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

Thank you for your response.

On Tue, 2009-07-07 at 21:08 -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Simon Riggs wrote:
>
> > We should either
> > i) remove it
> > ii) auction/openly charge for the advertising space
> > iii) have a credits or sponsors list
>
> First, I agree with many points of this thread, but I do want to point out
> that like *alot* of companies out there (CMD, EnterpriseDB, Redhat), they
> have already sunk a huge amount of money into personnel that are working
> directly on the code ...

For which they have been thanked in the normal way. Presumably no
additional thanks required then?

> The OneClick Installer is one of EDB's most *visible* contribution ...
> there is nothing stopping someone else with duplicating that effort, but I
> doubt that will happen ...

> As Dave mentions, EDB employs *several* ppl that work on that installer,
> which is not small contribution in terms of both man hours *and* monetary
> value ...

I think we should realise that they needed to write an installer anyway,
for their pay-for products.

> We have several places on the web site were we acknowledge other
> contributions ... if anything is missing from the installer (and I don't
> know that it is), it would be some sort of link *to* the list of Project
> Contributors in a prominent way .. but as the installer itself is their
> contribution, "charging for advertising space" on it doesn't quite seem
> reasonable, unless, of course, EDB wanted to charge for the advertising
> space to offset the budget they put into developing and maintaining it?

It seems it is a question of ownership. Are the installers the property
of the PostgreSQL Project or an external company?

If the installers are the property of the PostgreSQL Project then
certain constraints need to be imposed.

If the installers are property of an external company then they can do
whatever they like. But we can still control whether or not we link to
them.

In the past the PostgreSQL Project had its own installers that were
maintained by volunteer contributors. When was it announced that there
would be no Windows installer in this release and that we would rely on
an external company to produce it instead? When did we put that piece of
work out to public tender?

If we're short of money and need to raise some to fund a skill shortage
or because we have insufficient volunteers, then why not sell
advertising on the installer? If we don't like the idea of general
advertising, why is having just one advertiser acceptable?

If the project is accepting contributions from external companies with
strings attached then there should be some oversight, control and
guidance of that. Even if there is only one viable bidder.

If nobody is monitoring what goes into the installer, what is to stop
the external company requiring registrations prior to download? Or
charging for it? Or tracking people's information? Who has vetted the
privacy policy of the external company? Have we a legal agreement that
says these things will not change?  What is the difference between a
respected, benevolent company such as IBM having patents in our code and
another benevolent company having a monopoly on our installers? What if
a non-nice company bought the nice company and then started exerting
leverage?

If there are no controls on what can be included with the software, what
is to stop Mammoth replicator being put on the Download page? Mammoth is
just PostgreSQL, plus some additional items. Why does it make a
difference whether those additional items are splash screens (OK) or
changes to installation directories (OK) or useful additional production
software (apparently not OK)? Why are some "value adds" allowed and
others not? Note that EDB Advanced Server already *is* on the download
page, since we link externally. So why not put EDB Advanced Server and
all the other variants on the postgresql.org download page and be done?
That seems like the pragmatic response.

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