Thread: Presentation: Adoption and Trends
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Here is a presentation I just finished for a talk in Japan. It covers:
How is open source development different from closed source?
What is the pattern of PostgreSQL adoption?
What does the future hold for PostgreSQL?
Here is the URL:
http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/adoption_and_trends.pdf
Comments welcome. I leave on Tuesday morning.
Josh, I still need your OK to use your name on the slide talking about
open source development structures.
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes: > Here is a presentation I just finished for a talk in Japan. It > covers: > Comments welcome. I leave on Tuesday morning. Slide 6: How does open-source software bring "democracy" to software development? The core group may be benevolent, but a benevolent aristocracy is not a democracy by any means. Slide 14: The list of similar projects is a little baron -- I sent a list of ~10 to -advocacy a little while ago which I can resend if necessary/useful. Slide 15: Josh Berkus, despite being an all-round nice guy, is not a "PostgreSQL core developer" AFAIK :-) You might want to include NetBSD among the "distributed leadership" projects on slide 15. Also, are you sure that calling XFree86 governed by a "corporate council" is fair? In slide 18, you might want to mention that a drawback of OSS is that sometimes features that developers don't find interesting (such as a native Win32 port or a better upgrade story) aren't implemented as quickly as they might be in a commercial environment. There is a typo on slide 31: s/Practial/Practical/ -Neil
Neil Conway wrote: > Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes: > > Here is a presentation I just finished for a talk in Japan. It > > covers: > > > Comments welcome. I leave on Tuesday morning. > > Slide 6: How does open-source software bring "democracy" to software > development? The core group may be benevolent, but a benevolent > aristocracy is not a democracy by any means. True, there are autocratic open software projects, but I was talking more about PostgreSQL there, and the ability to take the source and make a new distribution is democratic. I realize it is a stretch, but the idea of centralized control has the same advantages/disadvantage in government and software --- that was the point I was trying to make. > Slide 14: The list of similar projects is a little baron -- I sent a > list of ~10 to -advocacy a little while ago which I can resend if > necessary/useful. Yep. Please help me beef it up, but I am looking for ones visible outside the open source world. > Slide 15: Josh Berkus, despite being an all-round nice guy, is not a > "PostgreSQL core developer" AFAIK :-) Sure, he is, or has been for the past few months. The developers page has not been updated, however. > You might want to include NetBSD among the "distributed leadership" > projects on slide 15. Also, are you sure that calling XFree86 governed > by a "corporate council" is fair? Not sure. I can remove it. I thought of NetBSD too but it didn't seem visible enough outside the open source world. However, I just added it. This presentation is an intro to open source so therefore I was hoping for something that was visible outside open source, like Linux and Mozilla. > In slide 18, you might want to mention that a drawback of OSS is that > sometimes features that developers don't find interesting (such as a > native Win32 port or a better upgrade story) aren't implemented as > quickly as they might be in a commercial environment. Any ideas how to phrase that? > There is a typo on slide 31: s/Practial/Practical/ Fixed. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Bruce Momjian writes: > > Slide 15: Josh Berkus, despite being an all-round nice guy, is not a > > "PostgreSQL core developer" AFAIK :-) > > Sure, he is, or has been for the past few months. The developers page > has not been updated, however. The sticky point might be "developer". -- Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net
On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Bruce Momjian writes: > > > > Slide 15: Josh Berkus, despite being an all-round nice guy, is not a > > > "PostgreSQL core developer" AFAIK :-) > > > > Sure, he is, or has been for the past few months. The developers page > > has not been updated, however. > > The sticky point might be "developer". developer of advocacy? :) ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Bruce Momjian writes: > > > > Slide 15: Josh Berkus, despite being an all-round nice guy, is not a > > > "PostgreSQL core developer" AFAIK :-) > > > > Sure, he is, or has been for the past few months. The developers page > > has not been updated, however. > > The sticky point might be "developer". Updated to "core member". Thanks. We do have a "Steering" section on the developers page and that historically has be core members. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Bruce, > Josh, I still need your OK to use your name on the slide talking about > open source development structures. OK, now I've had time to view it. My one worry is that my pigeonholing of projects by name was based on the OSS rumor mill rather than extensive research. For example, my putting XFree86 into the "corporate council" category was based on a couple of editorials on Slashdot ... hardly reliable information. (Gnome is a little more substantial, being based on a description of their governance related to me by a Sun staff member). Java might be a better example of a "corporate council" project, as it is owned by Sun but heavily influenced by IBM, BEA, and a few other companies. Unfortunately, I really don't see my getting the time to verify this catagorization for each project before you leave for Japan -- I'm still catching up from being out of town. So if you don't either, I'd suggest a fat disclaimer on the page. Incidentally, a Debian contributor pointed out that Debian is a really good candidate for category #1. FWIW, I don't really buy your "uniqueness" argument, but it's your presentation. -- Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Josh Berkus wrote: > Bruce, > > > Josh, I still need your OK to use your name on the slide talking about > > open source development structures. > > OK, now I've had time to view it. > > My one worry is that my pigeonholing of projects by name was based on the OSS > rumor mill rather than extensive research. For example, my putting XFree86 > into the "corporate council" category was based on a couple of editorials on > Slashdot ... hardly reliable information. (Gnome is a little more > substantial, being based on a description of their governance related to me > by a Sun staff member). Java might be a better example of a "corporate > council" project, as it is owned by Sun but heavily influenced by IBM, BEA, > and a few other companies. > > Unfortunately, I really don't see my getting the time to verify this > catagorization for each project before you leave for Japan -- I'm still > catching up from being out of town. So if you don't either, I'd suggest a > fat disclaimer on the page. The presentation is not designed to give factual information about other projects, but to give people a flavor of the other structures out there. > Incidentally, a Debian contributor pointed out that Debian is a really good > candidate for category #1. Yes. > FWIW, I don't really buy your "uniqueness" argument, but it's your > presentation. Uniqueness is probably too strong a word. I was just trying to point out its unusual attributes. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
In the last exciting episode, josh@agliodbs.com (Josh Berkus) wrote: >> Josh, I still need your OK to use your name on the slide talking about >> open source development structures. > > OK, now I've had time to view it. > > My one worry is that my pigeonholing of projects by name was based > on the OSS rumor mill rather than extensive research. For example, > my putting XFree86 into the "corporate council" category was based > on a couple of editorials on Slashdot ... hardly reliable > information. <http://www.xfree86.org/legal/bod.html> provides some hard information that doesn't really say anything of the sort. The "core" seems to be a _little_ different from "corporate council." From what I can see (and I'm surely not trying to be unkind to them), the "core" appears to comprise the set of developers that were working heavily on XFree86 five years ago. Most of the core joined in 1999; only one has joined core since, and survived; I'm not sure where Keith Packard stands in that regard. I think he was in "core" briefly before his ousting. It seems more like "sometimes eminent developers" than a "corporate" council. (The accusation that gets leveled is that some haven't produced much code lately, but that's not something I would be competent to point at them.) The parallels to PostgreSQL are pretty strong, with the difference that "The XFree86 Project Inc." has all of the formalities associated with incorporation, notably that officers effectively 'own' part of the control of the corporation. Which certainly makes extricating one's self a bit stickier if one's interests change. > Incidentally, a Debian contributor pointed out that Debian is a > really good candidate for category #1. There have been some governance "issues," but that's pretty much true _any_ time you have an organization of any sort. The fact that packages are contributed by an enormous, wide-spread set of geographically and politically distributed individuals sure seems to fit with category #1. -- (reverse (concatenate 'string "ac.notelrac.teneerf" "@" "454aa")) http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/ Rules of the Evil Overlord #64. "I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/>
I just did five magazine interviews in Japan, and every one referenced
items from my new presentation:
http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/adoption_and_trends.pdf
I am not sure how would have answered those questions clearly without
it. They asked about 7.4 features and 7.5+ features, how support
companies make money, and about that 1996-2004 diagram that shows our
history in stages. I wonder if we should use something like this more
frequently for the press.
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073