FreeTDS Development Group

[Steve Olson <olson AT sybase.com>]

Hello,

I originally sent this message to freetds AT metalab.unc.edu, and received a 
reply from Brian Bruns (included) that suggested I send it to a wider 
audience.  I hope this is the right to: list.

In terms of TDS specification, we are prepared to make it available 
immediately; we are also giving serious consideration to open-sourcing 
dblibrary, client library, and possibly jConnect (our all-java jdbc driver).

Your thoughts on how we can help are welcome.

Regards,
Steve Olson
Technical Director,
Sybase, Inc.


> Hello,
>
> Sybase is giving serious consideration to taking a fairly aggressive 
> position
> in the Linux world, with availability of ASE 11.x,  ASA 6.x, and a
> number of additional components.  We are also considering more active
> support for efforts such as yours (FreeTDS).
>
> Assuming that we go ahead with this, how can we help make your project 
> successful?
>
> Regards,
> Steve Olson
> Technical Director
> Sybase, Inc.
>
>

Hello,

First, let me apologize for the lateness of my reply.  I don't check this
mail box as often as I should.

I'm glad to hear that Sybase is getting more aggressive in supporting Linux. 
The primary reason for this projects existence was a large mass of dblib code 
that I had no way (at the time) of running under Linux.

Would you mind me sharing this letter either with the mailing list or at 
least with the other core developers?  While I've written much of the C 
library code, there are some other significant contributors and I wouldn't 
pretend to speak for them.

>From my perspective, the things that slow the project down are the same as 
>in other open-source projects.

Lack of documentation:
In our case this would be the specifications for the TDS protocol. I don't 
know how feasible it would be to release it without an NDA (for 
political/contractual/whatever reasons), but it would save us much groping
in the dark.

Lack of time on the part of the developers:
Most of us do this after our normal day jobs and juggling family life, so the 
amount of time spent on the project is scarce at times. I don't think there 
is anything Sybase could help with here though.

Platform or endian specific bugs:
Quite recently we've had a few reported problems with people trying to run on 
Solaris. Well, a few have Solaris and a few don't, so many times the people 
who could fix it don't have the resources. So, shell access to a
Solaris machine with a decent set of dev tools is something I'm currently 
trying to acquire.

While I'm at it, can I throw in my vote for Rep Server for Linux?

Cheers,

Brian Bruns
FreeTDS Project Leader