[KLUG Members] MySQL adoption

[bill]

> And in hindsight, I'm not certain never starting is such a terrible thing.

An argument based on your convenience.  BTW, Tim Berners-Lee is on the 
phone and wants to talk to you.  I'd mention someone who never started 
but I don't know any of them.

> If I (or anyone else) is going to inherit it and have to support it.

Nowhere do you account for the possibility that anybody ever benefited 
from it.  The chief benefit of these systems is for the user, not the 
admin.  That's also where the long-term benefit lies.

> True, but I think the methaphor has problems.  Expectation of exponential 
> increases in complexity should be the assumption,  everything will be 
> easier later, even if harder at first.  In most organizations the cost of 
> building, scrapping, and rebuilding is just way too high; maybe because 
> the cost of limping along on an existing base isn't properly perceived, 
> but the "why" politically doesn't matter.

Nevertheless, the "limpers" -did- something and if it's being used, 
someone is still benefiting from it.  No business keeps using useless 
programming simply to have something for the Smithsonian.  It's only 
because people use it now that anybody complains that it can't grow even 
more.  Three cheers and a cold brew for the limpers!  May their tribe 
increase.

>>There is something valuable about contributing your effort to a larger 
>>whole, leaving something behind you after you've moved on.  Those who do 
>>not build leave nothing behind.  The principal ties in rather with the 
>>whole open source movement, I believe.  The more people contributing 
>>generally by trying new things specifically the better.

Making it too difficult to start can be counterproductive.  The 
Conestoga skeletons littering the pioneer path west left many stories 
but were largely made by those who tried to take too much equipment.

> Right, but those who build nothing reusable also leave nothing behind.

Well, that's not true on its face.  They at least left something 
unusable -now-, and it was possibly useable -then-.  Maybe the telegraph 
system is unusable, but it paved the way for the telephone.  By such 
logic no one should have made a footpath through the wilderness to Santa 
Monica because today it is paved and called Wilshire Boulevard.

If you build it, they may or may not come.  But if they keep coming, 
someone will find a way to make it better: that's what admins do; all 
the while bellyaching about the sad banana job done by their 
predecessors.  :-)

kind regards,

bill