Alas, it's one of the biggest shortcomings of email. My apologies for
grasping the wrong end of the stick.
All of your points are valid, but there is always room for a larger
user community, especially in one that is almost entirely voluntary.
It's OK to be aloof and niche, Debian has done just fine by it, in very
many ways it far superior to Mandrake, Redhat, and many many others (I
use it myself on all of my servers) but it doesn't excel in terms of
accessability to the novice or even intermediate Linux users. Visit the
#debian channel, and most of the people there will help you a great deal
until they get bored with your newbieness and start sighing and telling
you to RTFM. There is always a hardcore of advanced users however who
will always help as far as they can, as long as they are Debian related
Q's (I don't think anyone would be interested in "How do I use ftp" type
Q's), a very similar story is true of the perl community (nothing
personal Randall). I see very many parallels in all the advanced OS
software and there are elements of this in PostgreSQL community, whilst
the PG people in general are not quite as aloof as the Debian crowd,
there are definite undertones of "Hey, If you're not good enough to
appreciate us, then Tough Poopie to you!"
This was very much how the Linux community was seen for the longest
time, fortunately due to some vary hard advocacy work by some very
dedicated people and talent programmers working hard on accessibility
issues, Linux itself is now (mostly) far more accessible to many more
people. I never expected to see so many people talking about Linux on
the desktop so soon.
The main point I'm trying to hit, is this how PostgreSQL community
chooses to be viewed, or do they want to become a little more warm and
fuzzy and have journalists cooing over PG. Either choice is a double
edged sword.
Those who can RTFM nearly always will, the others will probably use
MySQL instead and get spoonfed by a more accessible piece of software
that also runs on Windows.
I'm trying to provoke thought rather than conflict here. Where does PG
community see its place in the big picture?
Regards
T.
PostgreSQL, Putting the .org into your Organization.
========
Casey Allen Shobe wrote:
>Tony (Sunday 28 December 2003 10:30)
>
>
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>I think...you read my E-mail quite a bit differently than how I wrote it.
>
>Vertu sæll,
>
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>
