Database Connectivity

[R Baumann]

"Ville Vainio" <ville at spammers.com> wrote in message
news:du7is9hoxue.fsf at lehtori.cc.tut.fi...
> >>>>> "Baumann" == R Baumann <rynt at 9yahoo.com> writes:
>
>     Baumann> <GASP!> M$ sells stuff for money!  Why not?  I like to
>     Baumann> eat, you like to eat.  Don't like Microsoft?, sounds like
>     Baumann> a personal problem to me.  I don't
>
> I know I'm treading highly flammable waters here, but dislike of a
> company is not necessarily a purely personal problem (making the
> assumption that ethics means something for the purpose of this
> discussion). Making money is not a problem, it's *how* they make the
> money (or more correctly, prevent others from making money) that irks
> some people, including me.
>
>     Baumann> like everything they do either, but to pay my salary, the
>     Baumann> company I work for has to make money, not live on
>     Baumann> indignant or righteous attitudes.  I use whatever works
>     Baumann> best for the particular customer I have to work with.  If
>
> Yes, we all need to make some concessions to make a living. If you are
> paid to sell cigarettes and the alternative is going without a job,
> you sell cigarettes. Where people draw the line is determined by their
> individual (irrational) hangups like principles and ethics. Still, I
> generally try not to ridicule people that have higher moral standards
> than me.
>
> Of course an individal developer has very little power to decide these
> things in the first place, so no drawing a line is necessary.
>
> -- 
> Ville Vainio   http://tinyurl.com/2prnb

I don't disagree with a thing you've written in response to my little
diatribe.  No, I probably should have just stopped while I was ahead, and
not included the paragraphs about MS, but it seems to me that not everyone
in this, or other newsgroups has the same outlook as you do, and it was
those people I was responding to.  Some of those people would gripe if MS
gave all their developer tools away for free.  Some just gripe because
they've heard others gripe.  Ya just can't please everyone. :-)

If I've struck a sour note, I apologize to all.  I absolutely grant and
agree with you that a lot of the business decisions and marketing ploys that
MS have practiced, and probably still practice, are not ethical, tend to
raise hackles, and don't give people a warm fuzzy feeling, and develop a
hatred for the company.

Am I a MS supporter?  Only to the extent that what I select to do a job must
be the best product for that job.  If it's MS, then it's MS.  If it's
Python, it's Python, and so on, and so on.

RB