IBM is busy playing defense, trying to extract as much money from legacy customers for as long as possible, not playing offense and trying to win new customers away from rivals.
they won't implement anything until convinced that they will lose customers and their fat maintenance contracts doing so. Until then, a dollar spent playing golf will do far more to retain customers than a dollar spent implementing features.
Reg, I always value your opinion, but I'm afraid that's an outdated perception of IBM - or a limited one at the very least. IBM is a huge organization, and while some departments may be more conservative than others, there is plenty of innovation happening every day at the labs.
Each release of DB2 keeps innovating and adding useful features. Often these are not in response to something else that's already available on the market (aka, competition), but rather to what our customers will find beneficial (pureXML is a prime example of this).
If you think about it, the very existence of a free edition doesn't quite fit in with the picture you painted. I assure you that IBM is interested in acquiring new customers as much as keeping large, existing ones. How do I know? I'm paid to focus on the former.
they won't implement anything until convinced that they will lose customers and their fat maintenance contracts doing so. Until then, a dollar spent playing golf will do far more to retain customers than a dollar spent implementing features.