are still people who believe that everything can
be traced through internet at no cost: not so for chemical data.
This long preamble to ask: give me the name of an efficient free-form database
for unix (free, with source code as in our desire, or non-free, or from a
vendor). You have none. I believe that this is a major "bug" in unix systems.
That is, on my old PC with debian etch 32bit I use such commercial stuff
through wine, and I could hardly had written my books without it. From time
to time I try to convince an expert in programming to write such a stuff for
Linux. Unfortunately I am not the expert, although I can promise all my
support in explaining how that stuff could be planned, and all other that I
could.
cheers
francesco pietra
>
> And if the chef in your favorite restaurant does not give you his
> recipies when you demand them, boycott the restaurant!
>
> Patrick.
> --
Reply to: