On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Nick May wrote:
> As a practical point, one issue with such a database would be speed. It
> would be pleasantly anarchic to have a fairly promiscuous data set that
> would mate with a range of languages. But the more one abstracts, the
> slower things get.
I don't think it's going to be a big problem. If we defined an XML
format and stick the data in an XML file, most reasonable languages
will be able to read in the data at startup and stick it in fast
internal storage. For those that can't, you could write a standalone
converter that would convert it into some format that would be
easier to access (such as a Berkeley DB file or whatever).
My bigger concern would be devising a useful way of accessing these
data. In particular, I'd want easy and efficient support for using
Cocoon or other XML -> HTML/cHTML/WML/etc. translators.
> Could someone remind me why the LGPL would be inappropriate? I am outside
> a bottle of wine currently (just the wine I stress, not the bottle
> itself....) and can't quite remember.
I guess the LGPL deals with my main worry. It doesn't deal with
the fact that I don't like Stallman's redefinition of the word
"free" to mean "we want to force you to do certain things," but
such Arbeit macht frei, I suppose. (I find it ironically appropriate
that such a project was started in 1984, and uses "Brave Gnu world"
as a slogan.)
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Mon Feb 25 01:23:31 2002