On Thursday 09 July 2009 16:34:18 Simon Riggs wrote:
> Are we really in a position where we are forced to accept advertising
> from a company because they run what we consider to be a critical part
> of the project? Is that the only alternative?
By the way, a quick look around shows that there are a few other instances of
advertisement on PostgreSQL sites.
On www.p.o you have a link to the "server sponsors" and to tinysofa (not sure
if they are a commercial entity).
archives.p.o and buildfarm.p.o have "hosted by Command Prompt" or some
variant. (Plus the buildfarm is sure to repeat that on just about every
page.)
There is some imbalance here. Because these web sites (and the installer) are
the frontends that are exposed to the user, as opposed to code, letting those
who create and manage these aspects stick their name there could give them an
amount of exposure that is not proportional to the amount of contribution to
the overall project effort. That is further skewed because we have a fairly
restrictive policy on the extent to which individuals and companies are
credited in code and release notes.
(Yes, there is a list of project sponsors, but that isn't really easy to find,
let alone stumble upon. Plus I think it's pretty bogus.)
This is an uneasy peace. If I wanted to, for example, I could stick my name
or the name of my sponsors on a lot of things in PostgreSQL, because I
technically host or manage them or have the ability to edit the relevant HTML
or text files. Or if you want to get easy exposure, I think the easiest way
is to just start hosting things.
There isn't a good way out of this except requiring that all PostgreSQL things
be hosted on postgresql.org servers and are not branded or otherwise decorated
with third party labels, and that everything else is explicitly marked as
"third party". This could be done, but will this degrade the user experience?
In the meantime, I suggest you follow the revised version of the old saying:
"If you can't beat them, join them, then beat them." ;-)
