I got a call from Info World asking for a few details about our press
release. He wanted specifics about the data warehouse improvements. I
told him it was related to optimizer and executor improvements that
allow typical data warehouse queries to run faster.
He also asked about the price of PostgreSQL. I told him it was a
community project and was free. "Well, how do you make money?" I said
we don't. There are commercial companies that provide technical support
for PostgreSQL, and they pay the salaries of a few full-time developers,
but they do not control the direction of the community project, and most
of our developers are volunteers. He wanted to know the names of some
of the support companies, and I mentioned SRA, Command Prompt, and
dbexperts. (I didn't mention PostgreSQL, Inc because as Josh suggested,
having the company name match the db name is confusing.) I also stated
that the community provides support through mailing lists and that is
quite successful.
Interestingly, in trying to think of a visible open source project that
isn't controlled by a company, I couldn't think of one. Mozilla, PHP,
Apache, MySQL, even perhaps Linux have one very visible company that has
significant control over the project, while we do not. Is there a good
example someone can think of?
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
