Thread: Press release for 7.3
Folks, We seem to be sort of stalled on the press release. I know that I, for one, was holding further commentary, hoping for an opinion from Justin. My opinion is that the press release should lead with what's *new* about 7.3, and have what's great about PostgreSQL in general at the bottom and on the (linked) Advocacy site. Not everyone agrees with this perspective. Justin? -Josh Berkus
Josh Berkus wrote: > > Folks, > > We seem to be sort of stalled on the press release. I know that I, > for one, was holding further commentary, hoping for an opinion from > Justin. Sorry guys. Haven't been going flat out on adding some backend infrastructual stuff to the websites. > My opinion is that the press release should lead with what's *new* > about 7.3, and have what's great about PostgreSQL in general at the > bottom and on the (linked) Advocacy site. Not everyone agrees with > this perspective. > > Justin? It's probably the best move for the Community if we do assume that the majority of the press contacts that receive the release will indeed not know much (if anything) about PostgreSQL. If we release a Press Release that specifically doesn't have the "intro to PostgreSQL" type stuff at the top of it, then a lot of potential new contact people will "turn off" at this point. However, including this stuff means they can forward it on to people who've never even heard of PostgreSQL, and/or include it in places which would be considered "new markets". That's what we're trying to achieve after all. As a further consideration, the people who are familiar with PostgreSQL already will probably do at least 1 of two things: 1) Skip the bits not relevant to them (good) 2) Know that PostgreSQL is finally getting a Advocacy/Marketing aspect together (great) So, I strongly feel we should use the Press Release that Geoff wrote up as the basis for things and take it from there. Points of consideration with it are: - We should mention as soon as possible in it that the whole .info and soon-to-be .org domain name registries run on PostgreSQL. If we can somehow illustrate that all of the proposals for the .org contract were either Oracle "High Availability" solutions or PostgreSQL, and that we still won, all the better. :) - We should mention the licensing terms. Not "we use the BSD license", but something that brings meaning from that to the average CIO. "Our licensing means you can use PostgreSQL at no cost, in as many projects or installations as needed, and don't even have to tell us about it." Through the feedback form on the Advocacy site about 1/5 of the requests are to confirm there are indeed no licensing costs. To me this says its a strong "selling point" for some, strong enough that they take a look and then confirm it "Just to Make Sure". :) :-) Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift > -Josh Berkus > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? > > http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html -- "My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there." - Indira Gandhi
On Mon, 2002-11-04 at 23:22, Justin Clift wrote: > Josh Berkus wrote: > > My opinion is that the press release should lead with what's *new* > > about 7.3, and have what's great about PostgreSQL in general at the > > bottom and on the (linked) Advocacy site. Not everyone agrees with > > this perspective. > > > > Justin? > > It's probably the best move for the Community if we do assume that the > majority of the press contacts that receive the release will indeed not > know much (if anything) about PostgreSQL. > > If we release a Press Release that specifically doesn't have the "intro > to PostgreSQL" type stuff at the top of it, then a lot of potential new > contact people will "turn off" at this point. > > However, including this stuff means they can forward it on to people > who've never even heard of PostgreSQL, and/or include it in places which > would be considered "new markets". > > That's what we're trying to achieve after all. > After thinking about this some more, I tend to agree with Josh that any detailed "what is PostgreSQL" stuff should go at the bottom of the press release. I think Geoff's first paragraph can stand as is, but I would move the second paragraph to an "About PGDG" section at the end of the announcment. This is a pretty standard for press releases, and I don't think it's a turn off to new readers. Essentially we are saying 1. "we're an object relational database and we've got a new release" 2. "here are some of the places we're currently being used in the world" 3. "here's some of the new features we have in this release" 4. "here's how you can get our software" 5. "need more information,this is who we are and how you can learn more" > Points of consideration with it are: > > - We should mention as soon as possible in it that the whole .info and > soon-to-be .org domain name registries run on PostgreSQL. If we can > somehow illustrate that all of the proposals for the .org contract were > either Oracle "High Availability" solutions or PostgreSQL, and that we > still won, all the better. > In a perfect world, this information should have gone out in it's own press release. It might still be possible to do something like that once the switch is completed. If you look at the oracle/mysql/etc.. press releases, a lot of them are of the "oracle helps foo to crank more widgets" variety. In the future I think we should try to release these type of announcements when a large company uses postgresql for something and is willing to get some free publicity about it. However for this announcement, I think we need to keep focused on the actual release. > > - We should mention the licensing terms. Not "we use the BSD license", > but something that brings meaning from that to the average CIO. "Our > licensing means you can use PostgreSQL at no cost, in as many projects > or installations as needed, and don't even have to tell us about it." > > Through the feedback form on the Advocacy site about 1/5 of the requests > are to confirm there are indeed no licensing costs. To me this says its > a strong "selling point" for some, strong enough that they take a look > and then confirm it "Just to Make Sure". :) > I'm sure this is a direct off shoot of the "mysql is gpl" campaign, when in fact it's licensed a few different ways depending on what your trying to do with it. Robert Treat
On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 03:22:02PM +1100, Justin Clift wrote:
> - We should mention as soon as possible in it that the whole .info and
> soon-to-be .org domain name registries run on PostgreSQL. If we can
> somehow illustrate that all of the proposals for the .org contract were
> either Oracle "High Availability" solutions or PostgreSQL, and that we
> still won, all the better.
That's not quite true. One of the proposals used MS SQL Server.
(They said they had 16 licenses of SQL Server Enterprise donated by
MS to them. I wasn't sure exactly what they'd need that many
licenses _for_ exactly; but then, I'm used to being able to set up
another database without worrying about software costs.)
> licensing means you can use PostgreSQL at no cost, in as many projects
> or installations as needed, and don't even have to tell us about it."
Not just this. Not-GPL means also that you can sell the product
without worrying about the "viral" stuff, in case people happen to
believe the MS FUD about the GPL. (Please, no license flames. They
are more boring than daytime TV.) This one really does matter to a
lot of people.
A
--
----
Andrew Sullivan 204-4141 Yonge Street
Liberty RMS Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@libertyrms.info> M2P 2A8
+1 416 646 3304 x110
16 is the wrong type of number for Microsoft, unless the 15 is maybe
10+5+1 or 5*3+1. maybe they had 1 already.
i ghost-wrote a mini-grant for a non-profit legal aid clinic that wanted to
upgrade their Microsoft server setup. Microsoft has per-user licensing.
everything asked for was delivered by Microsoft.
douglas
Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>That's not quite true. One of the proposals used MS SQL Server.
>(They said they had 16 licenses of SQL Server Enterprise donated by
>MS to them. I wasn't sure exactly what they'd need that many
>licenses _for_ exactly; but then, I'm used to being able to set up
>another database without worrying about software costs.)
>
>
On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 03:16:53PM -0600, Douglas Trainor wrote: > 16 is the wrong type of number for Microsoft, unless the 15 is maybe > 10+5+1 or 5*3+1. maybe they had 1 already. I have no idea. Here's the outline: http://www.icann.org/tlds/org/questions-to-applicants-13.htm#Response13TheOrgFoundation A -- ---- Andrew Sullivan 204-4141 Yonge Street Liberty RMS Toronto, Ontario Canada <andrew@libertyrms.info> M2P 2A8 +1 416 646 3304 x110
The current version of MS SQL Server is primarily licensed on a per-processor basis. They probably mean licenses for 16 processors. You can then put that on 16 small machines, 2 fairly large or 1 very large, and AFAIK you can move the licenses between the machines freely. Per-processor licensing is *required* if you want to publish-to-the-internet. If you run intranet only, you can use per-*device* (client device, that is) licensing if you want to, but MS is pitching to make this go away (for example, removing it from their enterprise agreement contracts). There is no such thing as per-*user* licensing. //Magnus > -----Original Message----- > From: Douglas Trainor [mailto:trainor@uic.edu] > Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 10:17 PM > To: Andrew Sullivan > Cc: pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org > Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Press release for 7.3 > > > 16 is the wrong type of number for Microsoft, unless the 15 is maybe > 10+5+1 or 5*3+1. maybe they had 1 already. > > i ghost-wrote a mini-grant for a non-profit legal aid clinic > that wanted to upgrade their Microsoft server setup. > Microsoft has per-user licensing. > everything asked for was delivered by Microsoft. > > douglas > > Andrew Sullivan wrote: > > >That's not quite true. One of the proposals used MS SQL Server. > >(They said they had 16 licenses of SQL Server Enterprise donated by > >MS to them. I wasn't sure exactly what they'd need that many > >licenses _for_ exactly; but then, I'm used to being able to set up > >another database without worrying about software costs.) > > > > > > > > > > ---------------------------(end of > broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? > http://archives.postgresql.org
Geoff, Can you send me your first draft of the press release, so that I can propose a revised version? We're running out of time. -- -Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Hi Josh, Can you paste them into the PostgreSQL Guides section so we can all take a look at the suggestions, live, add comments, etc? :-) Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift Josh Berkus wrote: > > Geoff, > > Can you send me your first draft of the press release, so that I can propose a > revised version? We're running out of time. > > -- > -Josh Berkus > Aglio Database Solutions > San Francisco > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? > > http://archives.postgresql.org -- "My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there." - Indira Gandhi
Folks, > Can you paste them into the PostgreSQL Guides section so we can all > take > a look at the suggestions, live, add comments, etc? I jjust put my current draft up at: http://techdocs.postgresql.org/guides/Pressrelease73 However, the formatting got pretty screwed in the process. If someone has the time, can you fix the formatting? It should be pretty obvious. This version is my revision of Robert Treat's re-arrangement of Geoff's original press release. Improvements are welcome. Questions that need to be answered, even if you love this version: 1) We need two volunteers to take press inquiries, preferably one in North America and one somewhere else. You must be able to accept both e-mails and phone calls, and be able to talk knowlegably about 7.3 2) Do we have permission to quote ISOC? 3) Can I get a nice, 20-30 word quote from Tom Lane about the new version? 4) Marc, what's our current total mailing list enrollment? I'd like to throw a figure at the press for "PostgreSQL Community membership" 5) Anybody have a good idea how many other major RDMBSs have SCHEMA support? I'll bet it's not many ... 6) I'd love someone to re-write the "about PostgreSQL". Particularly, I want to hit on all of the following points: - worldwide volunteer & commmercial developer base. - 16 years of development - had enterprise features, ACID, etc for years - same DB as Red Hat DB - home at www.postgresql.org and advocacy.postgresql.org - supported by dozens of commercial products. Thanks, lets get this on the road, 7.3 may be out in less than 2 weeks! -Josh