UML/Commercial v Free Muds

[Greg Munt]

Has anyone used UML here? Advantages/disadvantages? I'm thinking of using 
it to help with the design of my project, having been introduced to it 
through Rational Rose.

Also. Someone (John Adelsberger, I think - what a nice man) commented 
that the development effort that goes into free software (he was 
referring to gcc, I think) is incomparable to that of commercial software..

My experience of the commerical software development industry is: "If 
it works, who cares beyond that?"

I was wondering, since there a lot of commercial/professional mud ppl on 
this list, what you lot thought about it, when mapped into the mudding 
world...?

What do you think of the assertion that, since in a commercial 
environment, you have to get something out by a particular time, and 
that, so long as the desired functionality is provided, the customer is 
happy, then less attention is given to producing a quality product, than 
might be given to something produced through a free community? There is 
also the thousands of testers available for free products (on the 
internet) to be considered, also.

Using a current example - databases - how do things like DB2 and Oracle 
compare to products listed in the FreeDB list? Is it a case of high 
levels of development/support (in the free industry), versus lots of 
money to put into a product (in the commercial industry? Which side comes 
out better? (Is this an unanswerable question, perhaps depending on context?)

--
Greg Munt, greg at uni-corn.demon.co.uk; http://www.uni-corn.demon.co.uk/ubiquity/
"My ambition is surpassed only by my egotism."