The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - Gupta announces RAD/Database for Linux: Comments?

Gupta announces RAD/Database for Linux: Comments?

http://www.guptaworldwide.com/NewsEvents/Releases.aspx?ReleaseID=27501

It will be running on the Wine platform. They claim that you can run the same business application (minus COM,ActiveX --> M$ stuff) in both Windows and Linux.
They say they have changed their API so that its compatible on Wine. No Linux binaries are generated, but the executable will be made compatible with Wine. They have been doing very very badly in the past- due to competition from microsoft visual basic. Many customers have been deserting them because no one has heard about Gupta (Its like visual basic).

Also SQLBASE(their database) has been ported to Linux.

Is their strategy sound?. LINUX tools are not very known. Kylix failed miserably (I think) and Java is not portable. Mono seems to taking so long. Also there are freeware databases available for linux.

Full disclosure: I program in Gupta. But have nothing to do with the company. Just seeing what others think ......

Karthik
Wednesday, March 31, 2004

<<Java is not portable>>

Sorry for that silly statement . I meant that it requires work for it to be cross platform and java development takes more time.

Karthik
Wednesday, March 31, 2004

I think the time is right anyway.
Their advantage over the OSS tools is that its a complete, almost atomic environment which I think will apeal to people comming from windows.
The shear abundance of options in the OSS world is scary to many. It is also time consuming unless you are already up to speed. Its hard to pick a language, widget set, DB engine, IDE/editor and what ever else you need, without either thourough analysis or lots of lingering doubts.

I think kylix could have had a bright future, I dont know what went wrong. Pricing maybe? Or maybe people dont feel like Borland will be trustworthy in the long term.

Eric Debois
Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Eric - why Kylix failed
* quality is low and crashes are too frequent
* Borland is not very good in fixing bugs (I am very mild here)
* Pascal (Kylix means both Pascal and C++ IDE) isn't exactly popular under Linux

Pavel
Wednesday, March 31, 2004

What an elegant sense of timing...

Our database is currently built on top of SQLBase, but the suppliers have been moving across to SQLServer for a couple of years and support for SQLBase ends in January. So yesterday, I was pricing up SQLServer and a Win 2003 upgrade, purely for the doubtful pleasure of keeping the damn thing running. Oh joy.

a cynic writes...
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Have just been to the Gupta website.

I feel like doing a number six on the person who decided to force visitors to login before they can access pretty much any content (especially the sales material) on the site.

Tapiwa
Thursday, April 1, 2004