FreeTDS Development Group

[Brian Bruns <camber AT umcc.ais.org>]

On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Bill Tutt wrote:

> 
> 
> On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Brian Bruns wrote:
> 
> The ordering of some packets can apparently be different from what TDS 4.2
> specified apparently, and SQL Server 6.5 had support for logging in with
> TDS 5.0 which they apparently accidently yanked for SQL 7.
> 
> After logging in from a TDS 5.0 client though, you're on your own. MS
> won't support any other use of the 5.0 protocol.
> 
> > Good info though, and it goes to show why even though Sybase provides
> > binary-only client libs for x86 linux, it's just not good enough. By the
> > way, a (perhaps) interesting historical note.  I started all this because
> > (well, aside from just basic curiosity that is)...because I had some dblib
> > code I wanted to try out on my linux box.  Had Sybase made both dblib as
> > well as ctlib available, this project probably never would have happened.
> > 
> 
> Speaking of all of this... whatever happend to that TDS spec that the
> Sybase person mentioned?? I think he said something about June and here it
> is the end of August. :)
> 

I was contacted saying I could get a copy of the spec if I signed an NDA
until such time as it made its way through the lawyers. But, again that
was expected to be around the time of the 11.9.2 release for Linux.  I
chose not to sign the NDA for obvious reasons. Well 11.9.2 is now out for
Linux...He is on the mailing list, so if you're reading this, what's the
status?

Even if Sybase does open-source OpenClient, I see FreeTDS continuing for
quite some time given that we will be supporting TDS 7.0 and other 
specific Microsoftisms as well as an ODBC library and some other things
missing from OC. And we still don't know what license it will be under, so
for now I'm assuming nothing and continuing on with the status quo.

It's my opinion that Sybase should open-source the dataserver itself. I
mean look at it, Sybase has something like 4.5% of the north american unix
marketshare and around 3.5% worldwide IIRC. Their marketshare has been
declining year over year for sometime now.  Sybase makes alot of their
money in support and professional services dollars. So, if you radically
grow the marketshare you make up for the loss in support and consulting
contracts.  Sybase would become an object of study for most university CS
classes spinning out a wealth of talented programmers who know Sybase very
well.  And of course, the ISP community would probably take to it as well.
What does Sybase get from this? The things hackers would probably go
after right away are SQL 3 support, performance enhancements, and bug
fixes. So sybase gets a more marketable product, grows market share and
makes money off support, consulting, leveraging peripheral products (rep
server, IQ, SQL Any, etc...). Sorry for the long rant :)

Brian