If Maglev delivers on it’s promises, the Ruby community will be better off for it, but if Maglev delivered on its promises and was open source, that would be an even bigger benefit.

Would you take a pill that was produced by Pfizer, even if Pfizer had never published any efficacy studies? If so, that’s some kind of bravery, if that’s the word for it. Personally, I would be a bit more than “annoyed” if Pfizer tried to market a drug that could save my life, but couldn’t pass FDA approval because they wanted to keep its mechanism a secret.

The entire basis of Western Scientific Method is peer-reviewed publication and verifiability. This is the principle behind OSS. Its a principle that has carried Western civilization pretty far, doncha think?

It is enough justification for me to feel comfortable steering clear of MagLev.

Also, PostgreSQL is a more appropriate free alternative to Oracle; MySQL doesn’t really fit the analogy.

We both know that’s garbage. Many, many people use open source software for many reasons other than that.

They are sure that the software will work for them because other people have used it before and it worked. That’s all the “approval” that they need.

Some people also used closed source software because they feel that it works better for them.

Oddly enough, they can test this hypothesis by writing their software and seeing if it works on top of Oracle and it performs better than the alternative.

In fact, I bet that if you’re in a life threatening situation that had no cure, and Pfizer had a miracle drug that they wouldn’t reveal the internals of, but several of your friends had taken it and lived, you’d be the next in line to take it.

I certainly would be.