Software: Buy At Your Own Risk!
If public corporations announced their earnings with the same inflated claims as software marketing folks they would be liable for criminal fraud.
If car companies claimed their cars met certain safety standards which they did not meet, they would also liable for criminal fraud.
On the other hand, software companies seem to have been given a regulatory “get out of jail free” card. Software companies can make any claim they wish about their software and let the buyer beware.
Sometimes I simply am shocked at the degree of (repeated) false claims and marketing lies by software companies. Frankly speaking, I think someday it will be necessary to regulate this industry. Obviously, software marketeers know they can make any claim they desire and let the buyer beware.
Buy at your own risk!
Filed under: Complex Event Processing
It’s sad the software industry has been doing this for over 2 decades now. I would have thought false advertising would be covered by existing laws. Unless there’s a political will to prosecute these cases, I doubt anything will change. Both commercial and open source products are guilty of it these days.
Hi Peter,
Great to have you visiting. Thanks for commenting.
My experience and perspective is different. Maybe I am “old school” because I don’t recall any over-hyped, under-delivered free and open source.
I have been using Linux since 1993-1994 and Linux has always been free, perhaps the best open source on the planet. Then, there is Apache, PHP, MySQL, just a few examples, all free and delivering value with any marketing hype, magic quadrants, or other marketing; the software simply is great because the users love it.
I am sure there is open source that is over-hyped, but I don’t know off-hand what is it, unless it is some of the new commercial bundles we are seeing in the past few years versus the “old school” free and open source like Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL, and so much more.
However, on the commercial side, the story is completely different. This has been my experience. Commercial software (especially “enterprise” software) is generally always over-hyped with wild productivity claims, and very short on delivery.
Yours faithfully, Tim
Off the top of my head, Mysql, Spring, and Db4O have been and still are guilty of it. For a long time, Mysql claimed they were a full rdbms, when they weren’t and lacked many of the features an enterprise application needed. The latest release of mysql has come a long way, but there’s still plenty of hype. Spring framework makes bold claims based on opinions that are purely personal and not based on facts. Spring is useful, but they over state the innovation and value. DB4O has made many bold claims over the years, which many in the java industry have argued aren’t true. I’m sure I could name several more if I really took the time to list them.
I really wish the software industry toned down the hype and hyperbole. I don’t know that it will ever change, but many products be it commercial or open source feel they need hype to generate interest, rather than let the product speak for itself. Then again, many products are crappy and rely on hype to generate sales.
peter
Hi Peter,
As a MySQL user (and administrator) for as long as I can remember, I have never read any of the hype. I simply use it and administer it and find it is a great database for our web blogs, forums, etc.
The MySQL user base is huge. According to Wikipedia, “Together with Linux, Apache, and PHP, the MySQL Server forms one of the building blocks of the LAMP technology stack. The company claims a user base of over 5 million MySQL installations worldwide and over 10 million product downloads in 2004.”
I don’t think any MySQL users use MySQL because of any perceived hype. They use it (as we do) because it works well and it is free.
Yours faithfully, Tim
Definitely, mysql is a solid a database engine and easy to use. For a long time, mysql didn’t support correlated subqueries, data archiving, replication, stored procedures or triggers. In the early days, the mysql team claimed those features weren’t needed or that “it doesn’t matter”.
I’ve used mysql myself on a number of occassions, but they have been guilty of hype over the years. I guess that’s just a given in the software industry regardless if it’s open source or not
I hope that changes in the future.