Re: Proposal to add --single-row to psql - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 06:08:28PM -0500, Jim Nasby wrote:
> On 5/1/13 7:36 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
> >On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Jim Nasby<jim@nasby.net>  wrote:
> >>>On 4/28/13 7:50 AM, Craig Ringer wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>I find it frustrating that I've never seen an @paraccel email address here
> >>>>>and that few of the other vendors of highly customised Pg offshoots are
> >>>>>contributing back. It's almost enough to make me like the GPL.
> >>>
> >>>FWIW, I think there's a pretty large barrier to these folks contributing
> >>>back. Would the community really want to add a bunch of hooks to support
> >>>something like Redshift? Or Greenplum? Or etc, etc.? Most of these guys have
> >>>to change significant amounts of PG code, so much so that it's actually hard
> >>>for them to stay current (which is why most of them just fork).
> >>>
> >>>I do think this is a shame, but I'm not sure of any good way to fix it.
> >Yep.  There are plenty of things that we do at EDB for good and valid
> >business reasons that I can't imagine the community accepting under
> >any circumstances.  For example, Oracle compatibility is not something
> >the community values as highly as EnterpriseDB (and our customers) do.
> >  I'm sure that many of those vendors are in similar situations - they
> >write code that only runs on specialized hardware, or (rather
> >commonly, I suspect) they remove parts of the functionality in order
> >to make certain things very fast.  Those are not trade-offs that make
> >sense for PostgreSQL, but I find it hard to understand what we'd gain
> >from preventing other people from making them.  There are in fact a
> >pretty large number of companies - EnterpriseDB, obviously, but there
> >are many, many others - that are choosing to build businesses around
> >PostgreSQL precisely because it*isn't*  GPL.  Personally, I think
> >that's a good thing for our community in terms of mindshare even when
> >companies choose not to contribute back - and it's even better when
> >they do.
> 
> FWIW, one point I was trying to make that was overlooked is that it
> seems to be exceptionally difficult for companies to fork Postgres
> and then stay current (AFAIK EnterpriseDB and Mammoth are the only
> products that have pulled that feat off).

VMware and CitusDB are doing pretty well so far, but it's early days.

> I believe that makes it significantly harder for them to actually
> contribute code back that doesn't give them a business advantage, as
> well as making it harder to justify hacking on the community
> codebase because they'll just face a very large hurdle when it comes
> to pulling that code back into their proprietary product.
> 
> I don't know of any good way to solve that problem. Maybe it's not
> worth solving... but I do suspect there's some useful stuff that the
> community has lost out on because of this.

Some of this is getting solved by making PostgreSQL more pluggable in
ways that isolate the proprietary stuff, i.e. make people not have to
touch the PostgreSQL core code much, if at all, in order to provide
whatever special features they provide.  Hooks and FDWs are two such
pluggable components.

Cheers,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
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