On Mar 15, 2008, at 8:58 AM, Ron Mayer wrote:
> Greg Smith wrote:
>> On Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote:
>>> A silly question in this context: If we know of a company that
>>> does use PostgreSQL but doesn't list it anywhere ... can we take
>>> the liberty to publicise this somewhere anyway?
>
> I notice Oracle (and sleepycat before them) had a lot of fun
> pointing out when Microsoft uses BDB.
>
> http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/07-jan/o17opensource.html
> You'll find Oracle Berkeley DB "under the hood" in everything
> from Motorola cell phones, Microsoft/Groove's collaboration suite
>
> and it seems unlikely Microsoft gave them their blessings.
>
>> Bad idea. There are companies who consider being listed as a user
>> of a product a sort of recommendation of that technology, and
>> accordingly
>
> Other reasons a company might get offended by this:
>
> * They might consider it a trade secret and a competitive advantage
> over competitors; and internally enjoy giggling when they see
> their competitors sign deals with expensive databases.
>
> * They might have a close business partnership with Microsoft
> or Oracle that could be strained if they support other databases.
>
> I suspect my employer would not like it announced for both reasons.
>
>> they will get really annoyed...asked to be removed from the list of
>> those using PostgreSQL. ... PostgreSQL inside, it's best not to
>> publish the results unless you like to collect cease & desist
>> letters.
>
> While I agree companies are likely to get annoyed - just like fast
> food companies do when you say how much trans-fats their products
> contain; I'm rather curious what such a cease&desist letter would say.
Probably just a firm, but polite, request to quit it. I'd say that
with a completely open piece of software like Postgres, i.e. where no
commercial licensing is involved, the question is more ethical than
legal. In fact, I can't think of a situation where "mind your own
business" could be take more literally :)
Erik Jones
DBA | Emma®
erik@myemma.com
800.595.4401 or 615.292.5888
615.292.0777 (fax)
Emma helps organizations everywhere communicate & market in style.
Visit us online at http://www.myemma.com
