Re: Crediting sponsors in release notes? - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> I think it might be difficult to implement effectively. I am not
> against the idea but, do we say:
> Alvaro Herrera, Command Prompt, paid for by Enova Financial

Some of our features have the same sort of issue.  Three things to
consider here:

1) How does the data get collected
2) What does the output from this process look like
3) Where does it go

Collection:  the idea of having someone troll the commit logs for this
stuff seems forever impractical to me.  Is there anyone involved who
wants credit for sponsoring a feature who *isn't* willing to do that
manually?  This could easily be a manual process, where the developers
of the feature push the data to, say, the wiki or via e-mail.
Committers have enough to do; if a feature with your name on it goes in,
and your sponsor wants to be credited, it should be your job to
e-mail/post the link to the commit.  It should be a relatively quick
pass through per release to collect the data if you require the
submitter to get it right, and anybody who can finish a feature can do
that.  As Simon already mentioned, I think many people who develop
sponsored features are doing all this tracking anyway--I know I can tell
you exactly where the commits for everything sponsored I've ever done
are at, 'cause I wrote them all down as part of notifying the sponsor.
More on this below.

Output:  here's three from 9.1 I think I know the history of to
demonstrate what format this might appear in.  Bits in [] would be
hyperlinks:

Sponsor - Feature [commit] - Developer
* Enova Financial:  Add the pg_describe_object()  function
[http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-committers/2010-11/msg00177.php]
(Alvaro Herrera, Command Prompt)
* 2ndQuadrant Ltd, NTT Open Source Japan:  Efficient
transaction-controlled synchronous replication
[http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-committers/2011-03/msg00056.php]
(Simon Riggs, 2ndQuadrant Ltd; Fujii Masao, NTT Open Source Japan)
* EnterpriseDB:  Support unlogged tables.
[http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-committers/2010-12/msg00235.php]
(Robert Haas, EnterpriseDB)

Apologies to Robert if he actually did this all on his time and I'm
mis-representing who paid for it.  That actually highlights the
difference between the data that shows up in the commit logs from what
would go onto a sponsor credit page though.  The only authoritative
source for "who sponsored this feature" is the developer who submitted
it.  You have this push this work toward them, they're the only ones who
have the info anyway.  And they're the most likely people to do
it--again, they're probably already keeping track of it for business
reasons if they care enough to want to go on the page.  (The reviewer
data might go onto here, too, but I think that's probably not
appropriate though.  The sponsor and the reviewer may have nothing to do
with one another and not want to be associated)

Publication:  once you see the format it really needs to go in, this is
too heavy for the release notes.  Don't distract the poor DBA who is
trying to read through them to see what's been fixed with this release,
they don't care about any of this.  That's a technical document.  Make a
sponsored feature page on the web site somewhere, publish updates in
something like the above format before the release goes out, and make
sure it's highlighted in the PR around the release.

I don't see this as a replacement for the main sponsors page, which
includes sponsorship for a lot more than just features.

--
Greg Smith   2ndQuadrant US    greg@2ndQuadrant.com   Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support  www.2ndQuadrant.us