Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Kevin Brown wrote: Devrim G?ND?Z wrote: I do NOT like hearing about MySQL in this (these) list(s). PostgreSQL is not in the same category with MySQL. MySQL is for *dummies*, not database admins. I do not even call it a database. I have never forgotten my data loss 2,5 years ago; when I used MySQL for just 2 months!!! I think you're on to something here, but it's obscured by the way you said it. There's no question in my mind that PostgreSQL is superior in almost every way to MySQL. For those of us who are technically minded, it boggles the mind that people would choose MySQL over PostgreSQL. Yet they do. And it's important to understand why. Simply saying MySQL has better marketing isn't enough. It's too simple an answer and obscures some issues that should probably be addressed. I think it /is/ a significant factor, the point being that the MySQL company has been quite activist in pressing MySQL as the answer, to the point to which there's a development strategy called LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + (Perl|Python|PHP)). People use MySQL because it's very easy to set up, relatively easy to maintain (when something doesn't go wrong, that is), is very well documented and supported, and is initially adequate for the task they have in mind (that the task may change significantly such that MySQL is no longer adequate is something only those with experience will consider). ... And the consistent marketing pressure that in essence claims: - It's easier to use than any alternative; - It's much faster than any other DBMS; - It's plenty powerful and robust enough. As near as I can tell, /none/ of these things are true outside of very carefully selected application domains. But the claims have been presented enough times that people actually believe them to be true. PostgreSQL has come a long way and, with the exception of a few minor things (the need to VACUUM, for instance. The current version makes the VACUUM requirement almost a non-issue as regards performance and availability, but it really should be something that the database takes care of itself), is equivalent to MySQL in the above things except for documentation and support. I would point to a third thing: Tools to support hands-off administration. My web hosting provider has a set of tools to let me administer various aspects of my site complete with pretty GUI that covers: - Configuring email accounts, including mailing lists, Spam Assassin, and such; - Configuring subdomains; - Managing files/directories, doing backups; - Apache configuration; - Cron jobs; - A couple of shopping cart systems; - A chat room system; - Last, but certainly not least, the ability to manage MySQL databases. There is no canned equivalent for PostgreSQL, which means that ISPs that don't have people with DBMS expertise will be inclined to prefer MySQL. It's a better choice for them. MySQL's documentation is very, very good. My experience with it is that it's possible, and relatively easy, to find information about almost anything you might need to know. PostgreSQL's documentation is good, but not quite as good as MySQL's. It's not quite as complete. For instance, I didn't find any documentation at all in the User's Guide or Administrator's Guide on creating tables (if I missed it, then that might illustrate that the documentation needs to be organized slightly differently). I did find a little in the tutorial (about the amount that you'd want in a tutorial), but to find out more I had to go to the SQL statement reference (in my case I was looking for the means by which one could create a constraint on a column during table creation time). The reason this is important is that the documentation is *the* way people are going to learn the database. If it's too sparse or too disorganized, people who don't have a lot of time to spend searching through the documentation for something may well decide that a different product (such as MySQL) would suit their needs better. The documentation for PostgreSQL improves all the time, largely in response to comments such as this one, and that's a very good thing. My purpose in bringing this up is to show you what PostgreSQL is up against in terms of widespread adoption. That's probably pretty fair. I'm using the word fair advisedly, too. If someone objects, saying that PostgreSQL docs /are/ good, keep in mind that new users are not mandated to be fair about this. If they have trouble finding what they were looking for, they couldn't care less that you think the docs are pretty good: /they/ didn't find what /they/ were looking for, and that's all they care about. If we want to sell PostgreSQL, we should talk about, maybe, Oracle. I have never took care of MySQL said. I just know that I'm running PostgreSQL since 2,5 years and I only stopped it JUST before upgrades of PostgreSQL. It's just *working*; which is unfamiliar
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
You can't sell into the ISP appliance market until there's something as ubiquitous as PHPMyAdmin for PostgreSQL. And note that the ISP appliance market only cares about this in a very indirect way. They don't actually use the database; their /customers/ do. And their customers are likely to be fairly unsophisticated souls who will use whatever database is given to them. Hey! What about phpPgAdmin? We're actually working on a next generation version atm which is a total rewrite that: 1. modern php 2. register_globals off, full error checking 3. themable 4. Easily supports all versions 5. etc. However, even with repeated calls for developers, it's just me and Rob Treat! phpPgAdmin does not work with 7.3 so this in an increasingly important project. Anyone wanna help? :) http://phppgdamin.sourceforge.net/ Maybe we should move to gborg? Chris ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Kevin Brown wrote: Simply saying MySQL has better marketing isn't enough. It's too simple an answer and obscures some issues that should probably be addressed. I think it /is/ a significant factor, the point being that the MySQL company has been quite activist in pressing MySQL as the answer, to the point to which there's a development strategy called LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + (Perl|Python|PHP)). Oh, I'll certainly not dispute that marketing has had a significant effect, but I don't think it's the only reason for MySQL's success. History has a lot to do with it, because it's through history that momentum gets built up, as it has with MySQL. People use MySQL because it's very easy to set up, relatively easy to maintain (when something doesn't go wrong, that is), is very well documented and supported, and is initially adequate for the task they have in mind (that the task may change significantly such that MySQL is no longer adequate is something only those with experience will consider). ... And the consistent marketing pressure that in essence claims: - It's easier to use than any alternative; - It's much faster than any other DBMS; - It's plenty powerful and robust enough. As near as I can tell, /none/ of these things are true outside of very carefully selected application domains. But the claims have been presented enough times that people actually believe them to be true. I agree with you -- now. But the situation as it is now has not always been. Consider where PostgreSQL was 4 years ago. I believe it was at version 6 at that time, if I remember correctly. And as I recall, many people had very significant issues with it in the key areas of performance and reliability. Now, I didn't experience these things firsthand because I wasn't using it at the time, but it is the general impression I got when reading the accounts of people who *were* using it. MySQL at the time wasn't necessarily any more reliable, but it had one thing going for it that PostgreSQL didn't: myisamchk. Even if the database crashed, you stood a very good chance of being able to recover your data without having to restore from backups. PostgreSQL didn't have this at all: either you had to be a guru with the PostgreSQL database format or you had to restore from backups. That meant that *in practice* MySQL was easier to maintain, even it crashed more often as PostgreSQL, because the amount of administrative effort to deal with a MySQL crash was so much less. PostgreSQL has come a long way and, with the exception of a few minor things (the need to VACUUM, for instance. The current version makes the VACUUM requirement almost a non-issue as regards performance and availability, but it really should be something that the database takes care of itself), is equivalent to MySQL in the above things except for documentation and support. I would point to a third thing: Tools to support hands-off administration. My web hosting provider has a set of tools to let me administer various aspects of my site complete with pretty GUI that covers: - Configuring email accounts, including mailing lists, Spam Assassin, and such; - Configuring subdomains; - Managing files/directories, doing backups; - Apache configuration; - Cron jobs; - A couple of shopping cart systems; - A chat room system; - Last, but certainly not least, the ability to manage MySQL databases. There is no canned equivalent for PostgreSQL, which means that ISPs that don't have people with DBMS expertise will be inclined to prefer MySQL. It's a better choice for them. This is true, but the only way to combat that is to get PostgreSQL more widely deployed. Network effects such as that are common in the computing world, so it doesn't come as much surprise that the most popular database engine in the webhosting world is the best supported one for that role. It's only because of the relative popularity of MySQL that it has so much support. The only way to grow PostgreSQL's popularity is to get it deployed in situations where the tools available for it are sufficient. But you're mistaken if you believe that MySQL isn't competition for PostgreSQL. It is, because it serves the same purpose: a means of storing information in an easily retrievable way. Indeed. People with modest data storage requirements that came in with /no/ comprehension of what a relational database is may find the limited functionality of MySQL perfectly reasonable for their purposes. This is true, but the biggest problem is that the requirements of a project often balloon over time, and the demands on the database backend will also tend to increase. Because MySQL is rather limited in its functionality, it doesn't take much until you'll be forced to use a different database backend. This is why I view PostgreSQL as a much wiser choice in almost all cases where you
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. I am a long term user of PostgreSQL and I think it suffers from a lack of a marketing department. If you have the best restaurant in town, but no one eats there, what's the point? We all correspond and work on PostgreSQL to make it the best we can. To create something good that people can use. One of the prime parts of that sentence is people can use. Like it or not, that means getting the word out. MySQL is an appalling database, but people use it, a lot! Why? Because they really market it. They push it. They craft deceptive benchmarks which show it is better. PostgreSQL doesn't even need to be deceptive. My company is working on a Suite of applications and PostgreSQL is a key component. We will be doing our own local marketing, but it it would help if the PostgreSQL core understood that a clean professional looking website, geared toward end users would make a big difference. Furthermore, I think it would be very rewarding for everyone involved if we could get some of the street cred that MySQL has. PostgreSQL *is* a better database in almost every way. If MySQL virtually owns the open source mind share for SQL databases, it is our fault. Peter, Tom, Bruce, et al. you guys do a great job, IMHO PostgreSQL isn't lacking in anything technical, as of 7.2, with non-locking vacuum, I would consider it a viable database with no caveats. 7.3 is superior. A pure Win32 version would be awesome. I just think that if we could get people equally talented at spreading the word and making the noise, it would make a big difference in the number of users. More users eventually translates to more funding or development. Wouldn't you like to say to someone: I contribute the PostgreSQL project and have them say Cool instead of What's that? ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Hi, On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 13:26, mlw wrote: MySQL is an appalling database, but people use it, a lot! Why? Because they really market it. They push it. They craft deceptive benchmarks which show it is better. PostgreSQL doesn't even need to be deceptive. snip Furthermore, I think it would be very rewarding for everyone involved if we could get some of the street cred that MySQL has. PostgreSQL *is* a better database in almost every way. If MySQL virtually owns the open source mind share for SQL databases, it is our fault. I do NOT like hearing about MySQL in this (these) list(s). PostgreSQL is not in the same category with MySQL. MySQL is for *dummies*, not database admins. I do not even call it a database. I have never forgotten my data loss 2,5 years ago; when I used MySQL for just 2 months!!! If we want to sell PostgreSQL, we should talk about, maybe, Oracle. I have never took care of MySQL said. I just know that I'm running PostgreSQL since 2,5 years and I only stopped it JUST before upgrades of PostgreSQL. It's just *working*; which is unfamiliar to MySQL users. I've presented about 28 seminars in last 12 months on PostgreSQL... In all of them, I always tried to avoid talking about MySQL. But always hit Oracle. I'm sick of hearing such sentences : We paid to Oracle, we hold 1 GB of data!. Even MySQL can hold that amount of data :-) Also, I have something to say about win32 port. I'm a Linux user. I'm happy that PostgreSQL does not have win32 version. If someone wants to use a real database server, then they should install Linux (or *bsd,etc). This is what Oracle offers,too. Native Windows support will cause some problems; such as some dummy windows users will begin using it. I do not believe that PostgreSQL needs native windowz support. So, hackers (I'm not a hacker) should decide whether PostgreSQL should be used widely in real database apps, or it should be used even by dummy users? I prefer the first one, if we want to compete with Oracle; not MySQL. Best regards, -- Devrim GUNDUZ TR.NET System Support Specialist [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
- Original Message - From: Devrim GÜNDÜZ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: PostgreSQL-development [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 4:58 PM Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Also, I have something to say about win32 port. I'm a Linux user. I'm happy that PostgreSQL does not have win32 version. If someone wants to use a real database server, then they should install Linux (or *bsd,etc). This is what Oracle offers,too. Native Windows support will cause some problems; such as some dummy windows users will begin using it. I do not believe that PostgreSQL needs native windowz support. Ooops. I'm a Linux user too, but i have a SCO Openserver, UnixWare, Netware and lot of windows boxes in my office. Also I have Informix, Sybase ... etc. This isn't for my entertainment. Our customers need to use a real database server. But what about small business? A lot of our small customers can't spent money for dedicated linux box :((( I spent 2 month in trying open source databases (PostgreSQL, SAP DB, Interbase/Firebird) finaly i choose PostgreSQL. Now we port one of our products from Sybase SQL Anywhere to PostgreSQL. We have more than 100 customers with small networks (2-10). Most of them cant't aford dedicated linux box. Another situation DHL Bulgaria and TNT Worldwide Express Bulgaria are our customers too. In HQ they choose windows nt (i don't comment how smart is this decision), pay a lot of money to mr.Gates and now what - we say PostgreSQL is great , but .. ( and i have personal contacts with their sysadmins i don't believe they are dummy windows users) So if you don't want windows support just don't use it! ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Hi, On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 15:31, Igor Georgiev wrote: snip In HQ they choose windows nt (i don't comment how smart is this decision), pay a lot of money to mr.Gates and now what - we say PostgreSQL is great , but .. ( and i have personal contacts with their sysadmins i don't believe they are dummy windows users) Hey, I did not say that any windowz user is dummy. If you read my previous post from the beginning; you'll see that my target is MySQL users on Windows... What I've been trying to say that is: If we have a chance to choose, I'd prefer using PostgreSQL in *nix systems. This is what I've been doing since 2,5 years. So if you don't want windows support just don't use it! I can't, even if I want it; since I do not have a windows installed computer. ;-) Anyway, this will be a windows-linux discussion; which is offtopic for this list. Best regards, -- Devrim GUNDUZ TR.NET System Support Specialist [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Devrim G?ND?Z wrote: I do NOT like hearing about MySQL in this (these) list(s). PostgreSQL is not in the same category with MySQL. MySQL is for *dummies*, not database admins. I do not even call it a database. I have never forgotten my data loss 2,5 years ago; when I used MySQL for just 2 months!!! I think you're on to something here, but it's obscured by the way you said it. There's no question in my mind that PostgreSQL is superior in almost every way to MySQL. For those of us who are technically minded, it boggles the mind that people would choose MySQL over PostgreSQL. Yet they do. And it's important to understand why. Simply saying MySQL has better marketing isn't enough. It's too simple an answer and obscures some issues that should probably be addressed. People use MySQL because it's very easy to set up, relatively easy to maintain (when something doesn't go wrong, that is), is very well documented and supported, and is initially adequate for the task they have in mind (that the task may change significantly such that MySQL is no longer adequate is something only those with experience will consider). PostgreSQL has come a long way and, with the exception of a few minor things (the need to VACUUM, for instance. The current version makes the VACUUM requirement almost a non-issue as regards performance and availability, but it really should be something that the database takes care of itself), is equivalent to MySQL in the above things except for documentation and support. MySQL's documentation is very, very good. My experience with it is that it's possible, and relatively easy, to find information about almost anything you might need to know. PostgreSQL's documentation is good, but not quite as good as MySQL's. It's not quite as complete. For instance, I didn't find any documentation at all in the User's Guide or Administrator's Guide on creating tables (if I missed it, then that might illustrate that the documentation needs to be organized slightly differently). I did find a little in the tutorial (about the amount that you'd want in a tutorial), but to find out more I had to go to the SQL statement reference (in my case I was looking for the means by which one could create a constraint on a column during table creation time). The reason this is important is that the documentation is *the* way people are going to learn the database. If it's too sparse or too disorganized, people who don't have a lot of time to spend searching through the documentation for something may well decide that a different product (such as MySQL) would suit their needs better. The documentation for PostgreSQL improves all the time, largely in response to comments such as this one, and that's a very good thing. My purpose in bringing this up is to show you what PostgreSQL is up against in terms of widespread adoption. If we want to sell PostgreSQL, we should talk about, maybe, Oracle. I have never took care of MySQL said. I just know that I'm running PostgreSQL since 2,5 years and I only stopped it JUST before upgrades of PostgreSQL. It's just *working*; which is unfamiliar to MySQL users. The experience people have with MySQL varies a lot, and much of it has to do with the load people put on it. If MySQL were consistently bad and unreliable it would have a much smaller following (since it's not in a monopoly position the way Microsoft is). But you're mistaken if you believe that MySQL isn't competition for PostgreSQL. It is, because it serves the same purpose: a means of storing information in an easily retrievable way. Selling potential MySQL users on PostgreSQL should be easier than doing the same for Oracle users because potential MySQL users have at least already decided that a free database is worthy of consideration. As their needs grow beyond what MySQL offers, they'll look for a more capable database engine. It's a target market that we'd be idiots to ignore, and we do so at our peril (the more people out there using MySQL, the fewer there are using PostgreSQL). I'm a Linux user. I'm happy that PostgreSQL does not have win32 version. If someone wants to use a real database server, then they should install Linux (or *bsd,etc). This is what Oracle offers,too. Native Windows support will cause some problems; such as some dummy windows users will begin using it. I do not believe that PostgreSQL needs native windowz support. I hate to break it to you (assuming that I didn't misunderstand what you said), but Oracle offers a native Windows port of their database engine, and has done so for some time. It's *stupid* to ignore the native Windows market. There are a lot of people who need a database engine to store their data and who would benefit from a native Windows implementation of PostgreSQL, but aren't interested in the additional burden of setting up a Linux server because they lack the money, time, or expertise. So, hackers (I'm not a hacker) should decide whether
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. Then you will have what you want. You will be used by a limited number of developers who understand the idea. And you will have ugly dialogues like that. This sounds a bit like 'what would happen if all population of the world were male'. Or all were developers. You should accept the fact that you never have developers on the front line. Even if you take Microsoft - I even do not know the name of the chief software engineer (do not tell me this is Mr. Gates, he is not - there is a guy with a beard, the third richest man in the world or so). Or if you take Oracle - you have Larry. Larry is not a developer. Or even with MySQL - you see the marketing machine. Even with Linux - I have not seen Linus in the press for ages. Or Alan. All 'gurus' are hidden. You take the hype - the hype of Bill or the hype of Linus. Or the charming and successfully arogant Lary. And make a product out of it and a market. As long as the developers of PostgreSQL want to be on the front line - it will be what it is - a fine database used by the people who have the clue to talk to and understand developers. An uncut diamond. I actually do not understand why is the whole cry - why not somebody who has REALLY the marketing in his/her heart - does not make an open source amazingly beautiful and powerful web site. You do not have to ask Bruce for that. You get BRICOLAGE - it is free, and it is good - salon.com runs on it. You inspire some great designer to do the desing (do not ask a developer to do that, otherwise a designer might want to do some code and PostgreSQL is lost). Call Mario Garcia (www.mariogarcia.com) - he will be proud to help. And you take ten fanatic advocacy people to fill in success stories and case studies. News. Whatever. It does not take that much. It take strong individuals that lead. However, some people on HACKERS find special pleasure to kill all initiative. I do not see this for first time... Iavor www.pgaccess.org ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Bruce Momjian wrote: Iavor Raytchev wrote: I actually do not understand why is the whole cry - why not somebody who has REALLY the marketing in his/her heart - does not make an open source amazingly beautiful and powerful web site. You do not have to ask Bruce for that. You get BRICOLAGE - it is free, and it is good - salon.com runs on it. You inspire some great designer to do the desing (do not ask a developer to do that, otherwise a designer might want to do some code and PostgreSQL is lost). Call Mario Garcia (www.mariogarcia.com) - he will be proud to help. And you take ten fanatic advocacy people to fill in success stories and case studies. News. Whatever. It does not take that much. It take strong individuals that lead. However, some people on HACKERS find special pleasure to kill all initiative. I do not see this for first time... I think we have gotten over that hurdle and _most_ agree marketing is a priority. I am sorry. Seems I came too late. I did it out of my good feelings. Iavor ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Iavor Raytchev wrote: I actually do not understand why is the whole cry - why not somebody who has REALLY the marketing in his/her heart - does not make an open source amazingly beautiful and powerful web site. You do not have to ask Bruce for that. You get BRICOLAGE - it is free, and it is good - salon.com runs on it. You inspire some great designer to do the desing (do not ask a developer to do that, otherwise a designer might want to do some code and PostgreSQL is lost). Call Mario Garcia (www.mariogarcia.com) - he will be proud to help. And you take ten fanatic advocacy people to fill in success stories and case studies. News. Whatever. It does not take that much. It take strong individuals that lead. However, some people on HACKERS find special pleasure to kill all initiative. I do not see this for first time... I think we have gotten over that hurdle and _most_ agree marketing is a priority. -- Bruce Momjian| http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup.| Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Am Donnerstag, 5. Dezember 2002 05:22 schrieb Lamar Owen: [cc: list trimmed] On Wednesday 04 December 2002 22:52, Philip Warner wrote: At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems. What are the consequences of the problem? Actually, lack of easy upgrading is one of PostgreSQL's major problems But lack of focused marketing -- truthful, not, as has been said, like the 'Database HOWTO' -- is a real problem. It would be nice to increase our usage. If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of the development effort distorted or the existing user base inconvenienced in an effort to purely gain that market share. I usually associate increased marketing with decreased quality, and I think the causality works *both* ways. ISTM there's a separate, non-code-developer group doing this. It doesn't seem to take away _any_ developer resources to do an advocacy site. However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be as fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got advocacy.postgresql.org, techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org, developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and we also have www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they are fractured in their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here. Hi, there are lots of sites talking about postgresql. But if someone hear about postgresql he sure tries www.postgresql.org. There he just get a list of mirrors. Not really a good start. But worse: there is no links to gborg, advocacy, techdocs, ... Advocacy should be found at www.postgresql.org and have links to the other pages. I found gborg when reading the mailinglistst. It is something like a insidertip. www.apache.org has a much better structure. You go to www.apache.org and get a welcome-message and links to subprojects as the webserver. Another point that comes to my mind is design. I'm not a designer, but I like the design of www.postgresql.org but not advocacy.postrgresql.org. Tommi -- Dr. Eckhardt + Partner GmbH http://www.epgmbh.de ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Hi Tommi, Tommi Maekitalo wrote: snip Hi, there are lots of sites talking about postgresql. But if someone hear about postgresql he sure tries www.postgresql.org. There he just get a list of mirrors. Not really a good start. But worse: there is no links to gborg, advocacy, techdocs, ... Advocacy should be found at www.postgresql.org and have links to the other pages. I found gborg when reading the mailinglistst. It is something like a insidertip. There is a new front page for the www.postgresql.org site that was recently finished, and will be moved into the correct place soon. You can view it for now at wwwdevel.postgresql.org. The new front page has links to the other main websites, so it should help people find the information they need in a much easier way. :-) Hope that's helpful to know. :-) Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift snip Tommi -- My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. - Indira Gandhi ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Vince Vielhaber wrote: On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote: Vince Vielhaber wrote: On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote: Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of business, there really isn't much choice. That tells me their clients wanted a commercial database, not one that's open source. All the marketing in the world won't change that. Really? Why do you say that? Because of this taken from the above quoted text: they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2 Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned. Anything else you don't understand about that? There are a number of reasons their clients could have been clamoring for DB2 or Oracle, only some of which are related to the fact that they're commercial, closed-source databases: 1. They already have significant in-house expertise with one or the other product. 2. They need 24x7 support, and are convinced that they'll get better support for Oracle or DB2 than anything else. 3. They want a company to blame in case things go wrong. 4. They require certain capabilities that they believe only DB2 or Oracle can provide. 5. They have an established partnership with IBM or Oracle. 6. Some combination of the above. Some of those reasons are such that it might be possible (depending on the specifics of the situation) to successfully market PostgreSQL (or even MySQL) to them, and some of them aren't. It just depends. And that's why it's a bad idea to simply discard that situation as one in which it would be impossible to market PostgreSQL. Marketing is the art of convincing someone that they want your product. Since the keyword here is want, it's an art that combines reason and emotion. Even if the situation seems logically hopeless (that is, there's no logical reason for the customer to prefer your product over another), you may still manage to successfully market your product to them by appealing to their emotions. Happens all the time. My personal feeling is that in the case of PostgreSQL, it should be marketed primarily using reason. More precisely, it should *not* be marketed to someone for whom a different product would better suit them. That, to me, would be shady at best and would eventually become a blemish on the reputation of the PostgreSQL community. But it doesn't mean giving up just because the client thinks he wants a commercial database: he may well want something else that a commercial database just happens to provide. If you're trying to sell someone on PostgreSQL, it behooves you to figure out what their real needs are first. Their actual needs may be significantly different from what they tell you they want. -- Kevin Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On 9 Dec 2002 at 1:20, Kevin Brown wrote: 2. They need 24x7 support, and are convinced that they'll get better support for Oracle or DB2 than anything else. I have experienced what oracle support means for 24x7. I wouldn't even wish that penalty for my worst enemy. I can tell a story about it but I digress. Details aren't important though true. What really matters is how kindly and dearly you stand by your product. That is where all support originates.. Rest is marketing.. Bye Shridhar -- I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer toany question. -- Spock, This Side of Paradise, stardate 3417.3 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote: But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention. I'm not asking everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this list to recognize the utility of the effort. Here are my main problems with it. 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it. 2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to stay informed on what they're doing. 3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me) how or they'll never be taken seriously. That's all I'm going to say on this subject. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Mon, 09 Dec 2002 07:29:55 -0500, Vince Vielhaber wrote: On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote: But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention. I'm not asking everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this list to recognize the utility of the effort. Here are my main problems with it. 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it. I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the 7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed. 2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to stay informed on what they're doing. I think it was only suggested that you join since you obviously have a lot of feedback you'd like to give to the group. Since a lot of people on -hackers don't want to be involved in the process, it seemed a bad idea to post all of the detail work to this list. 3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me) how or they'll never be taken seriously. I've seen more posts saying that until you get a decent website your not going to be taken seriously than anything else, by far. While I'm hoping that's not entirely true, I do agree that until we get a coordinated and open web development process the advocacy group is going to have a much harder go of it. Robert Treat ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Vince Vielhaber [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it. I think the upshot of the prior discussion was that the outside press release shouldn't have been used as the release announcement for the existing mailing lists. Fine, they made a one-time mistake. 2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to stay informed on what they're doing. It seems to me that people have made it perfectly clear that they don't want to hear about marketing on the -hackers or -general lists. Taking it to a marketing-specific list seems like exactly the right response. Where do you think it should be discussed? regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Vince, Here are my main problems with it. 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it. First off ... not they, you. I'm a member of Advocacy; so are Robert, Justin, Neil, Marc, Bruce and several other members of this list. The advocacy group is not some privately sponsored bunch of marketeers; *we* are your fellow contributors. Yes, we should have released a different version of the announcement to the internal lists. I believe that I have already explained how that happened. 2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to stay informed on what they're doing. Unless you don't want to stay informed. In which case, you're welcome not to, and one or more Advocacy people will join wwwdevel to keep links synchronized. Nobody's going to make you do anything. This is Open Source. 3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me) how or they'll never be taken seriously. One of our volunteers is a professional PR person. Two are periodical writers. I started (with 2 partners) the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project, which was cited by one columnist (Amy Wohl) as a better volunteer marketing team than Sun could put together for a million-dollar budget (paraphrased). 3 of us are small business owners. I think we have as much or more combined experience as the marketing department of any start-up, without the baggage. Also, half a marketing effort is better than none. At the very least, we need to keep Postgres in the press, else we are likely to see PostgreSQL fade into permanent obscurity. The technology world is full of technically good but poorly marketed products -- FoxPro anyone? Paradox? Beta video? Amiga? Last week I got a 5-page long database developer survey from EvansData. It mentioned 10 other database platforms -- including Ingres! -- but not PostgreSQL. I personally don't want to see that again. Sure, we got off to a rocky start. However, I will point out that our first release happened to fall on a major American holiday; this made it extra hard to organize the effort, and things didn't work out well. But the answer to that is not to abandon the effort, but to plan and prepare better in the future. I would also be grateful if us folks on the Advocacy team could look to Hackers to make sure that we *aren't* going off on a tangent, or pushing Postgres in a way that's inconsistent with the development goals for the database. We *want* Advocacy to be an integral part of the Postgres community, serving the general goal of making Postgres the best possible ORDBMS in existence. -Josh Berkus ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Robert Treat writes: I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the 7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed. Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the press release, written by people who were obviously ill-informed. Release notes: Schemas Schemas allow users to create objects in their own namespace so two people or applications can have tables with the same name. There is also a public schema for shared tables. Table/index creation can be restricted by removing permissions on the public schema. Press release: Schemas PostgreSQL now joins the handful of ORDBMS's to support the SQL 92 Schema specification, improving both enterprise database management and security through the use of namespaces. This not only removes all information about the actual use of schemas, it contains completely bogus information, because SQL 92 is obsolete, there is no SQL Schema specification, and none of this has to do with being an ORDBMS. And besides, whose hands were used to do the counting? Release notes: Drop Column PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality. Press release: void Release notes: Table Functions Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are now much easier to use than before. You can call such a table function in the SELECT FROM clause, treating its output like a table. Also, PL/pgSQL functions can now return sets. Press release: Table Functions PostgreSQL version 7.3 has greatly simplified returning result sets of rows and columns in database functions. This significantly enhances the useability of stored procedures in PostgreSQL, and will make it even easier to port Oracle applications to PostgreSQL. Again, this removes all details about how the feature can be used, and again it inserts completely bogus information. There are no sets of columns, and PostgreSQL does not have stored procedures. Also, it makes it look as though PostgreSQL exists merely to reimplement Oracle. Release notes: Prepared Queries PostgreSQL now supports prepared queries, for improved performance. Press release: - Prepared queries for maximized performance on common requests. I'm curious to know how the marketing department determined that this is, in fact, the maximal performance. Release notes: Dependency Tracking PostgreSQL now records object dependencies, which allows improvements in many areas. DROP statements now take either CASCADE or RESTRICT to control whether dependent objects are also dropped. Press release: - Enhanced dependency tracking for complex databases. Again, all relevant information dropped, replaced by marketing fluff. Release notes: Privileges Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and functions can be defined to run with the privileges of their creator. Press release: Security Advances In response to community demands, PostgreSQL has added schema, function, and other permissions and settings to increase the database administrator's granular control over security. Information dropped, replaced by broad and repetitive verbiage. But at least they didn't write, in response to market pressures. And my personal favorite is this: Release notes: Internationalization Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled. Press release: - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP, EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...) That is just plain wrong. Support for various character sets is years old. -- Peter Eisentraut [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Thomas O'Connell wrote: I was surprised, for instance, to receive a non-list email announcing the release of the software but then to have to wait for days actually to see it show up on the official (or even the advocacy) website in a news item. Even now it is not listed at PostgreSQL, Inc. ack, an oversight, I can assure you ... I have proded the apporpriate ppl for this one :( ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Monday 09 December 2002 12:50, Peter Eisentraut wrote: Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the press release, written by people who were obviously ill-informed. If people want to see the details, let them read the release-notes themselves, and let it be the detail document. A press release of the detail that the release notes have will not get any 'press' -- and I say that wearing my radio broadcaster hat, where I have personally approved or disapproved 'press releases' in news stories in the past. Getting 'press' is what a 'press release' is all about. So, IMHO, the pgsql-announce mailing list should get the press release along with the other 'outside' press outlets -- and the developers' lists (since hackers is far from the only one) should, IMHO again, get a copy of the release notes. And my personal favorite is this: Release notes: Internationalization Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled. Press release: - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP, EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...) That is just plain wrong. Support for various character sets is years old. It IS true that the current release supports all of these. The blanket 'Supports' statement above quoted was not true in the blanket case until the 'support' became default, since there were cases that this would not be true. Support != 'if you pass the right parameters to configure this will work', at least not at the press release level. -- Lamar Owen WGCR Internet Radio 1 Peter 4:11 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Peter Eisentraut [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Robert Treat writes: I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the 7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed. Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the press release, written by people who were obviously ill-informed. snip for brevity So does this mean that you are volunteering to proofread the next marketing announcement? I would wager that only a PostgreSQL developer (such as yourself) could have picked out the inconsistencies that you were able to find. The press release might have seemed obviously ill-informed to you, but it seemed just fine to me, and I can guarantee you that I am at least an order of magnitude more informed about PostgreSQL than the average manager. The difference between the press release and the Release Notes is the intended audience. The folks that the press release is aimed at probably don't have any idea that SQL 92 is obsolete, or that internationalization has been supported for years. Chances are good that they will skim over the new features entirely. What *is* important to these people, however, are the customer testimonials at the beginning of the press release and the list of happy customers at the end. Once management has read the press release they can ask their developers to read the Release Notes. Press releases don't supercede Release Notes, they complement them. The difference between the 7.3 Release Notes and the press release is that I could give the press release to my boss. PostgreSQL desperately needs marketing help. In fact, at this point I would say that PostgreSQL needs more marketing help than it needs development work. Technically PostgreSQL is clearly a winner, but despite its myriad features and impressive performance PostgreSQL is still not being deployed nearly as much as it *should* be. The team that has been assembled to market PostgreSQL has some fairly impressive credentials. They are certainly *much* better than what you would expect considering how much they are getting paid :). In short, if you want to help the folks writing the press releases, then that's fine and dandy. But if all you want to do is throw rocks at the people doing the marketing, then that's another story altogether. Jason Earl ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Jason Earl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Peter Eisentraut [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the press release, written by people who were obviously ill-informed. So does this mean that you are volunteering to proofread the next marketing announcement? I would wager that only a PostgreSQL developer (such as yourself) could have picked out the inconsistencies that you were able to find. FWIW, the press release looked fine to me too (and yes, I saw it in advance). The difference between the press release and the Release Notes is the intended audience. Exactly. The level of detail in the release notes is aimed at hackers (and usually gets criticized as insufficient by them ;-)), but a press release has entirely different purposes. In short, if you want to help the folks writing the press releases, then that's fine and dandy. One error that I think the advocacy team made is that they didn't invite review of the press release from a wider part of the community. Although I generally agree with the viewpoint that marketing issues should be on a separate list and not on -hackers or -general, I think it wouldn't be out of place to send one message to those lists saying a draft of the press release for event FOO is up at this URL, please send comments to advocacy mail list. That seems like a reasonable compromise between filling the lists with unwanted material and having people feel that they were excluded from the process. regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Josh Berkus writes: I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL. However, your being opposed to promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me. How can you be against promoting PostgreSQL? I'm not against promoting PostgreSQL. I'm against promoting PostgreSQL in ways that embarrass me. -- Peter Eisentraut [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Peter, I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL. However, your being opposed to promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me. How can you be against promoting PostgreSQL? I'm not against promoting PostgreSQL. I'm against promoting PostgreSQL in ways that embarrass me. What, specifically, were you embarassed by? -- -Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Tom Lane wrote: I tend to agree with Peter. Not that we don't need a marketing presence; we do (I think Great Bridge's marketing efforts are sorely missed). But the point he is making is that the pgsql mailing lists go to people who are generally unimpressed by marketing fluff. And they're already sold on PG anyway. The right way to handle this next time is to generate a PR-style press release to send to outside contacts, but to do our more traditional, technically-oriented announcement on the mailing lists. Agreed ... we tried to do 'two-in-one' on this one and it didn't quite work out as well as it could have ... next time, we'll go with both methods ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote: Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the minority on this one. Kinda depends who you're asking now, doesn't it? I happen to agree with him, but as long as you're only going to involve a selected few in the opinion gathering you can pretty much get the answer you want to get. I can survey 100 people and get the opposite result putting you in the minority. Me, I think Peter went to the 'far left', while the press release went to the 'far right' (or vice versa) ... i think Tom sum'd it up best that we should have had one for each 'market' we were trying to address ... definitely something to keep in mind and strive for for the next release ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
s'alright, the 'fiefdoms' are about to be nuked :) On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote: On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote: www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work on the sites. This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4 different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms. Robert Treat ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Peter Eisentraut wrote: snip Press release: - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP, EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...) That is just plain wrong. Support for various character sets is years old. Sure is. Notice it didn't say just added or added with this release? It just says supports. It's to highlight the fact that it can be used for non-English character sets. Sure, a whole bunch of people know this, but the main target of the press release is people new to PostgreSQL that don't. :-) Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift -- My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. - Indira Gandhi ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Peter, Robert, Jason, Vince, Justin, et al.: First off, I'd like to ask everyone to CUT IT OUT WITH THE $^*^@** FLAMING, ALREADY! People are *attacking* each other instead of disagreeing. Several posters seem to be taking to opportunity to say everything in the most insulting way possible, even when the actual source of disagreement is small. Perhaps we should declare a moritorium on this topic for 48 hours to let everyone calm down? In case we don't, my response: PETER, it's obvious that the press release team would have benefitted from your copy-editing of the press release.You have several good points about places where we did not do the best possible job in the difficult task of translating technical notes into a form the general press would understand. I wrote a lot of the paragraphs you take issue with, and I don't deny that they could stand improvement. Would you be willing to act as a reviewer on future press releases? That way, we can get the benefit of your insight in a manner that will benefit the press release process. -- -Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Josh Berkus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: First off, I'd like to ask everyone to CUT IT OUT WITH THE $^*^@** FLAMING, ALREADY! People are *attacking* each other instead of disagreeing. Amen. This was first time 'round for the advocacy group, and it's not surprising that there are some things they did wrong, or at least could have done better. Can't we discuss the matter like a group of reasonably friendly people? I think we all have the same end goals in mind, so I don't see the need for unpleasantness. regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Tom Lane wrote: Josh Berkus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: First off, I'd like to ask everyone to CUT IT OUT WITH THE $^*^@** FLAMING, ALREADY! People are *attacking* each other instead of disagreeing. Amen. This was first time 'round for the advocacy group, and it's not surprising that there are some things they did wrong, or at least could have done better. Can't we discuss the matter like a group of reasonably friendly people? I think we all have the same end goals in mind, so I don't see the need for unpleasantness. Agreed. Here's a story: Myself and a few people wanted live animals for a manger scene on our church lawn for Christmas. Many thought it was a bad idea, but we went ahead anyway. It was a huge success, but then people complained we didn't have enough people on the lawn to greet the hundreds of visitors. Moral of the story: if you take risks, expect folks to complain. And, even if you succeed, others will complain you didn't anticipate the success. -- Bruce Momjian| http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup.| Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote: Vince Vielhaber wrote: On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote: Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of business, there really isn't much choice. That tells me their clients wanted a commercial database, not one that's open source. All the marketing in the world won't change that. Really? Why do you say that? Because of this taken from the above quoted text: they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2 Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned. Anything else you don't understand about that? Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Vince Vielhaber wrote: Because of this taken from the above quoted text: they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2 Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned. And ? Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift Anything else you don't understand about that? Vince. -- My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. - Indira Gandhi ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote: Vince Vielhaber wrote: Because of this taken from the above quoted text: they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2 Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned. And ? And what? If you can't understand the above you're in the wrong business. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Vince Vielhaber wrote: On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote: Vince Vielhaber wrote: Because of this taken from the above quoted text: they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2 Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned. And ? And what? If you can't understand the above you're in the wrong business. And ? Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift Vince. -- My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. - Indira Gandhi ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote: Vince Vielhaber wrote: On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote: Vince Vielhaber wrote: Because of this taken from the above quoted text: they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2 Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned. And ? And what? If you can't understand the above you're in the wrong business. And ? That's what I thought. You have no argument so your just typing. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On 7 Dec 2002, Rod Taylor wrote: What too many people fail to realize is that in a commercial environment many companies want another company to point the finger at in case of disaster. Sybase failed, or HP failed, or IBM failed, or Microsoft failed. They feel they can do something about that. If they lose a few million they have someone they can go after, who are they going to go after if PostgreSQL fails them? Marc? Bruce? This is when you start to shout that RedHat offers commercial support, licencing, etc. INCLUDING a free, non-restrictive source licence to the core components of RHDB. I had considered mentioning redhat but didn't want to blur things. Red hat markets PostgreSQL under a different name and they're offering a complete package (including support as you note). The PGDG isn't doing that and they shouldn't be. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 20:52, Vince Vielhaber wrote: Why do you say that? Because of this taken from the above quoted text: they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2 Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned. This is a reason to increase marketing effort. I know the word has pejorative overtones in our community, but it means talking about PostgreSQL so that the PHBs hear about it and therefore begin to feel comfortable about using it. If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL familiar. That's why we need marketing. -- Oliver Elphick [EMAIL PROTECTED] LFIX Limited ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Vince Vielhaber wrote: That's what I thought. You have no argument so your just typing. Hi Vince, Was more hoping you'd care to share your basis for stating Robert's employers clients wanted a commercial database, after he mentioned specifically DB2 and Oracle. Knowing one of the obvious common factors they have and then stating it was definitely the reason - not having sought clarification nor confirmation from Robert - and then further stating that the PG Advocacy and Marketing group wouldn't be able to assist even if that were the case, is extremely bad form coming from anyone, let alone you. Please consider the statements you make by a more accurate approach in the future. Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift Vince. -- My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. - Indira Gandhi ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote: Vince Vielhaber wrote: That's what I thought. You have no argument so your just typing. Hi Vince, Was more hoping you'd care to share your basis for stating Robert's employers clients wanted a commercial database, after he mentioned specifically DB2 and Oracle. Knowing one of the obvious common factors they have and then stating it was definitely the reason - not having sought clarification nor confirmation from Robert - and then further stating that the PG Advocacy and Marketing group wouldn't be able to assist even if that were the case, is extremely bad form coming from anyone, let alone you. Then they come with the insults. Justin, I'm finished discussing this with you. You're obviously not capable of understanding it and you're simply wasting my time - like usual. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote: On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 20:52, Vince Vielhaber wrote: Why do you say that? Because of this taken from the above quoted text: they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2 Last I looked neither Oracle or DB2 were open source, but they both just happen to be commercial and I don't see mysql mentioned. This is a reason to increase marketing effort. I know the word has pejorative overtones in our community, but it means talking about PostgreSQL so that the PHBs hear about it and therefore begin to feel comfortable about using it. If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL familiar. That's why we need marketing. Then why wasn't mysql in the list? It's familiar. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 22:27, Vince Vielhaber wrote: On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote: If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL familiar. That's why we need marketing. Then why wasn't mysql in the list? It's familiar. To PHBs? MySQL doesn't have anything like the marketing clout of Oracle and IBM. Be thankful it isn't in the list; it would make it a hell of a lot more difficult to dislodge it. If we want people to use PostgreSQL in preference to anything else, we have to make it known. That is marketing. If we believe we have a good product we need to say so and say why and how it's better, cheaper and purer than anything else. If there's no good marketing, bad marketing will rule the world for sure. If we don't care, we can retreat into a pure technological huddle and disappear up our own navels. The rest of the world won't even notice. Such purity will eventually destroy the project because it will lose the momentum for growth through a lack of new input. You can grow or you can decline; a steady state is almost impossible to achieve. -- Oliver Elphick[EMAIL PROTECTED] Isle of Wight, UK http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C For I am the LORD your God; ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy. Leviticus 11:44 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Oliver Elphick wrote: If we want people to use PostgreSQL in preference to anything else, we have to make it known. That is marketing. If we believe we have a good product we need to say so and say why and how it's better, cheaper and purer than anything else. If there's no good marketing, bad marketing will rule the world for sure. If we don't care, we can retreat into a pure technological huddle and disappear up our own navels. The rest of the world won't even notice. Such purity will eventually destroy the project because it will lose the momentum for growth through a lack of new input. You can grow or you can decline; a steady state is almost impossible to achieve. Couldn't agree more with that last point. I've had the perspective of working in big companies using various database software, a company specifically focused on PostgreSQL (Great Bridge), and now a new ISV with PostgreSQL underneath a vertical application (OpenMFG). I can tell you that even though the pgsql-hacker community is as strong as it's ever been, I think there's a serious danger of the larger world passing PostgreSQL by. Oracle and DB2 continue to get better and - significantly - cheaper, and SQL Server ... well, Oracle and DB2 are getting better. MySQL, even though it's an inferior product for most real database work, has always had a significantly larger installed base than PostgreSQL- and it's less controversial for people like Sun (who have deep relationships with Oracle) to get involved with. And despite the productizing of RHDB, Red Hat doesn't seem interested in making a real push for PostgreSQL either. While there are a number of smaller companies trying to help out, I think it's clear that the burden for helping PostgreSQL to find wider acceptance in the marketplace will be on the pgsql-hacker community for some time to come. I applaud the efforts of the advocacy group, and encourage others here not to look at the marketing as somehow dirty or beneath the dignity of the project. Keep up the good work, Ned ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote: On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 22:27, Vince Vielhaber wrote: On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote: If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL familiar. That's why we need marketing. Then why wasn't mysql in the list? It's familiar. To PHBs? I would argue yes. Everywhere you turn you see Powered by MySQL. If years of working on it isn't getting them the familiarity to overcome the PHBs then the PHBs are either not considering open source or the marketing attempts aren't strong or capable enough to penetrate. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Sunday 08 December 2002 06:14 pm, Vince Vielhaber wrote: On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote: On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 22:27, Vince Vielhaber wrote: On 8 Dec 2002, Oliver Elphick wrote: If something is familiar, it feels safe. We need to make PostgreSQL familiar. That's why we need marketing. Then why wasn't mysql in the list? It's familiar. To PHBs? I would argue yes. Everywhere you turn you see Powered by MySQL. If years of working on it isn't getting them the familiarity to overcome the PHBs then the PHBs are either not considering open source or the marketing attempts aren't strong or capable enough to penetrate. I don't think mysql has penetrated the enterprise class/ mission critical mindest, which is the level our service had to be provided that. To be honest, it was tough to argue PostgreSQL belonged in that group, though we had a good 2 years worth of history in actually running the business on PostgreSQL which couldn't be dismissed. Of course, some of these companies weren't too happy things were running on linux, and not aix or solaris; are we seeing a pointy haired trend here? Personally I never understood why our sales guys didn't just tell them ok we'll port the service to oracle/solaris for you, but it's going to cost you at least twice what it does now, if not three times. Oh, and you won't see any better performance. Robert Treat ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Saturday 07 December 2002 11:10 pm, Vince Vielhaber wrote: On 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote: On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote: www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work on the sites. This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4 different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms. Well we told you a few times which list you were supposed to subscribe to but over and over again you didn't. I just finished approving your subscription to the list we've been telling you to join. And I have multiple subscription denied emails from lists I've tried to join. In fact I was just rejected again from joining pgsql-www. Given that I'm one of the few people who have actually donated content and/or code to techdocs, advocacy, and the new portal site; not to mention I already have shell access for the backend servers; also not to mention my helping out with the sourceforge PostgreSQL project page; and finally not to mention my solid open source background which includes coding for the phpPgAdmin project and work as a php foundry administrator for sourceforge, among other projects; I have to ask what the hell could be so secretive and important about that list that people would complain about lack of communication and yet I can't be allowed access to that group?!? Robert Treat ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote: On Saturday 07 December 2002 11:10 pm, Vince Vielhaber wrote: On 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote: On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote: www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work on the sites. This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4 different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms. Well we told you a few times which list you were supposed to subscribe to but over and over again you didn't. I just finished approving your subscription to the list we've been telling you to join. And I have multiple subscription denied emails from lists I've tried to join. In fact I was just rejected again from joining pgsql-www. Given that I'm one of the few people who have actually donated content and/or code to techdocs, advocacy, and the new portal site; not to mention I already have shell access for the backend servers; also not to mention my helping out with the sourceforge PostgreSQL project page; and finally not to mention my solid open source background which includes coding for the phpPgAdmin project and work as a php foundry administrator for sourceforge, among other projects; I have to ask what the hell could be so secretive and important about that list that people would complain about lack of communication and yet I can't be allowed access to that group?!? Exactly, and pgsql-www is the wrong goddam list! I've told you over and over again. pgsql-www is the list that the group leaders use to collaborate. Over and over again we told you to join pgsql-www-main, which is an invitation only list for development of the soon to be released portal. I'm the one that approves or denies the subscriptions to BOTH of those lists and the first time I denied you I sent you a note telling you not only why I denied it, but which list you were SUPPOSED to join. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Sunday 08 December 2002 11:32 pm, Vince Vielhaber wrote: Exactly, and pgsql-www is the wrong goddam list! I've told you over and over again. pgsql-www is the list that the group leaders use to collaborate. And a fine job of collaboration you're doing *obviously* Over and over again we told you to join pgsql-www-main, which is an invitation only list for development of the soon to be released portal. I'm the one that approves or denies the subscriptions to BOTH of those lists and the first time I denied you I sent you a note telling you not only why I denied it, but which list you were SUPPOSED to join. fiefdoms!! Robert Treat ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Vince, Peter: I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL. However, your being opposed to promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me. How can you be against promoting PostgreSQL? Don't you want poeple to use your code? For me, it's not just a matter of preference, but of necessity; if Postgres becomes obscure, I stop being able to participate in the project. While there are people on this list who are fortunate enough to be able to code whatever they want and still get paid, for a lot of people, our participation hinges on the cycle: Postgres Users -- Postgres Contracts -- Postgres Jobs -- Postgres Contributors -- Improvement *and Promotion* of Postgres -- Postgres Users ... The Promotion part of that step is *not* dispensable; all of the best features in the world are not going to expand the Postgres commmunity if people haven't heard of it, can't find it, and know a lot more about MySQL anyway. While this may not be true for everybody, some of us have clients or bosses who do read trade periodicals and demand that we follow their technology reccomendations. I already have one client using MySQL because of MySQL's much more professional web site and better support and better performance. Frankly, if we blow off marketing PostgreSQL as irrelevant, we *deserve* to get steamrollered by MySQL. I think it's terrific that Postgres is a real, programmer-centric, democratic Open Source project. I believe that programmers and contributors should lead the project, and decide features and schedules based on technical and not marketing reasons. Nobody on the Advocacy team is trying to take control of the project and turn it into a dot-com. But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention. I'm not asking everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this list to recognize the utility of the effort. -Josh Berkus ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote: Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the minority on this one. Kinda depends who you're asking now, doesn't it? I happen to agree with him, but as long as you're only going to involve a selected few in the opinion gathering you can pretty much get the answer you want to get. I can survey 100 people and get the opposite result putting you in the minority. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Vince Vielhaber wrote: On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote: Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of business, there really isn't much choice. That tells me their clients wanted a commercial database, not one that's open source. All the marketing in the world won't change that. Really? Why do you say that? :-) Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift Vince. -- My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. - Indira Gandhi ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Brian Knox wrote: Speaking from the perspective of a long time postgresql user, who currently has several very mission critical applications using postgresql on the back end, at a very large company... I can say the one consequence of the problem that I have run into personally, is convincing management to allow me to use postgresql for my projects to begin with. Fortunately, where I am currently employed, I was able to bash my head against the brick wall until they got tired of hearing from me, and allowed me to go with postgresql instead of sybase (which was their first choice, as the corporation already has a sybase site license). The lack of name recognition was a factor that contributed to the difficulty of getting postgresql accepted. The last thing a non technical middle manager wants to tell his or her manager is that some mission critical application that just crashed was running on some database he had never heard of before that he gave the go ahead to use. Not name recognition, but it'd be nice to think that's the reason. Mysql has alot of name recognition but you didn't mention them. You mentioned sybase and having a sybase site license. Marketing wouldn't help here, they want a commercial database used that they've already paid for. What too many people fail to realize is that in a commercial environment many companies want another company to point the finger at in case of disaster. Sybase failed, or HP failed, or IBM failed, or Microsoft failed. They feel they can do something about that. If they lose a few million they have someone they can go after, who are they going to go after if PostgreSQL fails them? Marc? Bruce? Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
What too many people fail to realize is that in a commercial environment many companies want another company to point the finger at in case of disaster. Sybase failed, or HP failed, or IBM failed, or Microsoft failed. They feel they can do something about that. If they lose a few million they have someone they can go after, who are they going to go after if PostgreSQL fails them? Marc? Bruce? This is when you start to shout that RedHat offers commercial support, licencing, etc. INCLUDING a free, non-restrictive source licence to the core components of RHDB. -- Rod Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: http://www.rbt.ca/rbtpub.asc signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On 5 Dec 2002, Robert Treat wrote: On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote: www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work on the sites. This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4 different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms. Well we told you a few times which list you were supposed to subscribe to but over and over again you didn't. I just finished approving your subscription to the list we've been telling you to join. Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote: Dave, BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group When did that happen then? I think I must have blinked :-) Marc and Justin are periodically keeping the Advocacy group informed of progress on wwwdevel, and we were asked to test it before. Vince asked us for suggestions, too. I did what? When? Vince. -- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond! http://www.pop4.net/ http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
As someone who exists mainly as an active user (and part-time advocate/documentation tweaker), I have found the release of PostgreSQL 7.3 to be disappointing. The ensuing pseudo-flamewar on the various lists has been similarly disappointing. I was surprised, for instance, to receive a non-list email announcing the release of the software but then to have to wait for days actually to see it show up on the official (or even the advocacy) website in a news item. Even now it is not listed at PostgreSQL, Inc. Consider the pieces of the puzzle here: 1) an official website (http://www.postgresql.org/) 2) an advocacy website (http://advocacy.postgresql.org/) 3) official mailing lists 4) a separate email database 5) a developers' website (http://developers.postgresql.org/) 6) an official ftp site (ftp://ftp.postgresql.org/) 7) mirror websites 8) mirror ftp sites 9) a corporate website (http://www.pgsql.com/) While I have remained impressed with the software itself, the organization of these pieces has left much to be desired for the duration of my involvement as an end user. As someone who works in a small startup company, I am a frequent witness to both the advantages and disadvantages of the lack of a strong benevolent dictatorship in the form of management. I think one of the core problems with the advocacy and presentation of the PostgreSQL project is the fact that it has been a developer-centric project for quite some time, and that process, while there are drivers, does not tend to affect much other than the code. There does not seem to be a single, driving vision (or even a Board or consensus-based vision) behind the public face of PostgreSQL. Granted, when a project is entirely volunteer-based, the management and development are loose. I've noticed that in many such projects, web design and maintenance become very low priority, especially when left to groups of hackers. Witness GNU, Debian, and, I would say PostgreSQL: extremely spare official websites often intimidating and/or difficult for the newbie. I've wanted to see a bit more structure given to the PostgreSQL website, the release process, and various other portions of the project for quite some time, but often it seems as though such a structure would not even be welcome. As someone who has not had time to be a true developer on the project, I'm content to wait for the missing features I'd like to see. Still, I'm hoping that developers and advocates alike realize that the release process and these lists are in the public domain, and the way business is conducted affects the perceptions of users as much as the quality of the software or any amount of marketing. In any case, thanks for all the hard work. I actually thought the text of the email release I received was good and am working on the upgrade process now in my own environment. -tfo In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Lane) wrote: Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the minority on this one. I tend to agree with Peter. Not that we don't need a marketing presence; we do (I think Great Bridge's marketing efforts are sorely missed). But the point he is making is that the pgsql mailing lists go to people who are generally unimpressed by marketing fluff. And they're already sold on PG anyway. The right way to handle this next time is to generate a PR-style press release to send to outside contacts, but to do our more traditional, technically-oriented announcement on the mailing lists. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Dave, BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group When did that happen then? I think I must have blinked :-) Marc and Justin are periodically keeping the Advocacy group informed of progress on wwwdevel, and we were asked to test it before. Vince asked us for suggestions, too. It's not like Advocacy has so much time to mess around with the Advocacy site that we need weekly updates from WWW as well ... == Postges People: What really troubles me is that I'm seeing the *implication* on this list that one or more people offered to help the WWW team and were rejected. If this is true, I'd like to see that person say so explicitly and we can find out from Vince and Marc what happened; if not, I think the insinuations about exclusiveness by the WWW team are completely uncalled for. -Josh Berkus ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
-Original Message- From: Josh Berkus [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 06 December 2002 17:45 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Dave, BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group When did that happen then? I think I must have blinked :-) Marc and Justin are periodically keeping the Advocacy group informed of progress on wwwdevel, and we were asked to test it before. Vince asked us for suggestions, too. It's not like Advocacy has so much time to mess around with the Advocacy site that we need weekly updates from WWW as well ... Ahh, it's the other way round we don't see (advocacy - www). == Postges People: What really troubles me is that I'm seeing the *implication* on this list that one or more people offered to help the WWW team and were rejected. If this is true, I'd like to see that person say so explicitly and we can find out from Vince and Marc what happened; if not, I think the insinuations about exclusiveness by the WWW team are completely uncalled for. Yes, this worries me. We have very recently had a couple of new volunteers join the team who have been actively helping me with the new portal - I've certainly not heard of anyone being turned away. It was also not long ago that Vince solicited new design ideas from the community on -general. Wrt the closed status of the list, I think (please correct me if I'm wrong Marc/Vince) this is mainly because we try to keep it very focused. It is very much a developers meeting place where we *all* contribute heavily to the work. It is not a support list, or general discussion list. Regards, Dave. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
-Original Message- From: Lamar Owen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 05 December 2002 04:23 To: PostgreSQL-development Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be as fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got advocacy.postgresql.org, techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org, developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and we also have www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they are fractured in their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here. Thats what we're working on. We've designed a new portal to all the sites. That's go live soon and then we'll start rationalising what's left. I'm already (admittedly slowly) deprecating odbc.postgresql.org. Regards, Dave. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is unfortunate that it is almost impossible to have a marketing group without there being some wilful blinders involved; it's vital for there to be some technical involvement in the marketing group to pop whatever bubbles they grow that are woefully wrong. But even if it operates with some occasional lack of /real/ vision, it's necessary to have a marketing group... And, for the most part, those that are -advocacy are techies that wish to contribute as they can, but don't have the knowledge/time to dedicate to actual code ... Bruce is kinda quiet, but both he and I are on that list, and I read (and imagine Bruce does to) pretty much everything that goes through ... but, again, these aren't 'marketing droids' we have over there, but techies that are using the software and have an idea of her limitations and benefits ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Lamar Owen wrote: However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be as fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got advocacy.postgresql.org, techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org, developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and we also have www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they are fractured in their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here. Ummm, actually, we have: advocacy, techdocs, gborg, developer, archives, jobs note that altho they are seperate URLs, the end result is going to be that http://www.postgresql.org we become the town square of sorts, which should be real soon now ... jdbc/odbc are 'project sites' off of gborg, similar to what sourceforge provides ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Scott Lamb wrote: Is this list the appropriate place to discuss the websites? or should I take it to -advocacy? My impression here is that the two sites are maintained separately and the people involved haven't interacted very much. Is that accurate or no? Expect some major changes coming down the pipe ... http://www.postgresql.org is in its final stages of a major face lift ... the informatoin that iscurrently on that site, Vince is in the process of doing a major face lift on, but as it is now, I guess its been a veritible nightmare for him to really add anyting to it ... Once we announce the new http://www.postgresql.org (hopefully this coming week *cross fingers*), then start bombarding us with problems :) Note that for the web site development effort itself, there is a closed list with about a dozen or so of us on it ... the -advocacy list is meant to be open, with its focus reflected on the advocacy web site itself ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
-Original Message- From: Scott Lamb [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 05 December 2002 06:37 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group I'm volunteering to do work here. I could at the very least go through the sites and make a longer list of things like this that I notice. If they are public CVS somewhere, I can send patches. I saw that there's a http://wwwdevel.postgresql.org/. What's going on with that? Is there anything I can do to speed up its adoption? How will it affect the rest of the sites? That will be going live RSN as the first part of a re-org. Is this list the appropriate place to discuss the websites? or should I take it to -advocacy? My impression here is that the two sites are maintained separately and the people involved haven't interacted very much. Is that accurate or no? There are 2 groups of people -advocacy and the web developers. I have suggested to Marc that we need liason between the 2 groups, and better definition of who does what. FYI, -advocacy is an open list (afaik) and www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work on the sites. There is a little overlap. Regards, Dave. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Thursday 05 December 2002 09:37, Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Lamar Owen wrote: However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be as fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got note that altho they are seperate URLs, the end result is going to be that http://www.postgresql.org we become the town square of sorts, which should be real soon now ... jdbc/odbc are 'project sites' off of gborg, similar to what sourceforge provides ... Glad to hear this. One question: is there any particular reason the www list is closed? Just curious -- reading archives of this list, or getting a digest or this list, even in a read-only manner, might alleviate some misconceptions. Those who care can at least read what's planned for the web site. As far as advocacy is concerned, I made a conscious decision to not read that list -- I don't need to be convinced to use PostgreSQL. :-). Nor am I necessarily a good 'advocacy' person..my 'convincing' many times comes across much different from what I meant. So I don't read that list. Can you (or Vince) distill a roadmap for the website and post here, on hackers? -- Lamar Owen WGCR Internet Radio 1 Peter 4:11 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Philip Warner wrote: At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems. What are the consequences of the problem? Well, I'd have to say the major one is a difficult in increasing our user base, as ppl like MySQL are making sure they are heard whenever they add something new that we've had for years ... If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of the development effort distorted or the existing user base inconvenienced in an effort to purely gain that market share. I usually associate increased marketing with decreased quality, and I think the causality works *both* ways. That is what we want, and the efforts in no way are meant to undermine/distort anything ... go to archives.postgresql.org and read through the threads to get a feel ... its not a closed/hidden list by any means ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 03:28, Dave Page wrote: www is a closed group consisting of a few of us who actually do the work on the sites. This is one of the primary reasons the sites are so fractured. We have 4 different mailing lists for website development (and I'm not counting advocacy as one of those) and the folks maintaining those lists seem to be against letting anyone into their fiefdoms. Robert Treat ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is unfortunate that it is almost impossible to have a marketing group without there being some wilful blinders involved; it's vital for there to be some technical involvement in the marketing group to pop whatever bubbles they grow that are woefully wrong. But even if it operates with some occasional lack of /real/ vision, it's necessary to have a marketing group... And, for the most part, those that are -advocacy are techies that wish to contribute as they can, but don't have the knowledge/time to dedicate to actual code ... Bruce is kinda quiet, but both he and I are on that list, and I read (and imagine Bruce does to) pretty much everything that goes through ... but, again, these aren't 'marketing droids' we have over there, but techies that are using the software and have an idea of her limitations and benefits ... Yes, I have been way too quiet. I am trying to carve out time before starting on 7.4 work, but it seems stuff keeps coming up. I have updated the developers page with company names, and Vince is going to integrate that. My next step is to split out my advocacy mailbox and start shooting out content for the advocacy site. -- Bruce Momjian| http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup.| Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
At 12:12 AM 5/12/2002 -0500, Robert Treat wrote: What are the consequences of the problem? One consequence that probably hits home for everyone here is it makes it extremely hard to make a living working with postgresql. ... You can't win marketshare on technology alone I am happy with increasing market share so long a development is not distorted or current users inconvenienced. We have seen the latter with the misplaced announcements. And the former because I am writing this on -hackers, rather than implementing dependency-tracking in pg_dump ;-). ...lots of stuff deleted... Marketing is very relevant to existing customers. Good point. Market Share - Influence -Corprate Support - more features - market share. Gaining market share *is* a natural consequence of improving the product; marketing is about convincing people a product has improved, even if it hasn't. Advocacy is about telling people about the product as it is - and I have no problem with that, with the above proviso. Aren't most development efforts made simply to gain market share? diatribe I seriously hope not - in fact I would find that very depressing. In my opinion, anyone who devotes their personal free time to an open source development project probably has a slew of complex motivations that have little to do with market share. Perhaps the closest they would come would be to say I want to make it better, and in some peoples minds, better is measured by market share. In my case, development I did on other open source projects (libgd) was driven by a philosophical objection to application of patents to software in the US, and to a need for particular features (gd2 format, gif support). My work on PG is driven by a desire to make the product more useful (to me), more usable (for me), and by a philosophical belief in the importance of free open software. The fact that other people ( I) profit from this work is great. In any case, market share, for me, is at best a third order influence - and I assume that's true for most people who contribute to OS software. Although I do admit that there is a natural tendency to want your team to win. /diatribe After all, I don't think we added schema support to get *less* people to use postgresql. I am not sure why it was added, and it's sufficiently esoteric and large that I doubt market share was an issue. If we wanted market share, then online-vacuum and online-upgrade would have been the big-hitters. My guess is that it was done because we did not support it, it is in the SQL standard, and it solved a number of issues that caused existing users developers problems. It was probably also an interesting project. Maybe I'm wrong... Philip Warner| __---_ Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd. |/ - \ (A.B.N. 75 008 659 498) | /(@) __---_ Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81 | _ \ Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172 | ___ | Http://www.rhyme.com.au |/ \| |---- PGP key available upon request, | / and from pgp5.ai.mit.edu:11371 |/ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Thu, 05 Dec 2002 21:26:13 -0500, Philip Warner wrote: At 12:12 AM 5/12/2002 -0500, Robert Treat wrote: I am happy with increasing market share so long a development is not distorted or current users inconvenienced. We have seen the latter with the misplaced announcements. It seems to me that people were inconvenienced solely because Mark forgot to CC the right groups and he didn't put the word 7.3 in the right place in his subject line. Oh, and guess it was disruptive for people who killfile any piece of email that has quoted text in it... And the former because I am writing this on -hackers, rather than implementing dependency-tracking in pg_dump ;-). so get back to coding already... ...lots of stuff deleted... Marketing is very relevant to existing customers. Good point. Market Share - Influence -Corprate Support - more features - market share. Gaining market share *is* a natural consequence of improving the product; really? postgresql has been improving by leaps and bounds of the last few years, but I guarantee you it's been losing market share, and it's losing that market share to databases without half the features. marketing is about convincing people a product has improved, even if it hasn't. Advocacy is about telling people about the product as it is - and I have no problem with that, with the above proviso. snip lots more stuff that basically says marketing isn't all bad, it's irrelevant too well, i think any more discussion at this point becomes a semantical argument or a flame war, and I've time for neither. Robert Treat ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the minority on this one. I tend to agree with Peter. Not that we don't need a marketing presence; we do (I think Great Bridge's marketing efforts are sorely missed). But the point he is making is that the pgsql mailing lists go to people who are generally unimpressed by marketing fluff. And they're already sold on PG anyway. The right way to handle this next time is to generate a PR-style press release to send to outside contacts, but to do our more traditional, technically-oriented announcement on the mailing lists. regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Folks, We have a marketing group: PGSQL-ADVOCACY. Our problem is that we don't have enough volunteers. For example, last week Robert and Justin had job crises, and I left for the mountains for Thanksgiving. As a result Marc had to pitch in at the last minute to try to get some kind of release out. Thus the lack of coordinated media splash for the 7.3 release. We need more people!!! We have right now about 7 active volunteers and 6-8 translators for Advocacy. That's not nearly enough. If the people on this thread care about marketing Postgresql, then please join the pgsql-advocacy mailing list. BTW, we do coordinate with the Website development group, and for that matter TechDocs. -Josh Berkus ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
-Original Message- From: Peter Eisentraut [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 03 December 2002 23:34 To: Justin Clift Cc: Dave Page; Marc G. Fournier; Bruce Momjian; PostgreSQL-development Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces Justin Clift writes: Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages. Why don't we just shut down the regular web site. Clearly it's not considered adequate anymore. Strangely I was just thinking the same thing. If all the info is on advocacy, then what exactly will be left on the main site? Idocs? I was sort of under the impression that the site reshuffle was happening in a top down manner anyway - start with the portal, then sort out the less-immediately-visible lower bits. I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last thing I need. Regards, Dave. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Dave Page wrote: snip Strangely I was just thinking the same thing. If all the info is on advocacy, then what exactly will be left on the main site? Idocs? Good point, and worth thinking about then. I was sort of under the impression that the site reshuffle was happening in a top down manner anyway - start with the portal, then sort out the less-immediately-visible lower bits. I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last thing I need. Ok then, what do you suggest? :-) Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift Regards, Dave. -- My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. - Indira Gandhi ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
-Original Message- From: Justin Clift [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 04 December 2002 10:59 To: Dave Page Cc: Peter Eisentraut; Marc G. Fournier; Bruce Momjian; PostgreSQL-development Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last thing I need. Ok then, what do you suggest? Not sure, but we do need to define the roles of the groups and keep them seperate as much as possible otherwise some of us are gonna overload. I'm sure Vince will have something to say about this, but it seems to me that advocacy should define what the urghmarketing/urgh plan should be, and should look like, then the www people should implement it. Having the www people maintaining most sites, then the advocacy people doing their own thing seperately is a recipe for trouble. Think about how this would work in a commercial organisation - you would not have the web team sitting in on all the marketing meetings. We also have the advantage that our marketing people (== advocacy) are technically knowledgable and will not make idiots of themselves on a regular basis by asking us for impossible things - unlike your regular run-of-the-mill marketing drones :-) Regards, Dave. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote: Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug* I understood it was intentional so comments wouldn't have done any good. Anything is only as intentional as nobody making constructive critisms of it ... e, that was major bad english ... not part of solution, you are part of problem sort of thing... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug* And how should we have guessed that release management is now done by the advocacy group? While you're out advocating, don't forget the existing users. It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Justin Clift wrote: Dave Page wrote: snip I could have sworn we used to have a bunch of ftp mirrors for downloads. Come to think of it I rewrote/stole a load of Vince's PHP code to allow you to select one from the portal recently. Are we not using them anymore? Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages. The only reason for the download page not having a list of mirrors is due to not having done it yet. So as to not recreate the wheel, or, at least, get the wheel properly rolling, can we get that download page redirected to the one that does list the mirrors? :) I liked Greg(?)'s ideas, but I don't see it as being implemented overnight :) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote: Justin Clift writes: Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages. Why don't we just shut down the regular web site. Clearly it's not considered adequate anymore. As of yet, the new portal isn't ready yet ... and the adequacy of the existing site isn't so much a problem, but maintainability of it ... according to Vince, trying to add anything to it is virtually impossible :( ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote: I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last thing I need. And I'll pre-empt *that* with the volume of email isn't changing, only the ability to filter that email ... the purpose of the -advocacy list is to focus on how to better market the software ... not through stuff like advertising, but how do we provide information to debunk alot of the out-dated myths that still float around ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote: Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug* I understood it was intentional so comments wouldn't have done any good. Anything is only as intentional as nobody making constructive critisms of it ... e, that was major bad english ... not part of solution, you are part of problem sort of thing... That may be how you understood it, but not how I understood it. There appears to be an incremental takeover occurring. Vince. -- http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Marc G. Fournier wrote: snip So as to not recreate the wheel, or, at least, get the wheel properly rolling, can we get that download page redirected to the one that does list the mirrors? :) Yep. Would the best way to do this be changing the wording to say something like: PostgreSQL can be downloaded as source code from any of the many mirror sites: With a link after it directing to somewhere that gives the list. The present www.postgresql.org with the list of mirrors would probably be adequate, but it'll need to be a different url than the straight www.postgresql.org as that's going to change as soon as the new portal is in place. Does this sound like a workable approach for now? Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift I liked Greg(?)'s ideas, but I don't see it as being implemented overnight :) -- My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. - Indira Gandhi ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: Yup, as with doing anything for the firs ttime, the press release itself had its 'bugs' ... considering how many times Josh asked for comments on it, I'm surprised that nobody picked up on it *shrug* And how should we have guessed that release management is now done by the advocacy group? While you're out advocating, don't forget the existing users. It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in this announcement you may want to try using this tool: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more refined and better paired. Vince. -- http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote: And I'll pre-empt *that* with the volume of email isn't changing, only the ability to filter that email ... the purpose of the -advocacy list is to focus on how to better market the software ... not through stuff like advertising, but how do we provide information to debunk alot of the out-dated myths that still float around ... Which is perfectly fine, but as one of the web site developers, I don't want to have to sit in on all the marketing threads to know what they want done with the websites. Instead I'd rather the discussions are summarized by one the the guys there (you/Justin/Bruce?), and they present that to -www and say 'this is what we think is good, please make it happen', at which point I can start coding. Ah, okay, that makes sense ... sort of allocate a 'liason' between the groups ... ? ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote: Justin Clift writes: Of course we are, it's just that we're also trying to direct people to the Advocacy site where there is a lot more info, in a lot more languages. Why don't we just shut down the regular web site. Clearly it's not considered adequate anymore. As of yet, the new portal isn't ready yet ... and the adequacy of the existing site isn't so much a problem, but maintainability of it ... according to Vince, trying to add anything to it is virtually impossible :( I have a new design for it, now it's just getting the time to implement it. It's easy to add to and looks alot nicer. Vince. -- http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
-Original Message- From: Marc G. Fournier [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 04 December 2002 13:56 To: Dave Page Cc: Peter Eisentraut; Justin Clift; Bruce Momjian; PostgreSQL-development Subject: RE: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote: And I'll pre-empt *that* with the volume of email isn't changing, only the ability to filter that email ... the purpose of the -advocacy list is to focus on how to better market the software ... not through stuff like advertising, but how do we provide information to debunk alot of the out-dated myths that still float around ... Which is perfectly fine, but as one of the web site developers, I don't want to have to sit in on all the marketing threads to know what they want done with the websites. Instead I'd rather the discussions are summarized by one the the guys there (you/Justin/Bruce?), and they present that to -www and say 'this is what we think is good, please make it happen', at which point I can start coding. Ah, okay, that makes sense ... sort of allocate a 'liason' between the groups ... ? Sounds spot on to me. Regards, Dave. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Page wrote: I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last thing I need. And I'll pre-empt *that* with the volume of email isn't changing, only the ability to filter that email ... the purpose of the -advocacy list is to focus on how to better market the software ... not through stuff like advertising, but how do we provide information to debunk alot of the out-dated myths that still float around ... But we *are* filtering. I'm filtering out all mail from -advocacy. Besides, I already got off of lists that I wanted to be on due to the traffic. Now you want me to join one that I don't want to be on so I can get more traffic? I've seen how well filters work. I've asked you questions that I never did get an answer to. How is that any better than not getting the mail to begin with? Vince. -- http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Dave Page [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last thing I need. I'm not subscribed to -advocacy either. I'm a little disturbed to hear that major decisions seem to be getting taken there without any mention in -hackers. regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote: That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in this announcement you may want to try using this tool: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more refined and better paired. Bookmark'd for the next release ... thanks for the suggestion ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote: I have a new design for it, now it's just getting the time to implement it. It's easy to add to and looks alot nicer. Cool, I think the only beef I ever had with it was the way the results were presented, but loved teh whole annotated aspects ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Tom Lane wrote: Dave Page [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'll preempt the 'this was all discussed on -advocacy, you should have been there' response with yet another agreement with Vince :-) - I too am getting far too much mail these days and another list is the last thing I need. I'm not subscribed to -advocacy either. I'm a little disturbed to hear that major decisions seem to be getting taken there without any mention in -hackers. Everything that is discussed on -advocacy is generally that which is dealing with the advocacy web site ... case studies and such ... there are no major decisions being made over there ... in my case, it was a small pool of ppl interested in advocacy/marketing that I could draw on to write a stronger, less techie oriented, press release around ... I have a list of 350+ contacts that I used to get it out through, in various fields (university, publishing, etc) and needed something a little bit more at that level then I've been able to create in the past ... Most, if not all, of the stuff going through -advocacy is, right now, revolving around keeping track of the various press links that ppl find on the 'Net, which are to be added to the various sites that are currently being developed ... as well as a point of contact for liason'ng with companies willing/able to write and publish case studies ... ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote: That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in this announcement you may want to try using this tool: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more refined and better paired. Bookmark'd for the next release ... thanks for the suggestion ... I was hoping for something that would take existing text and *Bullshit* it. Bummer. -- Bruce Momjian| http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup.| Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote: Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote: That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in this announcement you may want to try using this tool: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more refined and better paired. Bookmark'd for the next release ... thanks for the suggestion ... I was hoping for something that would take existing text and *Bullshit* it. Bummer. Click on it a few times. You'll get the text you need. I've actually used it for real things with excellent results (I'm not going to elaborate). Vince. -- http://www.meanstreamradio.com http://www.unknown-artists.com Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. Ummm...I disagree. Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems. Particularly when you compare against similar efforts from MySQL, Oracle, etc. Yes, indeed. The _prime_ reason for the fact that MySQL is the M in LAMP is that there is a steady, intent set of efforts going into marketing the M. People think that MySQL is faster, easier to use and more standard than its alternatives, and that is certainly the result of marketing. The /real/ technical merit of MySQL has been that there are some integrated tools for ISPs like CPANEL that make it easy for ISPs that don't know /anything/ about DBMSes to provide MySQL for their customers. CPANEL doesn't support PostgreSQL, and historically, it has been somewhat more difficult to support large numbers of PostgreSQL instances on a web server. Some of that has changed, though CPANEL /still/ doesn't support PostgreSQL. If any of you consider these technical issues to be small and petty, I'm afraid I don't /care/. More importantly, the hundreds of ISPs licensing CPANEL don't care. /They/ are the ones that would need convincing, and I don't think there's any real route to convince them that they should be pounding down CPANEL's door asking for a PostgreSQL front end and to convince them that they have to tell their customers: We sold you MySQL, telling you it was good for you to use. We were wrong, and our new story is that you should convert your databases over to use PostgreSQL. Anyone consider that a likely scenario? Anyone? It's fair to say that PostgreSQL doesn't need the likes of the Database HOWTO that gives a sales job that's so blindly enthusiastic as to be, well, blind. But an organization that has /no/ marketing department is at a severe disadvantage, like it or not. It is unfortunate that it is almost impossible to have a marketing group without there being some wilful blinders involved; it's vital for there to be some technical involvement in the marketing group to pop whatever bubbles they grow that are woefully wrong. But even if it operates with some occasional lack of /real/ vision, it's necessary to have a marketing group... -- (reverse (concatenate 'string moc.enworbbc@ sirhc)) http://cbbrowne.com/info/advocacy.html Rules of the Evil Overlord #106. If my supreme command center comes under attack, I will immediately flee to safety in my prepared escape pod and direct the defenses from there. I will not wait until the troops break into my inner sanctum to attempt this. http://www.eviloverlord.com/ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
[cc: list trimmed] On Wednesday 04 December 2002 22:52, Philip Warner wrote: At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems. What are the consequences of the problem? Actually, lack of easy upgrading is one of PostgreSQL's major problems But lack of focused marketing -- truthful, not, as has been said, like the 'Database HOWTO' -- is a real problem. It would be nice to increase our usage. If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of the development effort distorted or the existing user base inconvenienced in an effort to purely gain that market share. I usually associate increased marketing with decreased quality, and I think the causality works *both* ways. ISTM there's a separate, non-code-developer group doing this. It doesn't seem to take away _any_ developer resources to do an advocacy site. However, I seriously question the need in the long term for our sites to be as fractured as they are. Good grief! We've got advocacy.postgresql.org, techdocs.postgresql.org, odbc.postgresql.org, gborg.postgresql.org, developer.postgresql.org, jdbc.postgresql.org, etc. Oh, and we also have www.postgresql.org on the side? I think not. Oh, and they are fractured in their styles -- really, guys, we need a unified style here. -- Lamar Owen WGCR Internet Radio 1 Peter 4:11 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote: Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Vince Vielhaber wrote: That wasn't stronger, it was fluffier. It was full of buzzwords that were masking the actual content. Are you trying to hide the accomplishments or promote them? If you're trying to hide them like in this announcement you may want to try using this tool: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html The stored phrases are much more refined and better paired. Bookmark'd for the next release ... thanks for the suggestion ... I was hoping for something that would take existing text and *Bullshit* it. Bummer. No, but I figure that at least it will give me a good site to give me BS fodder from ... man, just wait for the next release announcement :) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Marc G. Fournier writes: It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. -- Peter Eisentraut [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group Announces
Peter Eisentraut wrote: Marc G. Fournier writes: It isn't, but those working on -advocacy were asked to help come up with a stronger release *announcement* then we've had in the past ... Consider that a failed experiment. PostgreSQL is driven by the development group and, to some extent, by the existing user base. The last thing we need is a marketing department in that mix. Peter, I understand your perspective, but I think you are in the minority on this one. -- Bruce Momjian| http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup.| Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group
On Wed, 04 Dec 2002 22:54:37 -0500, Philip Warner wrote: At 05:48 PM 4/12/2002 -0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: Lack of marketing is one of Postgres's major problems. What are the consequences of the problem? One consequence that probably hits home for everyone here is it makes it extremely hard to make a living working with postgresql. A quick search on monster.com gives me 17 jobs mentioning postgresql, with none listed in the last week. A search on mysql gives me 100 jobs, with 3 filed just today. I won't even go into the numbers for Oracle, DB2, and M$. We all have to pay the bills and I think we'd like to do it working with postgresql. Particularly when you compare against similar efforts from MySQL, Oracle, etc. You could even include Microsoft here - they do a lot of database marketing. I am not at all sure the fact that a lot of large companies with dubious products engage in extensive marketing is a reason for *us* to engage in extensive marketing. You can't win marketshare on technology alone, so unless you think we don't need to increase our market share, that is reason enough to do more marketing. We already have a substantial following, and our clients have direct access to the developers, so any marketing group is pretty irrelevant for existing clients. So the only place I can see for a marketing group is in building our market share by bringing in new clients. Well, my previous employer uses postgresql, but they were under constant assault from their clients to use oracle or db2. Technically there was no reason to switch, but if your choice is switch databases or go out of business, there really isn't much choice. In the company I work for now we use at least 4 different database systems. We could probably switch all of these to postgresql, but it probably be one heck of a battle to convince people of that. A simple argument that could be raised is that several of the database developers use ERWin from computer associates. ERWin's postgresql support is spotty compared to its support of oracle, and unless there is a groundswell of demand for better postgresql support, that's not going to change. If postgresql can gain a larger market share, computer associates might improve their postgresql support, and we, existing clients that we are, will be able to use postgresql in more areas. Marketing is very relevant to existing customers. If that is what we want, then fine. But I don't want to see any part of the development effort distorted or the existing user base inconvenienced in an effort to purely gain that market share. I usually associate increased marketing with decreased quality, and I think the causality works *both* ways. Aren't most development efforts made simply to gain market share? After all, I don't think we added schema support to get *less* people to use postgresql. Robert Treat ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
