R: R: [Zope-DB] ZODBCDA for Python 2.3.3

[Philip Kilner]

Hi All,

I'd just like to add another take on this...

jwsacksteder at ramprecision.com wrote:
> There are many people who for whatever reason cannot use non-free
> applications. It is rather annoying for people who have existing deployments
> that rely on ZODBCDA to have that functionality dropped from an otherwise
> working solution.

True, although the eGenix fees are not high and anyone in the commercial 
world would probably not find it an obstacle to progress - that's the 
position I find myself in right now, and I'll depend on the RDBMS enough 
to be happy to pay the current license fees. Needless to say, that might 
not apply to not-for-profit enterprises.

*However*, I would not have found Zope an approachable product without 
the free ODBC driver - IOW, if there had /never/ been a free/bundled 
ODBC driver, I would not be using Zope in the first place.

I think this problem needs solving not so much for us as for those who 
may follow us. I'd hate to think that Zope's uptake could be slowed down 
by this omission, but I'm pretty sure that's what will happen - although 
I have no basis for judging the scale of the problem.

Questions that come to mind are: -

- What level of functionality would be required to address this issue?
I would have been put off by "crippleware", but not by a solution which 
would have been hard to scale.

- Would eGenix consider releasing a free driver without the qualities 
that made the eGenix product superior to the ZC product in the first place?
It doesn't seem like the best route, simply because the eGenix driver 
wasn't written to have such deficiencies!

- If the existing ZC driver could be picked up and updated, how much 
would that cost, and what factors would distinguish it from the eGenix 
product?
I couldn't fund such development - but I /would/ chip in, because I'd 
like to think that other people with my background would continue to 
find Zope approachable as a result. I'd only be interested if the 
resulting product would be open-sourced.

- If there are other people who would like to chip in to keep this 
functionality open-source, how do we round them up and extract money 
from them?

;-)

Cheers,

PhilK