MS Access 'equiv' for Linux 3301

That is the specific thing that is most certainly nonsense in every way.

The whole "sector" of free software was created because people found it of value to build tools that they found useful.

- There was such a huge interest in a "free version of Unix" that we see a barrel of more or less successful implementations in addition to the numerous ones that failed or otherwise became obsolete (the Atari-based "MiNT" comes to mind as one of the latter).

- There's such interest in scripting languages that you get to choose from the diverse list of Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, Lua, Rexx, Awk, PHP.

- There's such demand for web server software that there are literally dozens of them.

- There was enough desire for graphical environments that we have wound up with Tk, Gnome, KDE, GnuStep, amongst others.

- There's such demand for free database software that there are both dozens of "failed" choices as well as a number of credible ones.

These things have already turned out to be quite spectacular successes that have already helped put some pretty big vendors out of business, or at least caused them to give up on their products.

The few "all-singing, all-dancing" systems like OpenOffice.org are completely uncharacteristic of the successful free software projects. OpenOffice.org requires the "subsidy" of Sun Microsystems providing a horde of developers in order to survive. They aren't building a bunch of independent pieces that are personally useful tools; they have to have "mega-project" levels of effort in order to get something that is useful to Someone Else.

An "MS Access Cloning Project" suffers from the same problem of diffuse, ill-defined functionality where the value of individual bits of effort are NOT self-evident.

In order to get the "MS Access clone," it is necessary to find some organization with deep pockets that is prepared to pay designers and developers for a considerable period of time without seeing one iota of return on that investment.

In the absence of those "deep pockets," the 'project' won't happen.

And in the absence of the completion of that project, those of us that helped make free software successful will take other approaches to our needs for database management that won't likely look terribly much like MS Access. -- Rules of the Evil Overlord #24. "I will maintain a realistic buttessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, rest is usually