Re: EDB taking over? - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

On Tue, 2009-07-07 at 10:46 +0100, Dave Page wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Andreas Pflug<pgadmin@pse-consulting.de> wrote:
> > I wonder how many non-EDB contributors have seen the One-Click
> > installer; I never used it until 8.4. I was quite irritated how
> > prominently the EnterpriseDB lettering is placed on the installer; apart
> > from a tiny "Packaged by" the graphics is a pgsql Elephant with a big
> > "EnterpriseDB(tm)" on top, with no PostgreSQL lettering around. From the
> > installer's appearance, you could get the impression EDB is the company
> > behind postgres.
>
> EDB *is* the company behind those installers. We have a number of
> people working on them, between two and three working full time in the
> lead up to 8.4 on testing and development.

I think Andreas' point is well made. I disagree with any company getting
sole mention on such prominent outputs from the project. The reason for
my disagreement is that this is a change to many years of working
practice by the project.

If there is a relationship between time committed to the project and
amount of visibility on the project's output then many many others are
missing from the credit list. It's clearly advertising space and that is
wrong, at least without payment. If you dislike the moral tone, then I
would say it is of no long term benefit to the project for a single
company to appear to be running the project. If we are "trustees of the
code", how does this help the long term viability of the project? How
does it help get other companies interested in contributing development
resources? I thought the argument was that no single company is behind
PostgreSQL. If we say that, we should try to make sure its true.

We should either
i) remove it
ii) auction/openly charge for the advertising space
iii) have a credits or sponsors list

If the argument is that this is EDB's installer and they can do what
they like, then I want to know at what point the project's installer
became EDB's installer. When did we discuss that the project no longer
has an installer and when did we ask for volunteers to help maintain it,
because EDB will not release its staff to do so without strings
attached? (Surely "ownership" of such things is exactly why open source
was born in the first place).

I've worked lots on the Write Ahead Log internals, but the pg_xlog
directory isn't called pg_xlog_2ndQuadrant. Such an idea ought to be
ridiculous, and the same for installer(s). Probably it ought to say Red
Hat or Tom Lane in very big letters, if anything. Perhaps error messages
ought to occasionally have a HINT saying, "error messages managed by
Peter and translated by Alvaro".

Jokes aside, we stopped advertising on the web sites some time ago. Why
was that? Why don't we have advertising on the docs and the home page
anymore? Why did we stop it there but allow it elsewhere?

I don't think many people will reply, especially when they have to
complain publicly on-list to core team members. It would be interesting
to hold a secret ballot to see who will show their hand then. Can we
hold a survey on whether people think it is wrong to allow any single
company to put its name on works produced by a group project?

Please don't mention that everyone thinks I hate EDB. I'm tired of that
being rolled out every time this kind of thing comes up. Don't keep
pushing the marketing angles and everybody will just say thanks very
much for the contributions, just as they do for many other companies.

--
 Simon Riggs           www.2ndQuadrant.com
 PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support