Re: [GENERAL] Thought provoking piece on - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

From Bruce Momjian
Subject Re: [GENERAL] Thought provoking piece on
Date
Msg-id 200608312148.k7VLmtQ14662@momjian.us
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In response to Re: [GENERAL] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: [GENERAL] Thought provoking piece on
List pgsql-advocacy
Tom Lane wrote:
> Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> > In general, I think that people who harp on PostgreSQL's lack of a
> > benevolent dictator as an inhibitor to progress are people who are not
> > comfortable with democracy and are looking for excuses why company X needs
> > to "take over the project for its own good."
>
> I don't recall having seen that idea being pushed for Postgres ... not
> seriously anyway.  However, it's certainly true that historically we've
> had effectively *no* project leadership, in the sense of anyone setting
> feature goals for releases or creating a long-term roadmap.  Would we
> be better off if we had done that?  I'm not sure.
>
> It's pointless to suppose that individual developers would really be
> answerable to any project-wide management, since that's not who they're
> paid by.  So I tend to think that a project roadmap would be more of an
> exercise in wishful thinking than a useful management tool.  OTOH it
> *could* be useful, if there are any developers out there wondering what
> they should work on next.  Are there any ... and would they listen to a
> roadmap if they had one, rather than scratching their own itches?

I think the longer someone is with the project the more they start
working on what is good for the project, rather than what interests
them.  I think we have seen many cases of that.

--
  Bruce Momjian   bruce@momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB    http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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