Hi,
I understand what marketing is, but I also understand how this project is
organised. The dev@ mailing list is where project direction and development is
discussed, and where all decisions must be made, which is why I asked that the
conversation moved here. Not many are signed up to the marketing mailing list.
I hear and share your concerns about “IBM employees” (and I am one, but was not
one for the majority of my involvement with CouchDB, like all the others that
are now IBM employees). We have bylaws and a code of conduct and a PMC with
many non-IBM employees. It should go without saying that those committers and
PMC members who are also IBM employees are mature adults capable of working in
open source with integrity. Were that ever to stop being the case, there would
be consequences.
The conversations about future direction (foundationdb et al) happened here on
this mailing list and everyone was welcome to raise the concerns you did. Those
conversations, and RFC’s, will continue to happen here. Ultimately, the project
moves forward in the direction that active contributions take it under the
watchful eye of the PMC.
Chitan’s thoughts on IoT are very welcome, which is why I wanted the
conversation here, where project ideas can be discussed with everyone
interested in them. I also hope my reply that pointed out why CouchDB is not
yet ideal for IoT was constructive. It is not just a question of marketing
CouchDB as it is today, it should inform CouchDB project direction.
B.
> On 8 Jul 2019, at 07:08, Johs Ensby <j...@b2w.com> wrote:
>
> I find Chitan's reflections very interesting,
> even if the current direction for CouchDB points in a different direction.
> The problem is that CouchDBs future is difficult to understand, as marketing
> discussions are discouraged.
> This is a very good example of how it is done:
>
>> Briefly, this mailing list is for marketing only. If you wish to discuss
>> project direction, post to the dev mailing list instead.
>
> This reveils a total lack of basic understanding of what marketing is.
> Just as a hint: Marketing is not the same as promotion. Marketing is a
> concept and a dicipline that arose in the 1960's as two previous concepts
> failed to capture the challenge of bringing products to the market.
>
> The "producion concept" worked as long as the market was underserved and you
> could focus on production, the market would swallow all available products
> (early days of mass production and hitech dev)
> The "sales concept" was characterized by strategies for pushing the products
> to market.
> The "marketing concept" turned the whole thing around and focused on
> identifying needs and wants in the market to which products could be
> developed in order to create value for the user/customer.
> A definition of marketing used by my professor at Harvard Business School
> was: Marketing is to create value and retain a fair share of that value.
>
> The notion that writing blog posts is marketing, unfortunately brings us to
> the pre-1960's thinking of how to bring a product to market.
>
> I am increasingly worried about the CouchDB project being dominated by IBM
> employees, and that new versions will require major workovers of CouchDB
> without concern as to:
> - what market is targeted
> - what competitive position in this market is being targeted
> - how to build on the existing user base for future success
>
> The latter point is crucial in order to make any technology adoption work,
> this is based on another theory that has been known since the 60's ("The
> diffusion of innovation" by Everett Rogers), popularised and brought to
> hitech in the early 90's by Jeff More's "Crossing the chasm".
>
> Chitans reflections on how to serve markets in need of new solutions is the
> kind of marketing discussion that CouchDB would benefit greatly from inviting.
>
> johs
>
>> On 7 Jul 2019, at 19:55, Robert Samuel Newson <rnew...@apache.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> The main (current) difficulties in running CouchDB on embedded devices is
>> running erlang there coupled with our clustering stack. To scale everything
>> down to fit within the typical constraints of an embedded device requires
>> effort, I don’t think couch “just works” there.
>>
>> The future release that replaces the clustering technology with FoundationDB
>> is what I refer to by “getting harder in the future”. While fdb does scale
>> down well, it might still need porting to platforms it’s not currently
>> supported on.
>>
>> As for suitability for IoT, couch is certainly used in that field, but care
>> must be taken, especially around the core notion that couch retains
>> information about a deleted document forever. This small amount of data can
>> build up, and you need to plan for it.
>>
>> B.
>>
>>
>>> On 7 Jul 2019, at 08:02, Chintan Mishra <chin...@rebhu.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear team,
>>>
>>> Quoting myself from <market...@couchdb.apache.org>
>>>
>>> ----
>>>
>>>> 3. A *way forward for CouchDB is focusing on what it is best*at viz.,
>>>> being a database for _*C*__luster __*O*__f __*U*__nreliable
>>>> __*C*__ommodity __*H*__ardware_. Being deploy-able at edge devices.
>>>> Focusing on this will invite people building for IoTs towards
>>>> CouchDB. And this will drive a whole new set of users/customers
>>>> towards CouchDB and IBM's Cloudant project. We already use
>>>> Cloudant's sync-android and CDTDatastore in our startup's(Rebhu
>>>> Computing) product.
>>>>
>>> ----
>>>
>>> I would like to draw attention to this point. I firmly believe that
>>> CouchDB can benefit by targeting IoT device developers. IoT
>>> developers don't want to worry about sending data from edge devices
>>> to server for processing. CouchDB already has battle-tested
>>> replication strategy. Extending this for IoT devs will drive the
>>> next age developers. CouchDB is already made for unreliable systems
>>> and what is more unreliable than an IoT lying in the sea connected
>>> with worldwide GSM/CDMA (2G) network.
>>>
>>> Quoting Robert Newson's <rnew...@apache.org> response
>>>
>>> It’s a good point but not for the marketing list unless you are talking
>>> just about producing blog posts or other materials to promote couchdb for
>>> that market?
>>>
>>> I think to make couchdb more useful for iot would require some development
>>> work. Running couchdb on embedded devices is already a challenge and it’s
>>> only going to get harder in future. As a server side hub, the retention of
>>> a small amount of data after document deletion presents further problems.
>>>
>>> Briefly, this mailing list is for marketing only. If you wish to discuss
>>> project direction, post to the dev mailing list instead.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> @Robert_Newson can you shed some light on the issues that arise while
>>> deploying CouchDB on embedded devices? Also, what is going to get harder in
>>> the future?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Chintan Mishra
>>> Founder and CEO
>>> Rebhu Computing
>>>
>>
>
