Re: Vote on Windows installer links - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Dimitri Fontaine wrote:
> Le 8 juil. 09 ? 19:34, Simon Riggs a ?crit :
> > "There is only one currently known Windows installer for PostgreSQL
> > 8.4,
> > and that can only be obtained by visiting an external commercial
> > company's website: http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/pgdownload.do
> > Do you think this situation should be changed, if a reasonable
> > alternative can be found? +1 means change, -1 means no change."
>
> +1, BUT
>
> It's hard to find a reasonable alternative it seems. I'd like the
> windows installer to be hosted on our website and mirrors, but we
> certainly can't do this with each and every binary distribution of
> PostgreSQL, which is the job of packagers.
>
> It seems we have the necessary infrastructure to host the installer.
> The problem with generalizing to every binary package or installers
> out there is to offer a simple way to update the stuff, or to have
> community members (or scripts) to go check for new material at each
> minor or major release and update accordingly.
> Linking to OpenSource packaging efforts should remain accepted for
> sake of simplicity, as long as the offering site isn't a commercial
> one. Now packages.ubuntu.com isn't the canonical website, should it be
> in the commercial or Open Source category?

[ license issues removed]

> Well I guess the pragmatic answer is: EnterpriseDB is maintaining
> pginstaller, which happens to be the only installer for windows. It's
> open source. If you want a project hosted installer, have a project
> community member fork it and maintain it and distribute it under the
> project's name and infrastructure. Good luck with that.

Yep, that's pretty much it.  Ideally we would have binary installers
created with zero effort by the community, but that isn't realistic.  We
originally had a Windows installer, but that was a pain to create, (I
remember the complaints from Dave and Magnus), and it never supported
Linux or OS/X.

I think the big question is whether reducing EDB's association with the
community is worth losing the one-click installers for Windows, Linux,
and OS/X.

Someone might come along and create those without wanting some kind of
association with the community, but as Dimitri said, "Good luck with
that."

Removing the EDB download links would also involve removing content
from all other externally linked distributions if they don't want to
give them to the community for hosting.  You might as well say we want
MySQL to again be easier to quickly install than PostgreSQL.

From an organizational perspective, trying to keep companies from being
too associated with Postgres is a defensive move to reduce the threat
that the company's influence might become uncontrollable in the future.
I don't think that is possible as long as our community is healthy.

I actually thought we had a good system where we were using the
strengths of companies to move our community forward.  If specific
things are causing confusion, like the installer banner, we can adjust
those, and Dave and my son Matthew have already done that (posted as a
separate thread).

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

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