Thread: Time to work on Press Release 8.0
Folks, Well, it's time to start work on the 8.0 press release. Who's interested? Given the amount of coverage we have on the beta already, I think we can do it here, on-list, until we get closer to the release. -- -Josh Berkus "A developer of Very Little Brain" Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Chris, Ned:
Well, great. Here's what I see for an outline:
P1: announce landmark 8.0 version, 200 developers.
P2: enterprise features, windows port, contributions by Fujitsu & Afilias,
work with OSDL.
P3: quote from somebody excited about a new feature.
List: Major "enterprise" features:
Savepoints
PITR
Tablespaces
Memory/I/O overhaul
Planner improvements
P4: discuss major add-ins: Slony-I, PL/perlNG, PL/Java, etc.
"more features for dedicated PG users, see full release".
P5: Quote by high-profile PG user about how great PG is.
P6: Quote from someone Afilias or FJ about development.
Closing: About PG, Links for FJ, Afilias, OSDL.
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco
Marc,
> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side
> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't
> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should
> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are
> releasing, not what another project is releasing ...
Afilias didn't want to do a Slony press release, which is why I want to
mention it in passing in the main release. Along with several other add-ons.
--
-Josh Berkus
______AGLIO DATABASE SOLUTIONS___________________________
Josh Berkus
Enterprise vertical business josh@agliodbs.com
and data analysis solutions (415) 752-2500
and database optimization fax 752-2387
utilizing Open Source technology San Francisco
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Josh Berkus wrote: > Marc, > >> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side >> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't >> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should >> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are >> releasing, not what another project is releasing ... > > Afilias didn't want to do a Slony press release, which is why I want to > mention it in passing in the main release. Along with several other > add-ons. IMHO, it detracts from what we are announcing ... ... but if nobody else feels the same way, go for it ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Josh Berkus wrote: > Marc, > >> Seems an awful lot of focus on Afilias/Fujitsu, no? Is it a PR about us, >> or them? :( If we are going to highlight contributors, Redhat (all of >> Tom's time, which is a *major* contribution) and CommandPrompt (pl/PHP) >> should be in there, among others I know I'm overlooking ... > > Probably. I guess what I'm fishing for is a paragraph on expanded corporate > contributions to PostgreSQL, regardless of from whom they came. Afilias and > FJ are easier because they're tied to specific contributions, whereas RH is > propping up our spiritual leader. CMD, of course, would show up in a mention > of PL/perlNG. > > Overall, I would *love* to have someone take a stab at a single, 4-5 line > "expanded corporate participation" paragraph that mentions most companies. > The press is really interested in knowing what companies back PostgreSQL. > Also, it helps drum into reporters that PostgreSQL is not a single-company > project. Agreed on justification, and about the "4-5 line para" ... just your outline seemed to have several 'paras' focusing on it :) Why not attribute the features themselves when you list them? Who sponsored what? Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are releasing, not what another project is releasing ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc, > Seems an awful lot of focus on Afilias/Fujitsu, no? Is it a PR about us, > or them? :( If we are going to highlight contributors, Redhat (all of > Tom's time, which is a *major* contribution) and CommandPrompt (pl/PHP) > should be in there, among others I know I'm overlooking ... Probably. I guess what I'm fishing for is a paragraph on expanded corporate contributions to PostgreSQL, regardless of from whom they came. Afilias and FJ are easier because they're tied to specific contributions, whereas RH is propping up our spiritual leader. CMD, of course, would show up in a mention of PL/perlNG. Overall, I would *love* to have someone take a stab at a single, 4-5 line "expanded corporate participation" paragraph that mentions most companies. The press is really interested in knowing what companies back PostgreSQL. Also, it helps drum into reporters that PostgreSQL is not a single-company project. -- -Josh Berkus "A developer of Very Little Brain" Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Seems an awful lot of focus on Afilias/Fujitsu, no? Is it a PR about us, or them? :( If we are going to highlight contributors, Redhat (all of Tom's time, which is a *major* contribution) and CommandPrompt (pl/PHP) should be in there, among others I know I'm overlooking ... On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Josh Berkus wrote: > Chris, Ned: > > Well, great. Here's what I see for an outline: > > P1: announce landmark 8.0 version, 200 developers. > > P2: enterprise features, windows port, contributions by Fujitsu & Afilias, > work with OSDL. > > P3: quote from somebody excited about a new feature. > > List: Major "enterprise" features: > Savepoints > PITR > Tablespaces > Memory/I/O overhaul > Planner improvements > > P4: discuss major add-ins: Slony-I, PL/perlNG, PL/Java, etc. > "more features for dedicated PG users, see full release". > > P5: Quote by high-profile PG user about how great PG is. > > P6: Quote from someone Afilias or FJ about development. > > Closing: About PG, Links for FJ, Afilias, OSDL. > > -- > Josh Berkus > Aglio Database Solutions > San Francisco > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? > > http://archives.postgresql.org > ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > Overall, I would *love* to have someone take a stab at a single, 4-5 line > > "expanded corporate participation" paragraph that mentions most companies. > > The press is really interested in knowing what companies back PostgreSQL. > > Also, it helps drum into reporters that PostgreSQL is not a single-company > > project. > > Agreed on justification, and about the "4-5 line para" ... just your > outline seemed to have several 'paras' focusing on it :) > > Why not attribute the features themselves when you list them? Who > sponsored what? > > Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side > projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't > appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should > be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are > releasing, not what another project is releasing ... But we need to share our visibility with relivant child projects. -- 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
Gang, While I understand the desire not to share the limit spotlight available with a press release, I think that addressing the replication "boogey monster" up front would be good. This is one of those things that people see as too loosely coupled. While we can all agree that no replication solution solves everyone's problem, the market feels otherwise, and so the more Slony and other sister projects are mentioned in tandem with other announcements, the more people will eliminate that silliness from their thoughts. I do also think that at lerast a paragraph of "thank you" at the end is appropriate. Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli | petrilli@gmail.com
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side > >> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't > >> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should > >> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are > >> releasing, not what another project is releasing ... > > > > But we need to share our visibility with relivant child projects. > > But this comes back to promoting some projects as being more important > then others, bestoying(sp?) a pseudo-official status on them ... > pginstaller, IMHO, makes sense since its pretty much a requirement for > anyone wishing to use Pg 8.0.0 on Windows ... > > If replication for PostgreSQL was something newly available, then not a > big deal, but it isn't even something that is new, nor has been for over a > year now ... We have to promote some projects over others as they merit promotion or nothing gets promoted. I don't see a problem with that. -- 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
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: >>> Overall, I would *love* to have someone take a stab at a single, 4-5 line >>> "expanded corporate participation" paragraph that mentions most companies. >>> The press is really interested in knowing what companies back PostgreSQL. >>> Also, it helps drum into reporters that PostgreSQL is not a single-company >>> project. >> >> Agreed on justification, and about the "4-5 line para" ... just your >> outline seemed to have several 'paras' focusing on it :) >> >> Why not attribute the features themselves when you list them? Who >> sponsored what? >> >> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side >> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't >> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should >> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are >> releasing, not what another project is releasing ... > > But we need to share our visibility with relivant child projects. But this comes back to promoting some projects as being more important then others, bestoying(sp?) a pseudo-official status on them ... pginstaller, IMHO, makes sense since its pretty much a requirement for anyone wishing to use Pg 8.0.0 on Windows ... If replication for PostgreSQL was something newly available, then not a big deal, but it isn't even something that is new, nor has been for over a year now ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Josh Berkus wrote: > >> Marc, >> >>> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side >>> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't >>> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they >>> should >>> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are >>> releasing, not what another project is releasing ... >> >> >> Afilias didn't want to do a Slony press release, which is why I want >> to mention it in passing in the main release. Along with several >> other add-ons. > Well -- and although I am notably biased it does seem that it is not quite correct to announce Slony as part of version 8. Slony is not "the" PostgreSQL Replication solution. It is one of many as many have (not just myself) noted. To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there that have been working for some time. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > > IMHO, it detracts from what we are announcing ... ... but if nobody else > feels the same way, go for it ... > > ---- > Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) > Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664 > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your > joining column's datatypes do not match -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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We agree Mark. What I talked with Josh about is our interest in getting Slony in use with some organizations in an enterprise capacity as well as ensuring that commercial support is available (hence our workshop on Slony at OSCON). Our plan is that once we have these details sewn up we can directly pitch case studies of Slony's use with adequate customer and support service references. Then we'd like to pursue product reviews. The first step is to get this in production in our organization and then we can think more about the press strategy. As always, we are happy to be quoted in PostgreSQL releases and listed as an enterprise user and contributor. We would just request review of how our organization and it's employees are mentioned. Best, Heather -- Heather D. Carle Director of Communications Afilias Tel: +1.215.706.5700 x114 Fax: +1.215.706.5701 E-mail: hcarle@afilias.info http://www.afilias.info -----Original Message----- From: pgsql-advocacy-owner@postgresql.org [mailto:pgsql-advocacy-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Marc G. Fournier Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2004 2:59 PM To: Josh Berkus Cc: pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Time to work on Press Release 8.0 On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Josh Berkus wrote: > Marc, > >> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side >> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't >> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should >> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are >> releasing, not what another project is releasing ... > > Afilias didn't want to do a Slony press release, which is why I want to > mention it in passing in the main release. Along with several other > add-ons. IMHO, it detracts from what we are announcing ... ... but if nobody else feels the same way, go for it ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >>> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side > >>> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't > >>> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they > >>> should > >>> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are > >>> releasing, not what another project is releasing ... > >> > >> > >> Afilias didn't want to do a Slony press release, which is why I want > >> to mention it in passing in the main release. Along with several > >> other add-ons. > > > > Well -- and although I am notably biased it does seem that it is not > quite correct to announce Slony as part of version 8. Slony is not "the" > PostgreSQL Replication solution. It is one of many as many have (not > just myself) noted. > > To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is > that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there > that have been working for some time. Uh, and we are an open source project --- Slony being "open source" seems like a very notable distinction to me. -- 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
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is > > that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there > > that have been working for some time. > > Uh, and we are an open source project --- Slony being "open source" > seems like a very notable distinction to me. My very basic knowledge of Slony gave me the impression that is was solving problems that other replication systems had not yet solved. These issues centered around masters/slaves, promotions, additions, withdrawals, catch up, etc. I have no details and I am certain that I'm using the wrong terminology. -- Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
Marc, > But this comes back to promoting some projects as being more important > then others, bestoying(sp?) a pseudo-official status on them ... > pginstaller, IMHO, makes sense since its pretty much a requirement for > anyone wishing to use Pg 8.0.0 on Windows ... Yep. That's the way the mainstream press works; they're not interested in technical merit of individual projects, they are interested in what's currently buzzword-compliant. Replication is sexy, HA is sexy, PITR is sexy, high performance is sexy, enterprise Java is sexy. A lot of other features and add-ons which are very valuable to the community are not interesting to the general press. For the Press Release, which is designed to go to reporters, we need to pack it densly with stuff that's going to appeal to them. > If replication for PostgreSQL was something newly available, then not a > big deal, but it isn't even something that is new, nor has been for over a > year now ... And as you recall, we mentioned eRServer repeatedly; there was an eRServer press release, followed by mentions in the next 2 general PostgreSQL releases. -- -Josh Berkus "A developer of Very Little Brain" Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: >>>>> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side >>>>> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't >>>>> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they >>>>> should >>>>> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are >>>>> releasing, not what another project is releasing ... >>>> >>>> >>>> Afilias didn't want to do a Slony press release, which is why I want >>>> to mention it in passing in the main release. Along with several >>>> other add-ons. >>> >> >> Well -- and although I am notably biased it does seem that it is not >> quite correct to announce Slony as part of version 8. Slony is not "the" >> PostgreSQL Replication solution. It is one of many as many have (not >> just myself) noted. >> >> To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is >> that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there >> that have been working for some time. > > Uh, and we are an open source project --- Slony being "open source" > seems like a very notable distinction to me. Yes, Slony is an Open Source project ... it is also one of many Replication Solutions for PostgreSQL, so if you are going to mention one, you should highlight mention them all ... by focusing on one, you are giving it a higher, semi-official, standing which will give readers the impression that it is *the* PostgreSQL Replication, not one of many ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Heather, > We would just request review of how our > organization and it's employees are mentioned. Yup. Which is why we're starting *now.* But now that I think of it, it would be better *not* to quote Afilias in this release since you were so prominent in the last one. -- -Josh Berkus "A developer of Very Little Brain" Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
On 8/12/2004 2:29 PM, Josh Berkus wrote: > Marc, > >> Seems an awful lot of focus on Afilias/Fujitsu, no? Is it a PR about us, >> or them? :( If we are going to highlight contributors, Redhat (all of >> Tom's time, which is a *major* contribution) and CommandPrompt (pl/PHP) >> should be in there, among others I know I'm overlooking ... > > Probably. I guess what I'm fishing for is a paragraph on expanded corporate > contributions to PostgreSQL, regardless of from whom they came. Afilias and > FJ are easier because they're tied to specific contributions, whereas RH is > propping up our spiritual leader. CMD, of course, would show up in a mention > of PL/perlNG. I would like to see CMD mentioned in connection with Mammoth Replicator as well. Yes, it is a closed source commercial add on, but still it is something that apparently attracts customers who otherwise would have had trouble making the decision pro-PostgreSQL. After all, this use of PostgreSQL is one of the best reasons for the BSD license. Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
On 8/12/2004 2:37 PM, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side > projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't > appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should > be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are > releasing, not what another project is releasing ... I don't agree with this. Many users have asked for a replication solution and not mentioning what is available only leads to "still without replication" summaries all over the place. We certainly want to avoid that "bad publicity". Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
On 8/12/2004 5:49 PM, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > giving it a higher, semi-official, standing which will give readers the > impression that it is *the* PostgreSQL Replication, not one of many ... But it is *the one* or the *many* :-) Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > On 8/12/2004 2:37 PM, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> Also, the PR should be focused around what we are releasing, not side >> projects ... Slony-I isn't part of this release, and, IMHO, isn't >> appropriate as part of the PostgreSQL Server press release ... they should >> be doing their own Press Release for that. Focus on what *we* are >> releasing, not what another project is releasing ... > > I don't agree with this. Many users have asked for a replication solution and > not mentioning what is available only leads to "still without replication" > summaries all over the place. We certainly want to avoid that "bad > publicity". Agreed, but focusing on one will give the impresion that there is only one ... I saw your other message concerning Replicator also ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Josh Berkus wrote: >Marc, > > > >>But this comes back to promoting some projects as being more important >>then others, bestoying(sp?) a pseudo-official status on them ... >>pginstaller, IMHO, makes sense since its pretty much a requirement for >>anyone wishing to use Pg 8.0.0 on Windows ... >> >> > >Yep. That's the way the mainstream press works; they're not interested in >technical merit of individual projects, they are interested in what's >currently buzzword-compliant. Replication is sexy, HA is sexy, PITR is >sexy, high performance is sexy, enterprise Java is sexy. A lot of other >features and add-ons which are very valuable to the community are not >interesting to the general press. For the Press Release, which is designed >to go to reporters, we need to pack it densly with stuff that's going to >appeal to them. > > > What about some mention like: This release is bundled with the open source replication solution, Slony-I. Other commercial replication solutions are available from other vendors, such as Command Prompt, Incorporated. Does this satisfy everyone's needs? I think that replication should be mentioned in some way as it helps to tell some people that PostgreSQL is ready for the enterprise. However, I do agree that we want to avoid leaving people with the idea that this is *the* end all and be all for PostgreSQL replication. Best Wishes, Chris Travers
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Chris Travers wrote: > Josh Berkus wrote: > >> Marc, >> >> >>> But this comes back to promoting some projects as being more important >>> then others, bestoying(sp?) a pseudo-official status on them ... >>> pginstaller, IMHO, makes sense since its pretty much a requirement for >>> anyone wishing to use Pg 8.0.0 on Windows ... >>> >> >> Yep. That's the way the mainstream press works; they're not interested in >> technical merit of individual projects, they are interested in what's >> currently buzzword-compliant. Replication is sexy, HA is sexy, PITR is >> sexy, high performance is sexy, enterprise Java is sexy. A lot of other >> features and add-ons which are very valuable to the community are not >> interesting to the general press. For the Press Release, which is designed >> to go to reporters, we need to pack it densly with stuff that's going to >> appeal to them. >> >> > What about some mention like: > This release is bundled with the open source replication solution, Slony-I. > Other commercial replication solutions are available from other vendors, such > as Command Prompt, Incorporated. > > Does this satisfy everyone's needs? No, as Slony-I is not bundled with, or has anything to do with, this release ... Slony-I is a seperate, independent project developed by a commercial entity (Afilias) and released Open Source very early in its lifecycle ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Jan Wieck wrote: > On 8/12/2004 2:29 PM, Josh Berkus wrote: > > > Marc, > > > >> Seems an awful lot of focus on Afilias/Fujitsu, no? Is it a PR about us, > >> or them? :( If we are going to highlight contributors, Redhat (all of > >> Tom's time, which is a *major* contribution) and CommandPrompt (pl/PHP) > >> should be in there, among others I know I'm overlooking ... > > > > Probably. I guess what I'm fishing for is a paragraph on expanded corporate > > contributions to PostgreSQL, regardless of from whom they came. Afilias and > > FJ are easier because they're tied to specific contributions, whereas RH is > > propping up our spiritual leader. CMD, of course, would show up in a mention > > of PL/perlNG. > > I would like to see CMD mentioned in connection with Mammoth Replicator > as well. Yes, it is a closed source commercial add on, but still it is > something that apparently attracts customers who otherwise would have > had trouble making the decision pro-PostgreSQL. After all, this use of > PostgreSQL is one of the best reasons for the BSD license. I am not in favor of mentioning a commercial product in our press release, especially when we have an open source alternative. -- 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
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> Yep. That's the way the mainstream press works; they're not interested in > >> technical merit of individual projects, they are interested in what's > >> currently buzzword-compliant. Replication is sexy, HA is sexy, PITR is > >> sexy, high performance is sexy, enterprise Java is sexy. A lot of other > >> features and add-ons which are very valuable to the community are not > >> interesting to the general press. For the Press Release, which is designed > >> to go to reporters, we need to pack it densly with stuff that's going to > >> appeal to them. > >> > >> > > What about some mention like: > > This release is bundled with the open source replication solution, Slony-I. > > Other commercial replication solutions are available from other vendors, such > > as Command Prompt, Incorporated. > > > > Does this satisfy everyone's needs? > > No, as Slony-I is not bundled with, or has anything to do with, this > release ... Slony-I is a seperate, independent project developed by a > commercial entity (Afilias) and released Open Source very early in its > lifecycle ... Well, it is open source and BSD licensed, so that is good enough for me. Mentioning commerical replication solutions when we have just-as-good open source ones makes no sense. At this point, Slony is the main PostgreSQL open source master/slave replication solution and we should promote it if we can. -- 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
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Jan Wieck wrote: > > On 8/12/2004 2:29 PM, Josh Berkus wrote: > > > > > Marc, > > > > > >> Seems an awful lot of focus on Afilias/Fujitsu, no? Is it a PR about us, > > >> or them? :( If we are going to highlight contributors, Redhat (all of > > >> Tom's time, which is a *major* contribution) and CommandPrompt (pl/PHP) > > >> should be in there, among others I know I'm overlooking ... > > > > > > Probably. I guess what I'm fishing for is a paragraph on expanded corporate > > > contributions to PostgreSQL, regardless of from whom they came. Afilias and > > > FJ are easier because they're tied to specific contributions, whereas RH is > > > propping up our spiritual leader. CMD, of course, would show up in a mention > > > of PL/perlNG. > > > > I would like to see CMD mentioned in connection with Mammoth Replicator > > as well. Yes, it is a closed source commercial add on, but still it is > > something that apparently attracts customers who otherwise would have > > had trouble making the decision pro-PostgreSQL. After all, this use of > > PostgreSQL is one of the best reasons for the BSD license. > > I am not in favor of mentioning a commercial product in our press > release, especially when we have an open source alternative. In support of Bruce's point, why should we be promoting commercial products? That should be left to the commercial entities. Let them spend their resources on that. -- Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Dan Langille wrote: > In support of Bruce's point, why should we be promoting commercial > products? That should be left to the commercial entities. Let them > spend their resources on that. IMHO ... I would think that 8.0.0 brought enough to a press release to be able to stand on its own ... I question not that we don't promote commercial products, but that we are promoting anything but that which we are releasing: PostgreSQL RDBMS 8.0.0 ... anything else draws focus *away* from that ... We are *not* releasing Slony ... nor is Slony "the first replication solution" ... hell, it isn't even the first *open source* replication solution, as I believe that pgReplication has that distinction ... Replication for PostgreSQL is *not* a new thing ... its not something that is first available in 8.0.0, but has been available since 7.2 ... if it were something new, fine, touting that we've finally got a replication solution is good. But replication is *old news*, plain and simple ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Dan Langille wrote: > > > In support of Bruce's point, why should we be promoting commercial > > products? That should be left to the commercial entities. Let them > > spend their resources on that. > > IMHO ... I would think that 8.0.0 brought enough to a press release to be > able to stand on its own ... I question not that we don't promote > commercial products, but that we are promoting anything but that which we > are releasing: PostgreSQL RDBMS 8.0.0 ... anything else draws focus *away* > from that ... > > We are *not* releasing Slony ... nor is Slony "the first replication > solution" ... hell, it isn't even the first *open source* replication > solution, as I believe that pgReplication has that distinction ... > > Replication for PostgreSQL is *not* a new thing ... its not something that > is first available in 8.0.0, but has been available since 7.2 ... if it > were something new, fine, touting that we've finally got a replication > solution is good. But replication is *old news*, plain and simple ... But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and should be touted as we have touted other replication solutions in the past. -- 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 wrote: > >>No, as Slony-I is not bundled with, or has anything to do with, this >>release ... Slony-I is a seperate, independent project developed by a >>commercial entity (Afilias) and released Open Source very early in its >>lifecycle ... >> >> > >Well, it is open source and BSD licensed, so that is good enough for me. > >Mentioning commerical replication solutions when we have just-as-good >open source ones makes no sense. At this point, Slony is the main >PostgreSQL open source master/slave replication solution and we should >promote it if we can. > > > I agree to some extent. But only Slony-I by name accomplishes that goal. The issue for me is that mentioning commercial solutions does something to indicate that PostgreSQL is a live and vibrant product with commercial software built on top of it. Basically it indicates that we are a larger community than any one project. Also there is a fine line between promotion and endorsement, and I am hearing that many people are uncomfortable endorsing Slony-I as *the* PostgreSQL replication solution. Even a comment like "Other commercial replication solutions available from other companies" indicates that this is one among others, but the one which is most worth noting in the press release. Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting
Josh Berkus wrote: > Well, it's time to start work on the 8.0 press release. Who's > interested? Given the amount of coverage we have on the beta already, > I think we can do it here, on-list, until we get closer to the > release. I have an idea: Try to write the entire press release without using the word "enterprise". It might be enlightening. :) -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
Martha Stewart called it a Good Thing when pgman@candle.pha.pa.us (Bruce Momjian) wrote: > But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and should > be touted as we have touted other replication solutions in the past. And note that if functionality such as PL/perlNG, PL/Java is to be mentioned, as "fairly important stuff" that is being managed outside of $SOURCES/contrib, for there to be mention a "new, improved replication system" ISN'T way out there. A good presentation is NOT going to dwell on any of these things, but in view of there being conspicuous interest in this, I don't think it destroys a press release to _mention_ it. Let me point out, for a moment, the discussion that resulted from presenting the 8.0 beta announcement to Linux Weekly News. <http://lwn.net/Articles/97213/> Almost all of the discussion was exclusively about the _lack_ of mention of replication in that announcement. If the 'ultimate' press release _does_ make mention, preferably brief, of some of the significant add-ons that are emerging on PGFoundry that are _clearly_ of "market interest," that'll go a long way towards defusing this sort of thing. Perhaps the flames should get deferred until someone proposes an actual wording for the point in question? I'd suggest, as a starting point, something similar to... ================================================================== A number of development projects outside the direct scope of the database project have also been flourishing: - PL/PerlNG, supported by Command Prompt, will allow Perl to be used as a fully-featured server side language to implement things like triggers and composite types. - PL/Java promises to allow Java to similarly be used for server programming within the database engine. - Slony-I, supported by Afilias, is a "master to multiple slave" replication system supporting cascading updates and slave promotion, compatible with multiple PostgreSQL versions. There is also an ongoing effort to simplify the ability to build software that has usually expected to access a PostgreSQL source tree, drawing the dependancies into a compiled copy of PostgreSQL. This will ease the task of building packages (such as RPMs) for extensions such as server programming languages, and should diminish the pressure for the PostgreSQL project to need to include such extensions. ================================================================== Note, that's a sort of "really-early-would-be-draft" of item P4, worthy only for being "red-marked" to fix/improve it. That should not be considered final, nor should it be considered to be the entirety of the release. The release would also include items P1-P3, P5-P6, several of which should be longer than P4, as well as the list of "major enterprise enhancements." -- let name="cbbrowne" and tld="cbbrowne.com" in name ^ "@" ^ tld;; http://cbbrowne.com/info/unix.html "When a float occurs on the same page as the start of a supertabular you can expect unexpected results." -- Documentation of supertabular.sty
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Dan Langille wrote: > > > > > In support of Bruce's point, why should we be promoting commercial > > > products? That should be left to the commercial entities. Let them > > > spend their resources on that. > > > > IMHO ... I would think that 8.0.0 brought enough to a press release to be > > able to stand on its own ... I question not that we don't promote > > commercial products, but that we are promoting anything but that which we > > are releasing: PostgreSQL RDBMS 8.0.0 ... anything else draws focus *away* > > from that ... > > > > We are *not* releasing Slony ... nor is Slony "the first replication > > solution" ... hell, it isn't even the first *open source* replication > > solution, as I believe that pgReplication has that distinction ... > > > > Replication for PostgreSQL is *not* a new thing ... its not something that > > is first available in 8.0.0, but has been available since 7.2 ... if it > > were something new, fine, touting that we've finally got a replication > > solution is good. But replication is *old news*, plain and simple ... > > But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and should be > touted as we have touted other replication solutions in the past. I am of a similar opinion. Having heard the Slony talk at BSDCan, I think it should at least be mentioned. -- Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
On 8/12/2004 11:35 PM, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > We are *not* releasing Slony ... nor is Slony "the first replication > solution" ... hell, it isn't even the first *open source* replication > solution, as I believe that pgReplication has that distinction ... > > Replication for PostgreSQL is *not* a new thing ... its not something that > is first available in 8.0.0, but has been available since 7.2 ... if it > were something new, fine, touting that we've finally got a replication > solution is good. But replication is *old news*, plain and simple ... And yet people are asking "does it have replication now" ... maybe it wasn't enough to propagate some data under severe limitations without any idea how to add advanced features like switchover and slave inheritance on failover in the future. People have evaluated what we have touted out as "replication solution" and came to the conclusion that this is no solution for them. Considering the time eRServer, rserv, dbmirror and all the others are released by now, the number of users and the vitality of the projects are not backing your statement that "replication is old news". Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement is "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0 press release and leave out the word replication, instead of pointing to the reasons why it is *better not to have replication builtin*, we will lose. People will read the press release, don't see the word replication, so "No Replication - checkmark". Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other > forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement is > "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0 press > release and leave out the word replication, instead of pointing to the > reasons why it is *better not to have replication builtin*, we will > lose. People will read the press release, don't see the word > replication, so "No Replication - checkmark". Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in their minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we mention ;( ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > > > Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other > > forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement is > > "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0 press > > release and leave out the word replication, instead of pointing to the > > reasons why it is *better not to have replication builtin*, we will > > lose. People will read the press release, don't see the word > > replication, so "No Replication - checkmark". > > Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means > "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in their > minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we mention ;( Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning commercial ones? I do. -- 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
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > > > > > Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other > > > forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement is > > > "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0 press > > > release and leave out the word replication, instead of pointing to the > > > reasons why it is *better not to have replication builtin*, we will > > > lose. People will read the press release, don't see the word > > > replication, so "No Replication - checkmark". > > > > Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means > > "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in their > > minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we mention ;( > > Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do > you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed > replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning > commercial ones? > > I do. Bruce is not alone here. The community does not exist to promote commericial solutions. -- Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: >> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: >> >>> Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other >>> forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement is >>> "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0 press >>> release and leave out the word replication, instead of pointing to the >>> reasons why it is *better not to have replication builtin*, we will >>> lose. People will read the press release, don't see the word >>> replication, so "No Replication - checkmark". >> >> Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means >> "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in their >> minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we mention ;( > > Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do > you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed > replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning > commercial ones? Neither Joshua or I are advocating mentioning either of our replication solutions ... that is not (or at least not for us) the discussion ... the discussion is whether or not it is appropriate to highlight a 3rd party add on (which is what Slony is) as part of *our* Release Announcement ... For those that are advocating in favor of this, to try and quell the 'we do not have replication' proponents, that isn't going to work since Slony is *still* an Add-On, and is not integrated. And, for those that are wondering about putting it into contrib, that doesn't make it any less of an Add-On in those ppls minds ... ... so we aren't buying anything, and, again, we are reducing the focus on what we *do* include (NT, PITR, native Win32, etc) ... The PR should be focusing on *our* features ... that which comes with *our* distribution ... not on something someone else wrote that works with PostgreSQL ... But, as one person has mentioned in this thread, as an attempt at a voice of sanity ... maybe we should just let this drop, and see how the PR fleshes out ... maybe we *don't* have enough in this release to do a strong Press Release, and need to mentioned add-on stuff to make it big enough to be picked up by the press *shrug* ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > >> > >>> Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other > >>> forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement is > >>> "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0 press > >>> release and leave out the word replication, instead of pointing to the > >>> reasons why it is *better not to have replication builtin*, we will > >>> lose. People will read the press release, don't see the word > >>> replication, so "No Replication - checkmark". > >> > >> Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means > >> "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in their > >> minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we mention ;( > > > > Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do > > you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed > > replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning > > commercial ones? > > Neither Joshua or I are advocating mentioning either of our replication > solutions ... that is not (or at least not for us) the discussion ... the > discussion is whether or not it is appropriate to highlight a 3rd party > add on (which is what Slony is) as part of *our* Release Announcement ... > > For those that are advocating in favor of this, to try and quell the 'we > do not have replication' proponents, that isn't going to work since Slony > is *still* an Add-On, and is not integrated. > > And, for those that are wondering about putting it into contrib, that > doesn't make it any less of an Add-On in those ppls minds ... > > ... so we aren't buying anything, and, again, we are reducing the focus on > what we *do* include (NT, PITR, native Win32, etc) ... > > The PR should be focusing on *our* features ... that which comes with > *our* distribution ... not on something someone else wrote that works with > PostgreSQL ... > > But, as one person has mentioned in this thread, as an attempt at a voice > of sanity ... maybe we should just let this drop, and see how the PR > fleshes out ... maybe we *don't* have enough in this release to do a > strong Press Release, and need to mentioned add-on stuff to make it big > enough to be picked up by the press *shrug* We are already planning to mention server-side java in the release announcement. That isn't integrated either, but I think we should mention it also. In fact I want to write a documentation section talking about add-ons, why the exist (are not integrated), and how to get them. -- 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
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Dan Langille wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > >> Marc G. Fournier wrote: >>> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: >>> >>>> Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other >>>> forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement is >>>> "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0 press >>>> release and leave out the word replication, instead of pointing to the >>>> reasons why it is *better not to have replication builtin*, we will >>>> lose. People will read the press release, don't see the word >>>> replication, so "No Replication - checkmark". >>> >>> Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means >>> "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in their >>> minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we mention ;( >> >> Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do >> you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed >> replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning >> commercial ones? >> >> I do. > > Bruce is not alone here. The community does not exist to promote > commericial solutions. Bruce is mis-representing the facts of this argument, and summarizing them as he sees ... in fact, I believe the only one here that advocated *for* promoting a commercial solution was Jan ... I know I didn't, I'm advocating that this Press Release is for PostgreSQL RBMS 8.0.0, *not* for Add On software (commercial *or* open source) ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Dan Langille wrote: >>Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do >>you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed >>replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning >>commercial ones? >> >>I do. > > > Bruce is not alone here. The community does not exist to promote > commericial solutions. > It's so easy. Joshua Drake an Marc can simply release their solutions under BSD, and we'd happily promote them :-) Regards, Andreas
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Andreas Pflug wrote: > Dan Langille wrote: >>> Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do >>> you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed >>> replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning >>> commercial ones? >>> >>> I do. >> >> >> Bruce is not alone here. The community does not exist to promote >> commericial solutions. >> > > It's so easy. Joshua Drake an Marc can simply release their solutions under > BSD, and we'd happily promote them :-) Ummm, actually, Marc did release his solution under BSD over 12 months ago ... But, again, neither Joshua or I are asking (or advocating) promoting our respective products ... please read the whole thread instead of Bruce's summary of it :) ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On 8/13/2004 10:31 AM, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > Bruce is mis-representing the facts of this argument, and summarizing them > as he sees ... in fact, I believe the only one here that advocated *for* > promoting a commercial solution was Jan ... I know I didn't, I'm > advocating that this Press Release is for PostgreSQL RBMS 8.0.0, *not* for > Add On software (commercial *or* open source) ... I am not advocating for promoting commercial software. I am for addressing one of the most demanded features. If that means that we have to list commercial products as well, I would accept that. We have removed and are still in the process of removing more details form the server project to gborg and pgfoundry. If that strategy is extended to not talking about demanded features and functionality in our press releases at all, I have to seriously rethink my position about what should be included in our release and what not. Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
Bruce Momjian wrote: > > >But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and should be >touted as we have touted other replication solutions in the past. > > > Any chance that Slony will be packaged in the contrib directory? Or is the time for that past? After all, in 7.4, iirc. we still had things like rserv and other things which probably don't even work with 7.4. Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting
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Jan Wieck wrote: > On 8/13/2004 10:31 AM, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > > Bruce is mis-representing the facts of this argument, and summarizing them > > as he sees ... in fact, I believe the only one here that advocated *for* > > promoting a commercial solution was Jan ... I know I didn't, I'm > > advocating that this Press Release is for PostgreSQL RBMS 8.0.0, *not* for > > Add On software (commercial *or* open source) ... > > I am not advocating for promoting commercial software. I am for > addressing one of the most demanded features. If that means that we have > to list commercial products as well, I would accept that. Agreed, if we don't offer a comparable open source alternative. -- 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
On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 15:29, Bruce Momjian wrote: > We are already planning to mention server-side java in the release > announcement. That isn't integrated either, but I think we should > mention it also. > > In fact I want to write a documentation section talking about add-ons, > why the exist (are not integrated), and how to get them. It is important to get across to the commercial world that add-ons can be equally as worthy as the core product. We don't use a commercial model for software development, but it's the commercial model that suggests that add-ons are less important. I suppose they imagine that an add-on product is somehow less reliable; but actually it is one of the core developers who has produced this add-on and it is as open to review as any other part of Pg. Oliver Elphick
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >>>> Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other > >>>> forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement is > >>>> "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0 press > >>>> release and leave out the word replication, instead of pointing to the > >>>> reasons why it is *better not to have replication builtin*, we will > >>>> lose. People will read the press release, don't see the word > >>>> replication, so "No Replication - checkmark". > >>> > >>> Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means > >>> "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in their > >>> minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we mention ;( > >> > >> Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do > >> you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed > >> replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning > >> commercial ones? > >> > >> I do. > > > > Bruce is not alone here. The community does not exist to promote > > commericial solutions. > > Bruce is mis-representing the facts of this argument, and summarizing them > as he sees ... in fact, I believe the only one here that advocated *for* > promoting a commercial solution was Jan ... I know I didn't, I'm > advocating that this Press Release is for PostgreSQL RBMS 8.0.0, *not* for > Add On software (commercial *or* open source) ... We have historically mentioned add-ons as appropriate. I think you are suggesting not mentioning slony because we already have covered replication, but I think others have said it is dramatically different that it deserves a mention. -- 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
>>To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is >>that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there >>that have been working for some time. > > > Uh, and we are an open source project --- Slony being "open source" > seems like a very notable distinction to me. > Thanks for pointing out what I already had :) Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > >>To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is > >>that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there > >>that have been working for some time. > > > > > > Uh, and we are an open source project --- Slony being "open source" > > seems like a very notable distinction to me. > > > > Thanks for pointing out what I already had :) My point was that saying it is the "only thing" that makes it notable is to minimize a major point of pushing Slony. It is "the" notable issue. -- 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
Why not something like: -- With Release 8.0 PostgreSQL adds another replication solution to its arsenal; Slony-I. Along with Mammoth Replicator, DbMirror and ErServer you can now choose the best replication solution for your enterprise needs. -- A notable thing about Mammoth is that Replicator will run on 8.0 Win32 from release. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake? -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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Am Freitag, 13. August 2004 16:29 schrieb Bruce Momjian: > We are already planning to mention server-side java in the release > announcement. That isn't integrated either, but I think we should > mention it also. You may want to make sure that PL/Java is actually released before you issue that press release. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > We have historically mentioned add-ons as appropriate. I think you are > suggesting not mentioning slony because we already have covered > replication, but I think others have said it is dramatically different > that it deserves a mention. I think Slony deserves its own Press Release ... its big enough of an add-on that including it as part of the 8.0.0 release will shift focus from what 8.0.0 has accomplished ... Getting two Releases in Slashdot will do alot more for us then one big one that has Slony hidden in its folds ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Am Freitag, 13. August 2004 06:22 schrieb Chris Travers: > Any chance that Slony will be packaged in the contrib directory? Or is > the time for that past? After all, in 7.4, iirc. we still had things > like rserv and other things which probably don't even work with 7.4. This may make arguments about the press release easier, but from a technical point of view, it would be a completely pointless, counterproductive move. The software is developed independently and at a different pace, so let them be. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > We have removed and are still in the process of removing more details > form the server project to gborg and pgfoundry. If that strategy is > extended to not talking about demanded features and functionality in our > press releases at all, I have to seriously rethink my position about > what should be included in our release and what not. The thing is, those should be *seperate* announces ... if you put it as part of a PostgreSQL 'the Server' announce, then you are going to either have to make it so prominent as to shift focus away from what we are announcing ... *or* ... make it so small so that nobody notices it anyway ... Slony-I, IMHO, *is* a big thing, and I'm not disputing that in any way ... but a *strong* PR should be made and broadcast out about it, not something hidden away in a PR for another products release ... My *biggest* beef is that focus is/will be shifted away from that which we are announcing, and that is PostgreSQL RDBM 8.0.0 ... PostgreSQL 8.0.0 is at least 2 months away from release ... why doesn't the advocacy group focus the next few weeks on making a big Slony splash? "The First Community Developed Replication Solution for PostgreSQL"? God, it might even do us good to have more regular "largish" press releases throughout the year, then trying to get it all into one ... Personally, looking at Josh's original on this thread, for 'layout', each one of those parts could just as equally be fleshed out as a press release for Slony ... You argue that its a much demanded feature ... and I tend to agree ... but by including it as part of the 'RDBMS" release, ppl are going to either gloss over it because its not too prominent, or have their focus shifted away from the big stuff in 8.0.0 (NT, PITR, native Win32) because its too prominent ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > >>I am not in favor of mentioning a commercial product in our press > >>release, especially when we have an open source alternative. > > > > > > In support of Bruce's point, why should we be promoting commercial > > products? That should be left to the commercial entities. Let them spend > > their resources on that. > > Because a great deal of the PostgreSQL resources come from commercial > entities. Hub, Command Prompt, Red Hat, SRA, Fujitsu, Afillias --- > > Who do you think is sponsoring a great deal of the "enterprise features" > that are coming out, open source to the community? We can acknowledge support from commercial entities without promoting their products. -- Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
On 8/13/2004 11:48 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > Why not something like: > > -- > With Release 8.0 PostgreSQL adds another replication solution to > its arsenal; Slony-I. Along with Mammoth Replicator, DbMirror and > ErServer you can now choose the best replication solution for your > enterprise needs. > -- Because that's incorrect. Slony-I can run on 7.3 and newer, even cross version ... leading to a completely different angle to look at it. What about this (the wording needs improvement, but you get the picture): -- In time for the 8.0 PostgreSQL release, a new replication solution has become availe. Among many advanced features Slony-I supports replicating between different PostgreSQL versions. Together with the possibility to be deployed on existing installations running 7.3 or newer and its capability to transfer the master role in a controlled and secure way, Slony-I allows upgrading of large scale enterprise databases with only seconds of downtime. -- Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > >>I would like to see CMD mentioned in connection with Mammoth Replicator > >>as well. Yes, it is a closed source commercial add on, but still it is > >>something that apparently attracts customers who otherwise would have > >>had trouble making the decision pro-PostgreSQL. After all, this use of > >>PostgreSQL is one of the best reasons for the BSD license. > > > > > > I am not in favor of mentioning a commercial product in our press > > release, especially when we have an open source alternative. > > Well if that doesn't just beg for argument. We gave away commercial > applications at the PostgreSQL OSCON booth (SRA)? Several people > there were commercial entities basically selling their services? > > What denotes commercial? plPHP and plPerlNG are both commercial. The release relates to our released software and other BSD-licensed code released around the same time with singificant new functionality. > If PostgreSQL is not commercial, then companies shouldn't use it because > then it is just a part time gig for a bunch of hackers. Huh? The project asks no money for its software and I don't think we as a project should promote other software that does. Yea, some of us have jobs, so in that broad sense we are commercial, but I don't see the point as it relates to the release announcement. In fact our jobs are supposed to be independent of our opinion on community matters. > Now, if you want to talk about Open Source that is a different argument. I guess I meant open source, but MySQL is open source but not community developed and free of licensing for commercial use, so it gets confusing what to call it. > It was my understanding that one of the arguments for PostgreSQL is the > BSD license "because it alllows closed source applications". Yes, but it is not our purpose to promote those beyond what we do on the main web page. Basically, I see you and Marc, both selling commercial replication solutions, arguing we shouldn't mention Slony, and everyone else saying we should. Are you guys being unbiased in your evaluation of mentioning Slony. I don't think your commercial interests should affect your opinion in this matter. I am not sure they are, but I have to ask. > Why shouldn't a PostgreSQL press release then mention closed source > applications? Why should we if we have an open source version that is as good? -- 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
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >>> Replication for PostgreSQL is *not* a new thing ... its not something that >>> is first available in 8.0.0, but has been available since 7.2 ... if it >>> were something new, fine, touting that we've finally got a replication >>> solution is good. But replication is *old news*, plain and simple ... >> >> >> But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and should be >> touted as we have touted other replication solutions in the past. > > Does a solution have to be Open Source to be touted? From Bruce's email, don't forget "and BSD" ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Josh Berkus wrote:
>
>>Well, it's time to start work on the 8.0 press release. Who's
>>interested? Given the amount of coverage we have on the beta already,
>>I think we can do it here, on-list, until we get closer to the
>>release.
>
>
> I have an idea: Try to write the entire press release without using the
> word "enterprise". It might be enlightening. :)
You know what... that is an amazingly valid point. Our market isn't
enterprise. Yes we have enterprise users, but we have far more that
are > 50,000,000 in sales a year.
Perhaps instead we should focus on what 8.0 will allow us to do:
Compete directly with Microsoft on their turf for a lower TCO.
Continue to compete more effectively with Oracle and DB2.
And this is why:
Continued increase in development interfaces:
plPerlNG
plPHP
PlJava (big for Oracle converts)
ECPG (Now even more functional)
Increased reliability:
Replication options:
Slony-I
Mammoth Replicator
DbMirror
(I only mention three because they seem to be the only
ones actually maintained consistly)
PITR
Increased functionality:
Nested transactions
Increased performance:
BGWriter
The new Vacuum
cross-type evaluation '1' == 1
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
>
--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com
Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > >>Replication for PostgreSQL is *not* a new thing ... its not something that > >>is first available in 8.0.0, but has been available since 7.2 ... if it > >>were something new, fine, touting that we've finally got a replication > >>solution is good. But replication is *old news*, plain and simple ... > > > > > > But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and should be > > touted as we have touted other replication solutions in the past. > > Does a solution have to be Open Source to be touted? Yes. Open source, free, BSD licensed, etc. You don't see me asking to mention Powergres in the press release, and I don't think it makes sense to do so. -- 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
>>Replication for PostgreSQL is *not* a new thing ... its not something that >>is first available in 8.0.0, but has been available since 7.2 ... if it >>were something new, fine, touting that we've finally got a replication >>solution is good. But replication is *old news*, plain and simple ... > > > But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and should be > touted as we have touted other replication solutions in the past. Does a solution have to be Open Source to be touted? > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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>>I am not in favor of mentioning a commercial product in our press >>release, especially when we have an open source alternative. > > > In support of Bruce's point, why should we be promoting commercial > products? That should be left to the commercial entities. Let them spend > their resources on that. Because a great deal of the PostgreSQL resources come from commercial entities. Hub, Command Prompt, Red Hat, SRA, Fujitsu, Afillias --- Who do you think is sponsoring a great deal of the "enterprise features" that are coming out, open source to the community? Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> >>>> To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is >>>> that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there >>>> that have been working for some time. >>> >>> >>> Uh, and we are an open source project --- Slony being "open source" >>> seems like a very notable distinction to me. >>> >> >> Thanks for pointing out what I already had :) > > My point was that saying it is the "only thing" that makes it notable is > to minimize a major point of pushing Slony. It is "the" notable issue. Not it isn't, as there are other Open Source replication solutions for PostgreSQL, as I pointed out before ... Slony is effectively "the fashion of the day", and next release, there could be 'yet another of the many' that is that much better ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
>>I would like to see CMD mentioned in connection with Mammoth Replicator >>as well. Yes, it is a closed source commercial add on, but still it is >>something that apparently attracts customers who otherwise would have >>had trouble making the decision pro-PostgreSQL. After all, this use of >>PostgreSQL is one of the best reasons for the BSD license. > > > I am not in favor of mentioning a commercial product in our press > release, especially when we have an open source alternative. Well if that doesn't just beg for argument. We gave away commercial applications at the PostgreSQL OSCON booth (SRA)? Several people there were commercial entities basically selling their services? What denotes commercial? plPHP and plPerlNG are both commercial. If PostgreSQL is not commercial, then companies shouldn't use it because then it is just a part time gig for a bunch of hackers. IMHO PostgreSQL is about as commercial as it gets. Now, if you want to talk about Open Source that is a different argument. It was my understanding that one of the arguments for PostgreSQL is the BSD license "because it alllows closed source applications". Why shouldn't a PostgreSQL press release then mention closed source applications? Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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On Friday 13 August 2004 11:10, Oliver Elphick wrote: > On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 15:29, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > In fact I want to write a documentation section talking about add-ons, > > why the exist (are not integrated), and how to get them. > It is important to get across to the commercial world that add-ons can > be equally as worthy as the core product. Ok, I think Bruce and Oliver have both hit a point here that I don't see discussed anyway. We need a paragraph or two in the press release that summarizes previous features anyway (after all, just because someone reads the 8.0.0 PR does not mean they read the previous ones; I think we should have the standard "PostgreSQL is an advanced open source database, specializing in extensibility, and has the following features...' (very rough draft) I think we need to emphasize our extensibility, and use the various third-party PL's (PL/R, PL/Java, etc) AND ALL OF THE KNOWN COMPATIBLE replication solutions, commercial or otherwise, that exist. Emphasize that our extensibility is what makes Slony, eRserver, etc EVEN POSSIBLE, and emphasize that our extensibility API is so robust that a replication solution can be implemented outside of the core server in a robust manner. We do not emphasize this enough, IMO. And be sure to emphasize that people are making money (however little....;-0) on third-party commercial modules. That might not be as friendly to the open source side of the equation as a purely open source PR would be, but I think would strike a balance that we sorely need. But the fact is 'we' (PGDG) do not 'have' a replication solution; all are third party, and there are some that are open source. I personally think that, since we tout the BSD license as making possible COMMERCIAL third party modules, whole versions, and enhancements (SRA's stuff, Command Prompt's stuff, etc), we should mention COMMERCIAL things to help highlight our extensibility. No, it's not new. But, it's new to the executive/CIO/etc that sees the 8.0.0 PR as the first piece of information he/she has ever seen about PostgreSQL. We should not limit our PR by assuming people have read about older versions, or are even familiar with PostgreSQL AT ALL. Bruce, I certainly understand how you feel on this, but SRA is one company that benefits from the BSD license and releases a commercial version of PostgreSQL, IIRC. These companies are supporting us; I really think they should get a nod. If it's good for companies supporting PostgreSQL commercially, then in reality it's good for the project's public relations as a whole. And the simple fact is that the replication solutions that we have ARE NOT WELL KNOWN, otherwise the topic would not come up so often. We need to address this. And we need to continually address this, in a prominent manner. This is not and should not be considered a technical document; people can and do skim/skip/and otherwise read out of order these things. Maybe something to the effect: "PostgreSQL's built-in robust API for third-party extensions enables companies like Command Prompt, Inc; PostgreSQL Inc; Software Research Associates; and Open Source projects like eRserver and Slony to build robust replication solutions tailored for different application requirements." (Yes, I also understand the possiblity for the confusion of PostgreSQL, Inc., and PostgreSQL 'The Project', but the simple fact is that people ALREADY confuse the two. That's not going to change; so not mentioning PgSQL Inc is helping. Then, at the end of the PR, provide a list of resources, or a link to a resources page. This is another thing we don't have; I'd like to see in one place a list of links to the various companies and projects providing third-part clients, modules, and versions. I'd like to see a listing of replication projects (gborg doesn't count, since it is not obvious from the main page that you need to go to gborg for this sort of thing, and even then it's only open source). I'd like to see a listing 'Commercial Support of PostgreSQL may be purchased from any of the following companies' and list them (this on the resources website, not in the PR!) with contact information. I'd like to see a hyperlinked concise listing of features PROMINENTLY visible. AND I'D LIKE TO SEE THESE RESOURCES IN PLAIN VIEW ON THE MAIN WEBPAGE. (Sorry for the raised voice, but I was working on a presentation for a LUG and could not for the life of me find this information in one place, so I likely missed some companies. It may very well exist, but it is well hidden) Yes, I'm willing to mangle HTML to do it, too, if I just had the information. It is good for the project to do this. -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >> > >>>> To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is > >>>> that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there > >>>> that have been working for some time. > >>> > >>> > >>> Uh, and we are an open source project --- Slony being "open source" > >>> seems like a very notable distinction to me. > >>> > >> > >> Thanks for pointing out what I already had :) > > > > My point was that saying it is the "only thing" that makes it notable is > > to minimize a major point of pushing Slony. It is "the" notable issue. > > Not it isn't, as there are other Open Source replication solutions for > PostgreSQL, as I pointed out before ... Slony is effectively "the fashion > of the day", and next release, there could be 'yet another of the many' > that is that much better ... Under which case, we'll be talking about that solution. -- Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Chris Travers wrote: > Oliver Elphick wrote: > >> It is important to get across to the commercial world that add-ons can >> >> be equally as worthy as the core product. We don't use a commercial >> model for software development, but it's the commercial model that >> suggests that add-ons are less important. I suppose they imagine that >> an add-on product is somehow less reliable; but actually it is one of >> the core developers who has produced this add-on and it is as open to >> review as any other part of Pg. >> >> > Agreed completely. > > One of the real issues is that many people hear "add-on" and they think > "afterthought, designed by folks who are not core developers." This is where > we get hurt on replication sorts of issues. At the same time, people don't > have the same sort of concerns regarding unofficial Linux kernel modules. > > I understand the advantage of kernelization in PostgreSQL, but to make this > work, perhaps we need a community-maintained distribution which includes many > of these other add-ons. The PostgreSQL project page can then hold news > regarding both commercial and community products. The actual PostgreSQL core > server then need not try to convince everybody that all these features are > available, as the distribution can do this. > > It seems to me that we can better strike a balance between promoting and > endorsing different commercial and open source projects while at the same > time providing more wholistic services to the community as this kernelization > progresses. In this regard, we could eventually get rid of the contrib > directory completely. Agreed, which I *believe* is one of the directions that the pginstaller went for Windows ... I don't imagine it would be possible to extend pginstaller to be cross-platform, like PgAdmin did, would it? ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Quoth scrappy@postgresql.org ("Marc G. Fournier"):
> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote:
>
>> Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other
>> forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement
>> is "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0
>> press release and leave out the word replication, instead of
>> pointing to the reasons why it is *better not to have replication
>> builtin*, we will lose. People will read the press release, don't
>> see the word replication, so "No Replication - checkmark".
>
> Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means
> "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in
> their minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we
> mention ;(
Perhaps.
Another feature that is emerging is Peter and Fabian's work to make it
easier to have a build environment that _isn't_ a PG source tree that
you can use to compile "extensions" against.
That's pretty key to the ability for people running "packaged"
distributions to be able to easily deploy extensions. It's certainly
a prerequisite to having plenty-o-language extensions for any systems
that deploy code in binary form. And I'm not sure that BSD Ports is
_totally_ comfortable with there needing to be packages that are
source installs; it looks as though their users kind of like to do a
"make clean" to drop out the deteriorata once one is done installing a
package.
The improved "working infrastructure for pg extensions" aka pgxs is
well worth pointing out as a way of letting there be a whole lot more
extensions that are simultaneously:
- Decoupled so that they may be pushed _OUT_ of the source tree, and
yet
- Not turned into a Huge Pain In The Neck To Compile.
This has the substantial merit that new things that are, to coin a
phrase, "pgxs-compliant," can be treated as new features that, while
not included in the strict "PostgreSQL source tree," are still readily
available.
For someone that's considering what database system they should choose
to use, it would be foolish to ignore the software that sits alongside
it, readily integrable, no?
If "pgxs" makes it possible to take most of the stuff presently
sitting in "contrib" and eliminate it from the source tree of
"PostgreSQL, the Database Proper," then that _drops_ the amount of
functionality found in "The Database, Proper," which sure looks like
the wrong message to send out if what's really happening is that it
has been made _EASIER_ to have plenty-O-extensions.
You'll notice, I trust, that I never used the word 'replication' in
any of the above. I daresay I'm biased from several perspectives,
nicely illustrated in that while I'm writing this, I'm monitoring the
installation of an ERS instance that's going to get used for a
migration to Slony-I ;-).
--
wm(X,Y):-write(X),write('@'),write(Y). wm('cbbrowne','acm.org').
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/internet.html
I hate wet paper bags.
Guys,
I think this discussion is getting WAY off track. Might I point out that I
had proposed mentioning Slony-I as part of a larger paragraph on new/more
mature add-ons?
P4: discuss major add-ins: Slony-I, PL/perlNG, PL/Java, etc.
"more features for dedicated PG users, see full release".
So far we've had 45 posts debating what should be, in my opinion, A SINGLE
SENTENCE in a press release which ISN'T WRITTEN YET. Maybe we could discuss
more pertinent stuff, like the general theme of the release?
Every press release, if you want it to be read and quoted, needs to tell a
story. Last release, it was that PostgreSQL was now equivalent to the Big
Boys and it was time for migration. I think we did a good job getting that
message across.
This release, I think our theme should be corporate involvement. Aside from
the specific features (which speak for themselves) what's news over the last
year is the amount of interest and sponsorship we've received from various
commercial entities, including feature sponsors SRA, FJ and Afilias and code
contributor Command Prompt, as well as our existing sponsors like RH and
PGInc and probably others I'm forgetting.
The reason to use this theme -- aside from attracting reporters -- is that
"partnerships" is currently widely perceived to be a weakness of our project.
MySQL, in contrast, has done a job of broadcasting whenever they so much as
have lunch with an exec from a major corporation -- as do many other
commercialized OSS projects and start-ups. This has resulted in an
impression (based on my conversations at LWE and elsewhere) that PostgreSQL
does not have "business momentum". I think we can turn that around.
I find this idea more appealing that our other thematic options for the
release:
1) PostgreSQL on Windows: while a major step forward, I think this will sell
itself;
2) Faster Development than anyone else: also true, but harder to convince
reporters.
> I think Slony deserves its own Press Release ... its big enough of an
> add-on that including it as part of the 8.0.0 release will shift focus
> from what 8.0.0 has accomplished ...
Not an option. Afilias, the sponsor, does not want to do a Slony release yet,
and it's their call.
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco
>> >> We can acknowledge support from commercial entities without promoting >> their products. > > > Agreed ... we should not be promoting *anyone's* products but that which > we are releasing ... O.k. I can live with this BUT that begs the question about plPerlNG and plPHP. Both are Command Prompt products that happen to be Open Source. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > > ---- > Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) > Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664 -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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>> Bruce is not alone here. The community does not exist to promote >> commericial solutions. >> > > It's so easy. Joshua Drake an Marc can simply release their solutions > under BSD, and we'd happily promote them :-) > Thanks for that. I just spit my coffee all over my monitor ;) > Regards, > Andreas > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your > joining column's datatypes do not match -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Dan Langille wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >> >>>> I am not in favor of mentioning a commercial product in our press >>>> release, especially when we have an open source alternative. >>> >>> >>> In support of Bruce's point, why should we be promoting commercial >>> products? That should be left to the commercial entities. Let them spend >>> their resources on that. >> >> Because a great deal of the PostgreSQL resources come from commercial >> entities. Hub, Command Prompt, Red Hat, SRA, Fujitsu, Afillias --- >> >> Who do you think is sponsoring a great deal of the "enterprise features" >> that are coming out, open source to the community? > > We can acknowledge support from commercial entities without promoting > their products. Agreed ... we should not be promoting *anyone's* products but that which we are releasing ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Peter, > I have an idea: Try to write the entire press release without using the > word "enterprise". It might be enlightening. :) <grin> Tell you what; I'll write a buzzword-compliant press release, and then you can take the work "enterprise" out of it and substitute it with something meaningful. Sadly, the press still likes "Enterprise" even if it doesn't mean anything (except maybe a reference to Star Trek). -- Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
> > Yes, but it is not our purpose to promote those beyond what we do on the > main web page. > > Basically, I see you and Marc, both selling commercial replication > solutions, arguing we shouldn't mention Slony, and everyone else saying > we should. Are you guys being unbiased in your evaluation of mentioning > Slony. I don't think your commercial interests should affect your > opinion in this matter. I am not sure they are, but I have to ask. I have zero problem mentioning Slony. I am just advocating being fair to other products/projects in the same vein. > >>Why shouldn't a PostgreSQL press release then mention closed source >>applications? > > > Why should we if we have an open source version that is as good? Because "as good" is arbitrary. Slony is a very different beast than replicator. I don't believe you could quantify whether either is better than the other because they serve very different needs. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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>>Does a solution have to be Open Source to be touted? > > > Yes. Open source, free, BSD licensed, etc. You don't see me asking to > mention Powergres in the press release, and I don't think it makes sense > to do so. That argument doesn't actually work Bruce. Powergres is a circa 7.3 series product. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > On 8/13/2004 11:48 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >> Why not something like: >> >> -- >> With Release 8.0 PostgreSQL adds another replication solution to >> its arsenal; Slony-I. Along with Mammoth Replicator, DbMirror and ErServer >> you can now choose the best replication solution for your enterprise needs. >> -- > > Because that's incorrect. Slony-I can run on 7.3 and newer, even cross > version ... leading to a completely different angle to look at it. > > What about this (the wording needs improvement, but you get the picture): > > -- > In time for the 8.0 PostgreSQL release, a new replication solution has become > availe. Among many advanced features Slony-I supports replicating between > different PostgreSQL versions. Together with the possibility to be deployed > on existing installations running 7.3 or newer and its capability to transfer > the master role in a controlled and secure way, Slony-I allows upgrading of > large scale enterprise databases with only seconds of downtime. > -- And the subject for this press release should be: New PostgreSQL Replication Aids Upgrades to Latest Release ? ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> >>>> I would like to see CMD mentioned in connection with Mammoth Replicator >>>> as well. Yes, it is a closed source commercial add on, but still it is >>>> something that apparently attracts customers who otherwise would have >>>> had trouble making the decision pro-PostgreSQL. After all, this use of >>>> PostgreSQL is one of the best reasons for the BSD license. >>> >>> >>> I am not in favor of mentioning a commercial product in our press >>> release, especially when we have an open source alternative. >> >> Well if that doesn't just beg for argument. We gave away commercial >> applications at the PostgreSQL OSCON booth (SRA)? Several people >> there were commercial entities basically selling their services? >> >> What denotes commercial? plPHP and plPerlNG are both commercial. > > The release relates to our released software and other BSD-licensed code > released around the same time with singificant new functionality. 2 month old releases constitute 'around the same time'? Actually, if we go for a release on (or after) Oct 1st, that will mean Slony 1.0 was released 3 months previous to it ... > Basically, I see you and Marc, both selling commercial replication > solutions, arguing we shouldn't mention Slony, and everyone else saying > we should. Are you guys being unbiased in your evaluation of mentioning > Slony. I don't think your commercial interests should affect your > opinion in this matter. I am not sure they are, but I have to ask. In my case, I know they aren't ... I'm being 'biased' because Slony *is not* being relesaed, it is an add-on that was previously released (on July 5th of this year, in fact) ... and it is something large enough that it should have a press release of its own *when* its developers feel it is ready ... in fact, I may have mis-read Heather @ Afilias' email earlier in this thread, but I got the impression that *they* didn't feel it was ready for a press release, and I quote: "We agree Mark. What I talked with Josh about is our interest in getting Slony in use with some organizations in an enterprise capacity as well as ensuring that commercial support is available (hence our workshop on Slony at OSCON). Our plan is that once we have these details sewn up we can directly pitch case studies of Slony's use with adequate customer and support service references. Then we'd like to pursue product reviews. The first step is to get this in production in our organization and then we can think more about the press strategy." So, again, unless I'm mis-reading Heather (and I think she's fairly clear), "pitching Slony" in our press release is *not* desired by them either ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 12:35:19AM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > IMHO ... I would think that 8.0.0 brought enough to a press release to be > able to stand on its own ... I question not that we don't promote > commercial products, but that we are promoting anything but that which we > are releasing: PostgreSQL RDBMS 8.0.0 ... anything else draws focus *away* > from that ... There is a pretty serious reason to mention Slony-I in the context, however. A big pile of features in this release are enterprise-level features. PITR, nested transactions, and tablespaces are three things that the Other Really Big Database2 products could offer that we could not. But enterprise users have historically had a nightmare in upgrading, also. I know that others with even moderately large databases and any sort of uptime guarantees have faced the same problem I have: you can't afford to go down for many hours to dump and restore your database. Well, Slony-I solves your problem. Its cross-version design means that version upgrades are now a matter of a few minutes' downtime, _plus_ you have a roll-back answer if you need it. Compared to previous white-knucke upgrade procedures, Slony-I is a big deal. A -- ---- Andrew Sullivan
> Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do
> you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed
> replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning
> commercial ones?
>
> I do.
I don't. At Command Prompt we practice a very simple theory:
If you take care of your employees, they will take care of you.
Command Prompt tries to do the same with the Community. We try
to take care of the community by:
Donating many thousands of dollars worth of IP in the form of:
plPHP
plPerlNG
pgManage
ECPG (additions to)
Donating extremely valuable time and resources:
Free Support (IRC, Mailing Lists)
Free Bandwidth (Relay of mailing lists)
Arranging for the OSCON Booth
Direct monetary contributions (Which I won't mention to whom).
PgSQL, Inc. does many of the same things including hosting 98% of the
bandwidth and servers for the PostgreSQL Project.
RedHat by the extreme liberties of Tom Lane (bow to the buddha)
Afilias by Slony and Jan (and Andrew I think)
SRA -- Tatsuo Ishii
In return we "hope" that the community will help take care of us, so we
can continue to provide these resources.
I am not saying that the project should go gone how about commercial
products, but helping increase the visibility of major contributing
companies/products/projects will only HELP the community.
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
>
--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com
Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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Oliver Elphick wrote: > It is important to get across to the commercial world that add-ons can > >be equally as worthy as the core product. We don't use a commercial >model for software development, but it's the commercial model that >suggests that add-ons are less important. I suppose they imagine that >an add-on product is somehow less reliable; but actually it is one of >the core developers who has produced this add-on and it is as open to >review as any other part of Pg. > > > Agreed completely. One of the real issues is that many people hear "add-on" and they think "afterthought, designed by folks who are not core developers." This is where we get hurt on replication sorts of issues. At the same time, people don't have the same sort of concerns regarding unofficial Linux kernel modules. I understand the advantage of kernelization in PostgreSQL, but to make this work, perhaps we need a community-maintained distribution which includes many of these other add-ons. The PostgreSQL project page can then hold news regarding both commercial and community products. The actual PostgreSQL core server then need not try to convince everybody that all these features are available, as the distribution can do this. It seems to me that we can better strike a balance between promoting and endorsing different commercial and open source projects while at the same time providing more wholistic services to the community as this kernelization progresses. In this regard, we could eventually get rid of the contrib directory completely. Any volunteers? ;-) I might have some time to work on this in the next few months, but no guarantees. Best Wishes, Chris Travers
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Marc, Peter, > Corporate theme sounds cool to me ... but, didn't we already do that press > release? I thought that you wrote (co-wrote?) concerning Fujitsu > emphasis'd that quite eloquently ... Yeah, but it was only on NewsForge, which isn't read much outside of OSS circles. Here I'm trying to reach CNN and CNet. > I like to think that the theme of any press release announcing a new > software release should be "what does this do for me". (This is more > generally true of anything you write.) We have plenty of new features > that you can map to prominent terms such as flexibility, performance, > safety, ease of administration, etc. while still staying on topic and > conveying actual information to the public. etc ... Hmmm ... yeah, good point. And I suppose if we just mention the sponsorships somewhere breifly or quote people, it accomplishes the same thing. One thing I'm struggling with is how to write this up; last release, as you pointed out, we used the word "enterprise" about a gazillion times. I'd like to find some verbal way to "package" our progress which reporters will understand without repeating last release. Ideas? Keep in mind that most of the press won't have the foggiest idea what Point In Time Recovery is, just that Oracle has it. And, unfortuantely, if we can't get the press excited about the release we can't reach potential users because it won't get printed. -- -Josh Berkus "A developer of Very Little Brain" Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Am Freitag, 13. August 2004 16:29 schrieb Bruce Momjian: > >>We are already planning to mention server-side java in the release >>announcement. That isn't integrated either, but I think we should >>mention it also. > > > You may want to make sure that PL/Java is actually released before you issue > that press release. > I plan to release PL/Java beta 4 (one 8.0 and one 7.4 compliant version) by the end of next week and then follow the beta release cycle for 8.0 with an aproximate 2 week delay. Regards, Thomas Hallgren
Josh Berkus wrote: > This release, I think our theme should be corporate involvement. > Aside from the specific features (which speak for themselves) what's > news over the last year is the amount of interest and sponsorship > we've received from various commercial entities, including feature > sponsors SRA, FJ and Afilias and code contributor Command Prompt, as > well as our existing sponsors like RH and PGInc and probably others > I'm forgetting. I like to think that the theme of any press release announcing a new software release should be "what does this do for me". (This is more generally true of anything you write.) We have plenty of new features that you can map to prominent terms such as flexibility, performance, safety, ease of administration, etc. while still staying on topic and conveying actual information to the public. The mention of corporate involvement is going to make everyone yawn. It will be of brief interest to those so-called market analysts, but it will do absolutely nothing for our users and potential users. If you want to make points about business momentum, you can do that in separate activities. Forcing this in the release announcement press release can lead to several impressions: "Oh, there are so few interesting features in this release, they need to fill the space with their sponsors." "Oh, they're so desperate to show off their business momentum, they need to mention three companies I've never heard of." "Oh, my beloved PostgreSQL is being taken over by evil corporations." Who cares about business momentum anyway? Tell me about feature momentum. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Josh Berkus wrote: > This release, I think our theme should be corporate involvement. Aside > from the specific features (which speak for themselves) what's news over > the last year is the amount of interest and sponsorship we've received > from various commercial entities, including feature sponsors SRA, FJ and > Afilias and code contributor Command Prompt, as well as our existing > sponsors like RH and PGInc and probably others I'm forgetting. Corporate theme sounds cool to me ... but, didn't we already do that press release? I thought that you wrote (co-wrote?) concerning Fujitsu emphasis'd that quite eloquently ... >> I think Slony deserves its own Press Release ... its big enough of an >> add-on that including it as part of the 8.0.0 release will shift focus >> from what 8.0.0 has accomplished ... > > Not an option. Afilias, the sponsor, does not want to do a Slony > release yet, and it's their call. 'k, from your note at the beginning of this (that I removed) about how you see mentioning Slony in the press release, I will concede that I blew things out of proportion, and apologize forthright for beating a dead horse ... I jump'd to the conclusion that what you were envisioning was a bit more grand then you demonstrated in your start of this not ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Agreed ... to me, I see at least three press releases that could be
created:
PostgreSQL RDBMS 8.0.0 and all its new features
Slony as a new replication option
pgFoundry as the new collaborative development environment
the thing with announcing pgFoundry is that it would take some 'sting' out
of your point about eliminating things from the source tree, as what we'd
be doing with pgxs is moving contrib to a more visible development
environment ...
I just feel that Slony is large enough that, again, the focus of ppl
reading the press release is going to be split from what is new as far as
the server is concerned, by drawing ppls eyes to something that, by the
time we release, will be 3 months (or more) old ...
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Christopher Browne wrote:
> Quoth scrappy@postgresql.org ("Marc G. Fournier"):
>> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote:
>>
>>> Every time PostgreSQL is discussed, be that slashdot or LWN or other
>>> forums or even interviews with any of out competitors, the statement
>>> is "doesn't have replication". If we avoid the topic in our 8.0
>>> press release and leave out the word replication, instead of
>>> pointing to the reasons why it is *better not to have replication
>>> builtin*, we will lose. People will read the press release, don't
>>> see the word replication, so "No Replication - checkmark".
>>
>> Except that "Have Replication" to those claiming 'No Replicatin' means
>> "Integrated with the Server", we still don't *have* Replication in
>> their minds, no matter how many external projects that do it we
>> mention ;(
>
> Perhaps.
>
> Another feature that is emerging is Peter and Fabian's work to make it
> easier to have a build environment that _isn't_ a PG source tree that
> you can use to compile "extensions" against.
>
> That's pretty key to the ability for people running "packaged"
> distributions to be able to easily deploy extensions. It's certainly
> a prerequisite to having plenty-o-language extensions for any systems
> that deploy code in binary form. And I'm not sure that BSD Ports is
> _totally_ comfortable with there needing to be packages that are
> source installs; it looks as though their users kind of like to do a
> "make clean" to drop out the deteriorata once one is done installing a
> package.
>
> The improved "working infrastructure for pg extensions" aka pgxs is
> well worth pointing out as a way of letting there be a whole lot more
> extensions that are simultaneously:
>
> - Decoupled so that they may be pushed _OUT_ of the source tree, and
> yet
> - Not turned into a Huge Pain In The Neck To Compile.
>
> This has the substantial merit that new things that are, to coin a
> phrase, "pgxs-compliant," can be treated as new features that, while
> not included in the strict "PostgreSQL source tree," are still readily
> available.
>
> For someone that's considering what database system they should choose
> to use, it would be foolish to ignore the software that sits alongside
> it, readily integrable, no?
>
> If "pgxs" makes it possible to take most of the stuff presently
> sitting in "contrib" and eliminate it from the source tree of
> "PostgreSQL, the Database Proper," then that _drops_ the amount of
> functionality found in "The Database, Proper," which sure looks like
> the wrong message to send out if what's really happening is that it
> has been made _EASIER_ to have plenty-O-extensions.
>
> You'll notice, I trust, that I never used the word 'replication' in
> any of the above. I daresay I'm biased from several perspectives,
> nicely illustrated in that while I'm writing this, I'm monitoring the
> installation of an ERS instance that's going to get used for a
> migration to Slony-I ;-).
> --
> wm(X,Y):-write(X),write('@'),write(Y). wm('cbbrowne','acm.org').
> http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/internet.html
> I hate wet paper bags.
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
>
> http://archives.postgresql.org
>
----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > What denotes commercial? plPHP and plPerlNG are both commercial. I think the terms you all are looking for are "free software" and "proprietary software". -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Dan Langille wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: >> >>> Joshua D. Drake wrote: >>>> >>>>>> To be fair :) the only thing that makes Slony notable for PostgreSQL is >>>>>> that it is Open Source. There are other replication systems out there >>>>>> that have been working for some time. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Uh, and we are an open source project --- Slony being "open source" >>>>> seems like a very notable distinction to me. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Thanks for pointing out what I already had :) >>> >>> My point was that saying it is the "only thing" that makes it notable is >>> to minimize a major point of pushing Slony. It is "the" notable issue. >> >> Not it isn't, as there are other Open Source replication solutions for >> PostgreSQL, as I pointed out before ... Slony is effectively "the fashion >> of the day", and next release, there could be 'yet another of the many' >> that is that much better ... > > Under which case, we'll be talking about that solution. And it will be no more appropriate for a release announcement about PostgreSQL RDBMS then it is now ... unless, of course, its a *really* slow release and we need to add stuff to prop it up, which this release does not require ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Chris, > ================================================================== > > A number of development projects outside the direct scope of the > database project have also been flourishing: <snip> This may be appropriate for a community announcement. However, it's far too long for a PR. To get everybody in the right frame, the "add-ons" paragraph should be no more than 5 lines, or 100 words. The whole press release should be less than 1000 words, really. -- -Josh Berkus "A developer of Very Little Brain" Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 09:40:53PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > conveying actual information to the public. The mention of corporate > involvement is going to make everyone yawn. It will be of brief > interest to those so-called market analysts, but it will do absolutely > nothing for our users and potential users. I couldn't disagree more. The actual users will get no benefit except other potential users converting. But the potential users get a great deal of benefit: some sort of evidence for their bosses that PostgreSQL is not some strange nutbar thing that "nobody" uses. That last problem is not nothing, as I can attest. > Who cares about business momentum anyway? Plenty of people. See the section in <http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html> about why someone would pick Java instead of other things for part of why. In spite of Graham's argument, in our case worrying about people who can use the technology is not foolish. For one, if you can't find any DBAs, you're never going to use that database engine for your product. A -- Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca This work was visionary and imaginative, and goes to show that visionary and imaginative work need not end up well. --Dennis Ritchie
Clinging to sanity, scrappy@postgresql.org ("Marc G. Fournier") mumbled into her beard:
> You argue that its a much demanded feature ... and I tend to agree
> ... but by including it as part of the 'RDBMS" release, ppl are going
> to either gloss over it because its not too prominent, or have their
> focus shifted away from the big stuff in 8.0.0 (NT, PITR, native
> Win32) because its too prominent ...
I look forward to seeing someone get around to writing some Actual
Text describing some of those features.
As far as I can see, thus far, the disputing about whether 'certain
extras' should or should not be mentioned in the press release has
spectacularly outweighed any discussion of things that clearly MUST be
discussed in the press release.
What we're seeing, thus far, is an attempt to sculpture an elephant by
trying to describe what bits of chisel work _shouldn't_ be visible.
In contrast, supposing these efforts were put into building GOOD
MATERIAL, perhaps everyone would forget that there was any reason they
imagined it a good idea to discuss extraneous matters in the press
release. (I think that's a reach, myself. Some of those "add-ons"
seem, shall I say, _WORTH TAKING ADVANTAGE OF_.)
How about we have fewer questions about what shouldn't be there, and
more concrete proposals of "Here! This is what should be said about
X."?
--
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Clinging to sanity, chris@metatrontech.com (Chris Travers) mumbled into her beard:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and should be
>>touted as we have touted other replication solutions in the past.
> Any chance that Slony will be packaged in the contrib directory? Or
> is the time for that past? After all, in 7.4, iirc. we still had
> things like rserv and other things which probably don't even work
> with 7.4.
There are two excellent reasons not to:
1. Slony-I is intended to be able to be "plugged" into several
different versions of PostgreSQL. Putting it in contrib would
somewhat injure that.
2. Peter Eisentraut and Fabien Coelho have been working on "pgxs"
which is designed to allow contrib to be essentially eliminated.
The goal is not to increase the amount of stuff in contrib; it
is to _eliminate_ contrib.
That goes along with pgxs making it easy to have a large number
of projects on GBorg/PGFoundry that can be easily added to a
PostgreSQL install.
--
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On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 12:40, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Josh Berkus wrote: > > This release, I think our theme should be corporate involvement. > > Aside from the specific features (which speak for themselves) what's > > news over the last year is the amount of interest and sponsorship > > we've received from various commercial entities, including feature > > sponsors SRA, FJ and Afilias and code contributor Command Prompt, as > > well as our existing sponsors like RH and PGInc and probably others > > I'm forgetting. > > I like to think that the theme of any press release announcing a new > software release should be "what does this do for me". (This is more > generally true of anything you write.) We have plenty of new features > that you can map to prominent terms such as flexibility, performance, > safety, ease of administration, etc. while still staying on topic and > conveying actual information to the public. The mention of corporate > involvement is going to make everyone yawn. It will be of brief > interest to those so-called market analysts, but it will do absolutely > nothing for our users and potential users. > > If you want to make points about business momentum, you can do that in > separate activities. Forcing this in the release announcement press > release can lead to several impressions: > > "Oh, there are so few interesting features in this release, they need to > fill the space with their sponsors." > > "Oh, they're so desperate to show off their business momentum, they need > to mention three companies I've never heard of." > > "Oh, my beloved PostgreSQL is being taken over by evil corporations." > > Who cares about business momentum anyway? Tell me about feature > momentum. Beautifully put. This is a press release of what makes PostgreSQL 8.0 what it is. What is PostgreSQL and what can it do for me? I'm not interested in what companies market their own versions. Should we expect that when linux kernel 3.0 is out that we'll see mentions of Red Hat and Novell selling great commercial versions that use kernel 3.0? In my opinion, I would stick to what is included in 8.0 when you download the package off the site. plPerlNG, plPHP, Slony-I, etc are all ADDONs and should be represented as such. Otherwise you get a bunch of people who didn't read the release properly, download it..install it and find that you dont see plPHP in contribs/ and where is this Slony replication they spoke of? Hmm, not in the source tree. I have to download it seperately...etc. For someone new to open source and/or postgresql this might come across as generating too much hype over 3rd party products (which these are). The 3rd party projects/products don't make PostgreSQL what is, they only help enhance it. *the cherry on top* my 2 cents, Robby -- /*************************************** * Robby Russell | Owner.Developer.Geek * PLANET ARGON | www.planetargon.com * Portland, OR | robby@planetargon.com * 503.351.4730 | blog.planetargon.com * PHP/PostgreSQL Hosting & Development ****************************************/
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On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 10:10:18AM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
>
> So far we've had 45 posts debating what should be, in my opinion, A
> SINGLE SENTENCE in a press release which ISN'T WRITTEN YET. Maybe
> we could discuss more pertinent stuff, like the general theme of
> the release?
Hear, hear.
> The reason to use this theme -- aside from attracting reporters --
> is that "partnerships" is currently widely perceived to be a
> weakness of our project.
I also think it's important because this year at OSCON we heard
repeated remarks of "we're using PostgreSQL, and you can quote me on
it." That's new, and it needs to be nurtured. The primary way to
nurture that in the business climate is to say it many more times,
preferably over loudspeakers -- i.e. in press releases.
> impression (based on my conversations at LWE and elsewhere) that PostgreSQL
> does not have "business momentum". I think we can turn that around.
Exactly.
A
--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
I remember when computers were frustrating because they *did* exactly what
you told them to. That actually seems sort of quaint now.
--J.D. Baldwin
Just a quick question here, but are we going to have two different Press Releases and, if not, should we? We have two different 'markets' we want to sell to ... Peter's market, the techies who want to know why they should switch to (or stick with) PostgreSQL ... and then there are the 'non-techies' who you want to "encourage" their techies to look deeper into it ... With one, you want to focus on features, with the other you want to focus on market adoption and what not ... No? On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Josh Berkus wrote: >> This release, I think our theme should be corporate involvement. >> Aside from the specific features (which speak for themselves) what's >> news over the last year is the amount of interest and sponsorship >> we've received from various commercial entities, including feature >> sponsors SRA, FJ and Afilias and code contributor Command Prompt, as >> well as our existing sponsors like RH and PGInc and probably others >> I'm forgetting. > > I like to think that the theme of any press release announcing a new > software release should be "what does this do for me". (This is more > generally true of anything you write.) We have plenty of new features > that you can map to prominent terms such as flexibility, performance, > safety, ease of administration, etc. while still staying on topic and > conveying actual information to the public. The mention of corporate > involvement is going to make everyone yawn. It will be of brief > interest to those so-called market analysts, but it will do absolutely > nothing for our users and potential users. > > If you want to make points about business momentum, you can do that in > separate activities. Forcing this in the release announcement press > release can lead to several impressions: > > "Oh, there are so few interesting features in this release, they need to > fill the space with their sponsors." > > "Oh, they're so desperate to show off their business momentum, they need > to mention three companies I've never heard of." > > "Oh, my beloved PostgreSQL is being taken over by evil corporations." > > Who cares about business momentum anyway? Tell me about feature > momentum. > > -- > Peter Eisentraut > http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/ > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@postgresql.org > ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Chris Travers wrote: > I understand the advantage of kernelization in PostgreSQL, but to > make this work, perhaps we need a community-maintained distribution > which includes many of these other add-ons. There are plenty of distributions out there, some community maintained. Some do a better job at providing a complete set of PostgreSQL "add-ons" than others. If you're interested in that sort of thing, join in the effort of your favorite distribution. About half a year ago I was thinking exactly the same thing as what you just wrote. But I realized that there is virtually no room for a "PostgreSQL distribution" to live between people who always download the original sources and people who want the full service of their operating system's package management. I have since joined a community maintained Linux distribution and now I have no problem getting all the PostgreSQL software I need. So if you're not getting reasonable access to PostgreSQL add-ons in your OS environment, start packaging. And if you're stuck with a vendor that does not listen to your package requests, find a new one. :) -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 09:27, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > Command Prompt tries to do the same with the Community. We try > to take care of the community by: > > > In return we "hope" that the community will help take care of us, so we > can continue to provide these resources. > Odd, shouldn't it be the other way around? Do you not have a product line that is based on the efforts of more than 10years (don't recall the actual number) of development by the community? It would seem like you would be returning the favor and partaking in the open source efforts (as you have with plPHP, plPerlNG..). The community already takes care of you. ;-) -Robby -- /*************************************** * Robby Russell | Owner.Developer.Geek * PLANET ARGON | www.planetargon.com * Portland, OR | robby@planetargon.com * 503.351.4730 | blog.planetargon.com * PHP/PostgreSQL Hosting & Development ****************************************/
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In the last exciting episode, jd@commandprompt.com ("Joshua D. Drake") wrote:
2>>> Replication for PostgreSQL is *not* a new thing ... its not
>>> something that is first available in 8.0.0, but has been available
>>> since 7.2 ... if it were something new, fine, touting that we've
>>> finally got a replication solution is good. But replication is
>>> *old news*, plain and simple ...
>> But many feel Slony is far better than previous solutions and
>> should be touted as we have touted other replication solutions in
>> the past.
>
> Does a solution have to be Open Source to be touted?
Well, vendors of proprietary solutions are normally expected to _pay_ to
get their products advertised.
MySQL(tm) appears to be treated as an exception to that rule, in the
"open source" community, which seems unfair, but that's presumably a
matter for some other thread.
--
(format nil "~S@~S" "cbbrowne" "ntlug.org")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/emacs.html
Signs of a Klingon Programmer - 16. "Klingon programs don't do
accountancy. For that, you need a Ferengi."
> Lamar Owen wrote > AND I'D LIKE TO SEE THESE RESOURCES IN PLAIN VIEW ON THE MAIN WEBPAGE. > (Sorry for the raised voice, but I was working on a presentation > for a LUG and > could not for the life of me find this information in one place, > so I likely > missed some companies. It may very well exist, but it is well hidden) > Thinking about Lamar's words... I notice that in the "first visible portion" of the main web page... 1. There is no mention of what PostgreSQL actually is on the main web page, unless it is mentioned in passing on one of thenews/events in the middle section. ...The "What is..." section is fairly redundant...we know click-thru rates are very low to second pages.... Let's replace that with a few words saying what PostgreSQL is, with a more> link underneath. 2. There is no mention of what releases are available, what the current one is etc... unless it is mentioned on the news(which it is NOW, but wouldn't normally be) ...The "Contact the Webmasters" section is also fairly redundant, 'cos it asks you not to contact them underneath. Let's replace that with a section called "Download Now!" Latest Stable: 7.4.3 (with links: src, Linux RPMs, Windows, others) Current Beta: 8.0.0 (with link: src, Linux RPMs, Windows, others) Both of these important facts/links are clearly visible on all of these web sites: http://www.mysql.com/ http://www.oracle.com/index.html http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/ http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ 3. Web page doesn't even mention the phrase "Open Source", which is no doubt something many have argued about previously,but it seems a very accepted term now for software distributed under the BSD licence. ...Let's replace "Licence" on left bar with "Open Source" I would also like to see the commercial support offerings emphasised elsewhere on the page, as Lamar suggests. Overall, I like the www.postgresql.org site design and hope that we could adopt the same design elsewhere. I'll help with the web page if that's what's needed. Best Regards, Simon Riggs
Andrew Sullivan wrote: > I also think it's important because this year at OSCON we heard > repeated remarks of "we're using PostgreSQL, and you can quote me on > it." That's new, and it needs to be nurtured. The primary way to > nurture that in the business climate is to say it many more times, > preferably over loudspeakers -- i.e. in press releases. I've been to several conventions and exhibitions of highly varying kind, and I've never heard anyone say, "we would like to use PostgreSQL, but our misinformed boss won't allow it". It's always about, when is this feature coming out, I would like to use it if you only had that, I would like to use it but I hear it's hard to administer, how does it compare to MySQL, how do you do replication, does it run on Windows. All these questions would be beautifully answered if we just report about the features. None of these questions would be answered if we talked about what level of corporate sponsorship we have. Those are the facts I can give you. If you have a different experience, maybe we need to reanalyze the market before going further. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > >>Does a solution have to be Open Source to be touted? > > > > > > Yes. Open source, free, BSD licensed, etc. You don't see me asking to > > mention Powergres in the press release, and I don't think it makes sense > > to do so. > > That argument doesn't actually work Bruce. Powergres is a circa 7.3 > series product. Even if it was based on 8.0 I don't think it makes sense to mention it. -- 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
> I've been to several conventions and exhibitions of highly varying kind, > and I've never heard anyone say, "we would like to use PostgreSQL, but > our misinformed boss won't allow it". It's always about, when is this Actually, my current employer has the fear that using PostgreSQL (rather than an Oracle, DB2, etc.) will devalue the company when the time comes to sell it. He's been quietly pushing to remove a number of components in the environment that are of the more unusual type, to replace them with more standard (accepted) components.
Over the last 4 years I've developed 5 major tools for an enterprise R&D
environment, my immediate supervisor comes from an Oracle background and
consistently tells me I should move our tools to a database, he is further
encouraged because our customer has a site license for Oracle. PostgreSQL
has more than met our requirements and there are more reasons to move stay
with PostgreSQL than to move to Oracle, I've been working on him and he is
starting to come around.
Fortunately I own the tools and so unless a major management decision is
made or we begin requiring Oracle features we are staying with PostgreSQL.
Jason
-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-advocacy-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-advocacy-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Rod Taylor
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 5:21 PM
To: Peter Eisentraut
Cc: Andrew Sullivan; Andrew Sullivan; Postgresql Advocacy
Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Time to work on Press Release 8.0
> I've been to several conventions and exhibitions of highly varying
> kind, and I've never heard anyone say, "we would like to use
> PostgreSQL, but our misinformed boss won't allow it". It's always
> about, when is this
Actually, my current employer has the fear that using PostgreSQL (rather
than an Oracle, DB2, etc.) will devalue the company when the time comes to
sell it. He's been quietly pushing to remove a number of components in the
environment that are of the more unusual type, to replace them with more
standard (accepted) components.
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html
Peter, > I've been to several conventions and exhibitions of highly varying kind, > and I've never heard anyone say, "we would like to use PostgreSQL, but > our misinformed boss won't allow it". I think this may be an area where the US and Europe are a bit different. While I don't get the above quote, I do constantly get requests for references around "who else is using it" because nobody over here wants to be a maverick. In fact, I fielded just two such today ... and one of them from a company which already has experience with PostgreSQL! So I think some balance is called for in the press release. -- -Josh Berkus "A developer of Very Little Brain" Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Simon@2ndquadrant.com wrote: >>Lamar Owen wrote >>AND I'D LIKE TO SEE THESE RESOURCES IN PLAIN VIEW ON THE MAIN WEBPAGE. >>(Sorry for the raised voice, but I was working on a presentation >>for a LUG and >>could not for the life of me find this information in one place, >>so I likely >>missed some companies. It may very well exist, but it is well hidden) >> >> >> > >Thinking about Lamar's words... > >I notice that in the "first visible portion" of the main web page... >1. There is no mention of what PostgreSQL actually is on the main web page, unless it is mentioned in passing on one ofthe news/events in the middle section. >...The "What is..." section is fairly redundant...we know click-thru rates are very low to second pages.... >Let's replace that with a few words saying what PostgreSQL is, with a more> link underneath. > >2. There is no mention of what releases are available, what the current one is etc... unless it is mentioned on the news(which it is NOW, but wouldn't normally be) >...The "Contact the Webmasters" section is also fairly redundant, 'cos it asks you not to contact them underneath. >Let's replace that with a section called "Download Now!" >Latest Stable: 7.4.3 (with links: src, Linux RPMs, Windows, others) >Current Beta: 8.0.0 (with link: src, Linux RPMs, Windows, others) > >Both of these important facts/links are clearly visible on all of these web sites: >http://www.mysql.com/ >http://www.oracle.com/index.html >http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/ >http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ > >3. Web page doesn't even mention the phrase "Open Source", which is no doubt something many have argued about previously,but it seems a very accepted term now for software distributed under the BSD licence. >...Let's replace "Licence" on left bar with "Open Source" > >I would also like to see the commercial support offerings emphasised elsewhere on the page, as Lamar suggests. > >Overall, I like the www.postgresql.org site design and hope that we could adopt the same design elsewhere. > >I'll help with the web page if that's what's needed. > >Best Regards, Simon Riggs > > >---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- >TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster > > Thinking about the web pages and the 8.0.0 press release... When we think about the press release, I think one of the goals is to get people to go and visit the web pages. Since that is usually the stage between reading the press release, and downloading and installing the software. A while ago there was a lot of talk about the postgresql logo. Then there has been some discussion about the web pages. And now there are a lot of discussions about different projects and companies, and how they should be/should not be seen in the press release. The advocacy.postgresql.org is very much different from the www.postgresql.org site. Even the logo is different. It would be very easy to think that the advocacy pages are from an other project... I know, that there is a project going on to get new postgresql www-pages. Is there any possibility, that this would be ready by the time 8.0.0 is launched? And could the advocacy pages be part of the new postgresql pages? I'd guess that at the time of the press release, there is a peak in the visitor amounts. From the www.postgresql.org page I could find links to some local postgresql web pages. Again, the look and feel is different, and the logos are different. I don't know the history behind this, but even if we just think that now there are several web sites that need administration and development, we could save someones work there. For new postgresql users to better understand and identify the project, I think that the logo and look and feel we use in postgresql communications should always be the same. And then about the companies, and their visibility. On http://advocacy.postgresql.org/about/#corporate there is nothing about Fujitsu. If we tell in a press release, that they are contributing to postgresql, then I guess they should be mentioned somehow there too. Especially, since Fujitsu is very well known, and in that way brings in more reliability to the message. Rgs, Jussi
On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 14:22, Christopher Browne wrote:
> In the last exciting episode, jd@commandprompt.com ("Joshua D. Drake") wrote:
> > Does a solution have to be Open Source to be touted?
>
> Well, vendors of proprietary solutions are normally expected to _pay_ to
> get their products advertised.
>
Exactly, it's not even remotely the responsibility of the community to
promote non-community projects. The community should focus on what it is
releasing. I don't see where any commercial products fit into said
release as they are not what is being released and that is the point of
a press release.
Proprietary solutions have the ability to release their own press
releases at any moment. Marketing for said products should be touted by
their own marketing department. I thought this was the PostgreSQL
Advocacy list. ;-) I'm here to promote a kickass open source project.
> MySQL(tm) appears to be treated as an exception to that rule, in the
> "open source" community, which seems unfair, but that's presumably a
> matter for some other thread.
Which is one reason why I like PostgreSQL more than I do MySQL. ;-)
*runs back to tout'n PostgreSQL to all his neighbors*
-Robby
--
/***************************************
* Robby Russell | Owner.Developer.Geek
* PLANET ARGON | www.planetargon.com
* Portland, OR | robby@planetargon.com
* 503.351.4730 | blog.planetargon.com
* PHP/PostgreSQL Hosting & Development
****************************************/
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> Odd, shouldn't it be the other way around? Do you not have a product > line that is based on the efforts of more than 10years (don't recall the > actual number) of development by the community? It would seem like you > would be returning the favor and partaking in the open source efforts > (as you have with plPHP, plPerlNG..). > > The community already takes care of you. ;-) I would suggest that you read the email again. I was writing to a symbiotic type of relationship where the two are equal giving partners. Not where one is more imnportant than the other. If you have the sum of commercial interests providing for a large portion of the code being developed into the community, it makes sense that the community in return would acknowledge and show appreciation for; as the PostgreSQL normally does, the existence of the commercial support that goes into said community. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > > -Robby > > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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>>to mention three companies I've never heard of." >> >>"Oh, my beloved PostgreSQL is being taken over by evil corporations." >> >>Who cares about business momentum anyway? Tell me about feature >>momentum. > > > Beautifully put. But not accurately. Business people are an extremely important portion of the community to please and one of the things that business people like to see, are businesses backing a project. Linux was not nearly as popular as it is today until people like RedHat and SuSE made deals with people like IBM and Oracle. > Should we expect that when linux kernel 3.0 is out that we'll see > mentions of Red Hat and Novell selling great commercial versions that > use kernel 3.0? Actually I bet you will. > In my opinion, I would stick to what is included in 8.0 when you > download the package off the site. plPerlNG, plPHP, Slony-I, etc are all > ADDONs and should be represented as such. Well plPerlNG is in core and will be shipped with PostgreSQL 8. plPHp and Slony-I are addons. > Otherwise you get a bunch of > people who didn't read the release properly, download it..install it and > find that you dont see plPHP in contribs/ and where is this Slony > replication they spoke of? Hmm, not in the source tree. You are kidding right? People who are going to bother downloading the source, compiling and installing will read know what they are getting. The ones that don't are going to be an extremely small lot. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake I have to > download it seperately...etc. For someone new to open source and/or > postgresql this might come across as generating too much hype over 3rd > party products (which these are). The 3rd party projects/products don't > make PostgreSQL what is, they only help enhance it. *the cherry on top* > > my 2 cents, > > Robby > > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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Josh Berkus wrote: > I think this may be an area where the US and Europe are a bit > different. While I don't get the above quote, I do constantly get > requests for references around "who else is using it" because nobody > over here wants to be a maverick. I also get that, and it might be a good idea to get answers to that included in some way. But note that mentioning sponsors is really not at all the same thing as mentioning prominent existing users. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 17:34, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >>to mention three companies I've never heard of." > >> > >>"Oh, my beloved PostgreSQL is being taken over by evil corporations." > >> > >>Who cares about business momentum anyway? Tell me about feature > >>momentum. > > > > > > Beautifully put. > > But not accurately. Business people are an extremely important portion > of the community to please and one of the things that business people > like to see, are businesses backing a project. > > Linux was not nearly as popular as it is today until people like RedHat > and SuSE made deals with people like IBM and Oracle. > > > Should we expect that when linux kernel 3.0 is out that we'll see > > mentions of Red Hat and Novell selling great commercial versions that > > use kernel 3.0? > > Actually I bet you will. You might find company names that are thanked, but you are not going to see mention of a specific product mentioned. I should have worded that differently. It would probably be a safe bet to say that they wouldn't mention the new release of Novell SuSE Linux in the press release. > > > In my opinion, I would stick to what is included in 8.0 when you > > download the package off the site. plPerlNG, plPHP, Slony-I, etc are all > > ADDONs and should be represented as such. > > Well plPerlNG is in core and will be shipped with PostgreSQL 8. plPHp > and Slony-I are addons. > See, I learned something today. ;-) > > Otherwise you get a bunch of > > people who didn't read the release properly, download it..install it and > > find that you dont see plPHP in contribs/ and where is this Slony > > replication they spoke of? Hmm, not in the source tree. > > You are kidding right? People who are going to bother downloading the > source, compiling and installing will read know what they are getting. > The ones that don't are going to be an extremely small lot. Ok, or those who apt-get install it, RPM, etc... or better yet.. download the exe (win32) and install it. Same problem. Regardless of source install or not, this only adds confusion. -Robby -- /*************************************** * Robby Russell | Owner.Developer.Geek * PLANET ARGON | www.planetargon.com * Portland, OR | robby@planetargon.com * 503.351.4730 | blog.planetargon.com * PHP/PostgreSQL Hosting & Development ****************************************/
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Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > Both Joshua Drake and Marc sell commercial replication solutions. Do > > you think it is fair of the community to mention BSD-licensed > > replication solutions in our press release while not mentioning > > commercial ones? > > > > I do. > > I don't. At Command Prompt we practice a very simple theory: > > If you take care of your employees, they will take care of you. > > In return we "hope" that the community will help take care of us, so we > can continue to provide these resources. > > I am not saying that the project should go gone how about commercial > products, but helping increase the visibility of major contributing > companies/products/projects will only HELP the community. OK, now I understand your approach to the issue, and it brings up some interesting questions. For companies doing consulting, training, support, etc. for PostgreSQL, there isn't any real conflict between the community development process and those companies. However, companies that provide proprietary add-ons can have conflicts because the functionality of their add-ons might later be provided by the community. What typically happens is that the company has had 1-2 years to recover their costs and make a profit, and they usually donate the code to the project, give us the code to take the parts we can make use of, or just abandon the project and move all their customers to the community solution. However, sometimes things don't work that cleanly. Do we promote proprietary add-on software, and if so, how? And if there are similar open-source solutions, does that affect the issue? -- 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
On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 17:27, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > Odd, shouldn't it be the other way around? Do you not have a product > > line that is based on the efforts of more than 10years (don't recall the > > actual number) of development by the community? It would seem like you > > would be returning the favor and partaking in the open source efforts > > (as you have with plPHP, plPerlNG..). > > > > The community already takes care of you. ;-) > > I would suggest that you read the email again. I was writing to a > symbiotic type of relationship where the two are equal giving partners. > Not where one is more imnportant than the other. > So, what you are saying 'symbioticly' (sp) is that a commercial entity, such yours, and an open source community are equal partners? I didn't take your original message as that you looked at one being more important than the other, but merely that you pointed out all the reasons of how Command Prompt helps the community and how it should basically *show a little love* in return. There are MANY companies (too many to list...and the techdocs site hardly covers them all) but if giving props to companies that provide support to the community in IRC, mailing lists, etc... the press release would just be a bunch of names of companies and individuals. So, I don't see where those points were going. > If you have the sum of commercial interests providing for a large > portion of the code being developed into the community, it makes sense > that the community in return would acknowledge and show appreciation > for; as the PostgreSQL normally does, the existence of the commercial > support that goes into said community. > I don't see a problem mentioning commercial companies that generate code to the community project. That makes perfect sense. If an entity (corporation) or an individual they should get the same type of appreciation. However, if an individual builds plugin xyz and keeps it for themselves (proprietary), I don't see where the obligation of the community is to mention such plugin in their press release. (but mentioning the individuals/entities that donated code to the community project should be mentioned for obvious reasons). -Robby -- /*************************************** * Robby Russell | Owner.Developer.Geek * PLANET ARGON | www.planetargon.com * Portland, OR | robby@planetargon.com * 503.351.4730 | blog.planetargon.com * PHP/PostgreSQL Hosting & Development ****************************************/
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On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 17:57, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > In return we "hope" that the community will help take care of us, so we > > can continue to provide these resources. > > > > I am not saying that the project should go gone how about commercial > > products, but helping increase the visibility of major contributing > > companies/products/projects will only HELP the community. > > OK, now I understand your approach to the issue, and it brings up some > interesting questions. > > For companies doing consulting, training, support, etc. for PostgreSQL, > there isn't any real conflict between the community development process > and those companies. Exactly, this directly helps the community. It's how the Open Source model proves to be successful > However, companies that provide proprietary > add-ons can have conflicts because the functionality of their add-ons > might later be provided by the community. > This seems to have been the general theme of this whole thread. ;-) -Robby -- /*************************************** * Robby Russell | Owner.Developer.Geek * PLANET ARGON | www.planetargon.com * Portland, OR | robby@planetargon.com * 503.351.4730 | blog.planetargon.com * PHP/PostgreSQL Hosting & Development ****************************************/
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> What typically happens is that the company has had 1-2 years to recover > their costs and make a profit, and they usually donate the code to the > project, give us the code to take the parts we can make use of, or just > abandon the project and move all their customers to the community > solution. However, sometimes things don't work that cleanly. > > Do we promote proprietary add-on software, and if so, how? And if there > are similar open-source solutions, does that affect the issue? Well let me be clear on a couple of things with this. 1. I do not expect the community to be Command Prompt's marketing arm. 2. I do not expect better billing than an OSS component. The most obvious example of course is what started all of this which was Slony-I/Mammoth Replicator. I have zero problem with the mention, of Slony in the press release. I do believe that it is a good product and CMD will make a ton of money supporting it. So the more presence it receives the better. However, I also believe that Mammoth Replicator would deserve equal mention, especially since Mammoth Replicator is more mature and they really are different products that serve a similar but not identical purpose. Also specifically for 8.0 it may be of interest to note that Slony won't currently run on what is about to be our most popular platform, Windows. However Mammoth Replicator will. So in answer to your second question, I would say no I don't believe that it effects the issue. If there is an OSS component that serves the same purpose by all means reflect that. I just feel that we may be potentially ignoring a very important piece of the community by not highlighting closed source products that utilize PostgreSQL. I would say, either promote all relevant add on software or promote none. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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> There are MANY companies (too > many to list...and the techdocs site hardly covers them all) but if > giving props to companies that provide support to the community in IRC, Actually no, you can list them on less than two hands. There are MANY companies yes, but there are only a few that contribute at the level that I am talking about. SRA - Bruce/Tatsuo - Core and MultiByte Fujitsu - TableSpaces and a programmer sponsor RedHat - Tom Lane - Enough said. Afilias - Jan, Andrew (and one other I don't recall) Command Prompt - MySelf (Editor N Chief), Sergey and all the code we have already hashed over HUB/PGSQL - Marc -- bandwidth, server resources Agliodbs - JoshB -- Advocacy and Core If I missed a company I apologize. > mailing lists, etc... the press release would just be a bunch of names > of companies and individuals. So, I don't see where those points were > going. And no it wouldn't. I brief blurb, three sentences at the end of a major release PR. -- Thanks to: <small list> > I don't see a problem mentioning commercial companies that generate code > to the community project. That makes perfect sense. If an entity > (corporation) or an individual they should get the same type of > appreciation. > > However, if an individual builds plugin xyz and keeps it for themselves > (proprietary), I don't see where the obligation of the community is to > mention such plugin in their press release. (but mentioning the > individuals/entities that donated code to the community project should > be mentioned for obvious reasons). Then we are obviously not as opposed you we possibly seemed. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > > -Robby > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > What typically happens is that the company has had 1-2 years to recover > > their costs and make a profit, and they usually donate the code to the > > project, give us the code to take the parts we can make use of, or just > > abandon the project and move all their customers to the community > > solution. However, sometimes things don't work that cleanly. > > > > Do we promote proprietary add-on software, and if so, how? And if there > > are similar open-source solutions, does that affect the issue? > > Well let me be clear on a couple of things with this. > > 1. I do not expect the community to be Command Prompt's marketing arm. > 2. I do not expect better billing than an OSS component. > > The most obvious example of course is what started all of this which > was Slony-I/Mammoth Replicator. > > I have zero problem with the mention, of Slony in the press release. I > do believe that it is a good product and CMD will make a ton of money > supporting it. So the more presence it receives the better. > > However, I also believe that Mammoth Replicator would deserve equal > mention, especially since Mammoth Replicator is more mature and they > really are different products that serve a similar but not identical > purpose. So even though Slony is free and open source and Mammoth Replicator is proprietary, you think we should give them equal mention? By that logic, if Powergres was based on 8.0 code, we would mention that along with the Win32 port mention? That doesn't make sense to me. (Powergres is threaded so it would have some distinction compared to our community Win32 implementation.) > Also specifically for 8.0 it may be of interest to note that Slony won't > currently run on what is about to be our most popular platform, Windows. > However Mammoth Replicator will. > > So in answer to your second question, I would say no I don't believe > that it effects the issue. If there is an OSS component that serves the > same purpose by all means reflect that. I just feel that we may be > potentially ignoring a very important piece of the community by not > highlighting closed source products that utilize PostgreSQL. > > I would say, either promote all relevant add on software or promote none. Again, you make no distinction between propriety and free software, even though our community is about free software, and not proprietary software. That seem like a disconnect to me. -- 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
I have replied with my personal opinion in another email. Below you have clearly expressed your opinion on the matter and now we should decide as a community if we should follow your suggested approach. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > What typically happens is that the company has had 1-2 years to recover > > their costs and make a profit, and they usually donate the code to the > > project, give us the code to take the parts we can make use of, or just > > abandon the project and move all their customers to the community > > solution. However, sometimes things don't work that cleanly. > > > > Do we promote proprietary add-on software, and if so, how? And if there > > are similar open-source solutions, does that affect the issue? > > Well let me be clear on a couple of things with this. > > 1. I do not expect the community to be Command Prompt's marketing arm. > 2. I do not expect better billing than an OSS component. > > The most obvious example of course is what started all of this which > was Slony-I/Mammoth Replicator. > > I have zero problem with the mention, of Slony in the press release. I > do believe that it is a good product and CMD will make a ton of money > supporting it. So the more presence it receives the better. > > However, I also believe that Mammoth Replicator would deserve equal > mention, especially since Mammoth Replicator is more mature and they > really are different products that serve a similar but not identical > purpose. > > Also specifically for 8.0 it may be of interest to note that Slony won't > currently run on what is about to be our most popular platform, Windows. > However Mammoth Replicator will. > > So in answer to your second question, I would say no I don't believe > that it effects the issue. If there is an OSS component that serves the > same purpose by all means reflect that. I just feel that we may be > potentially ignoring a very important piece of the community by not > highlighting closed source products that utilize PostgreSQL. > > I would say, either promote all relevant add on software or promote none. > > Sincerely, > > Joshua D. Drake > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC > Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. > +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com > Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL [ Attachment, skipping... ] > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings -- 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
>>However, I also believe that Mammoth Replicator would deserve equal >>mention, especially since Mammoth Replicator is more mature and they >>really are different products that serve a similar but not identical >>purpose. > > > So even though Slony is free and open source and Mammoth Replicator is > proprietary, you think we should give them equal mention? Yes. It is based on best tool for the job, not OSS versus non OSS. > > By that logic, if Powergres was based on 8.0 code, we would mention that > along with the Win32 port mention? That doesn't make sense to me. Yep. See above. > (Powergres is threaded so it would have some distinction compared to our > community Win32 implementation.) ] Yes, and if it was based on 8.0 code -- I would probably promote it over our implementation because it is threaded and in theory would perform better than our implementation. Obviously I would test and confirm. > Again, you make no distinction between propriety and free software, even > though our community is about free software, and not proprietary > software. That seem like a disconnect to me. Who says the community is all about free software? I don't know any GPLites in the community (o.k. I know a few, but they are the minority). I thought BSD was all about the best tool for the job? I use what tool works best for me and my customers. I started using PostgreSQL because it was better than MySQL (and still is). I started using Linux because I need a good OS for creating an ISP. I also use Xig which is closed source, because the X community doesn't come close to providing a competitive solution. I am about the overall promotion of PostgreSQL, which is why I am part of the advocacy group. Would I have a problem promoting a company if that company took PostgreSQL, closed sourced it, and never gave anything back? Absolutely that falls under ethics. Do I have a problem promoting SRA as a community member? Not in the least. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
Attachment
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Josh Berkus wrote: >> I think this may be an area where the US and Europe are a bit >> different. While I don't get the above quote, I do constantly get >> requests for references around "who else is using it" because nobody >> over here wants to be a maverick. > > I also get that, and it might be a good idea to get answers to that > included in some way. But note that mentioning sponsors is really not > at all the same thing as mentioning prominent existing users. Good point ... it would be of more value to find out how Fujitsu is using PostgreSQL inhouse, then to find out that they are sponsoring development ... are they even using it inhouse for anything? ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > > > Josh Berkus wrote: > >> I think this may be an area where the US and Europe are a bit > >> different. While I don't get the above quote, I do constantly get > >> requests for references around "who else is using it" because nobody > >> over here wants to be a maverick. > > > > I also get that, and it might be a good idea to get answers to that > > included in some way. But note that mentioning sponsors is really not > > at all the same thing as mentioning prominent existing users. > > Good point ... it would be of more value to find out how Fujitsu is using > PostgreSQL inhouse, then to find out that they are sponsoring development > ... are they even using it inhouse for anything? Fujitsu is promoting PostgreSQL as a powerful database for their customers and their hardware platform. -- 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
Peter Eisentraut wrote: > About half a year ago I was thinking exactly the same thing as what you > just wrote. But I realized that there is virtually no room for a > "PostgreSQL distribution" to live between people who always download > the original sources and people who want the full service of their > operating system's package management. I have since joined a community > maintained Linux distribution and now I have no problem getting all the > PostgreSQL software I need. That is an interesting analysis! -- 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
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: >> On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Peter Eisentraut wrote: >> >>> Josh Berkus wrote: >>>> I think this may be an area where the US and Europe are a bit >>>> different. While I don't get the above quote, I do constantly get >>>> requests for references around "who else is using it" because nobody >>>> over here wants to be a maverick. >>> >>> I also get that, and it might be a good idea to get answers to that >>> included in some way. But note that mentioning sponsors is really not >>> at all the same thing as mentioning prominent existing users. >> >> Good point ... it would be of more value to find out how Fujitsu is using >> PostgreSQL inhouse, then to find out that they are sponsoring development >> ... are they even using it inhouse for anything? > > Fujitsu is promoting PostgreSQL as a powerful database for their > customers and their hardware platform. So they don't actually use it? Josh, for all those that you've talked to at shows that are willing to be quoted ... any of those going to be able to step forward and do case studies? I know its one of the areas you were going to be trying to push on ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > >> > >>> Josh Berkus wrote: > >>>> I think this may be an area where the US and Europe are a bit > >>>> different. While I don't get the above quote, I do constantly get > >>>> requests for references around "who else is using it" because nobody > >>>> over here wants to be a maverick. > >>> > >>> I also get that, and it might be a good idea to get answers to that > >>> included in some way. But note that mentioning sponsors is really not > >>> at all the same thing as mentioning prominent existing users. > >> > >> Good point ... it would be of more value to find out how Fujitsu is using > >> PostgreSQL inhouse, then to find out that they are sponsoring development > >> ... are they even using it inhouse for anything? > > > > Fujitsu is promoting PostgreSQL as a powerful database for their > > customers and their hardware platform. > > So they don't actually use it? Internally? I have no idea. FYI, they are a big computer hardware manufacturer. -- 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
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Internally? I have no idea. FYI, they are a big computer hardware > manufacturer. Can you find out? Doing a case study on someone as big and well known as Fujitsu, I imagine, would be one helluva boost to the 'who is using it?' crowd ... since Fujitsu is already quite public about PostgreSQL in teh first place, I wouldn't imagine they would be adverse to such, would they? ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > Internally? I have no idea. FYI, they are a big computer hardware > > manufacturer. > > Can you find out? Doing a case study on someone as big and well known as > Fujitsu, I imagine, would be one helluva boost to the 'who is using it?' > crowd ... since Fujitsu is already quite public about PostgreSQL in teh > first place, I wouldn't imagine they would be adverse to such, would they? Sure. I can give someone a contact at Fujitsu Australia and they have a PR guy who could easily help. I might be able to get info from the Japan HQ but it would be harder. -- 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
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: >> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: >> >>> Internally? I have no idea. FYI, they are a big computer hardware >>> manufacturer. >> >> Can you find out? Doing a case study on someone as big and well known as >> Fujitsu, I imagine, would be one helluva boost to the 'who is using it?' >> crowd ... since Fujitsu is already quite public about PostgreSQL in teh >> first place, I wouldn't imagine they would be adverse to such, would they? > > Sure. I can give someone a contact at Fujitsu Australia and they have a > PR guy who could easily help. I might be able to get info from the > Japan HQ but it would be harder. Something like that would be one helluva big thing to have as print outs at shows like OSCON and LWE ... things techies can bring back to their bosses to say 'hey, fujitsu is using it for these reasons, so should we' ... you mentioned the other day that the Weather Service is switching over to it, which would also make a major splash ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Friday 13 August 2004 23:37, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Internally? I have no idea. FYI, they are a big computer hardware
> > manufacturer.
>
> Can you find out? Doing a case study on someone as big and well known as
> Fujitsu, I imagine, would be one helluva boost to the 'who is using it?'
> crowd ... since Fujitsu is already quite public about PostgreSQL in teh
> first place, I wouldn't imagine they would be adverse to such, would they?
>
Not that I disagree with the above, but linux saw its biggest gains when IBM
announced publicly that they would support it, not when they started using
it.
--
Robert Treat
Build A Better Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >>> However, I also believe that Mammoth Replicator would deserve equal >>> mention, especially since Mammoth Replicator is more mature and they >>> really are different products that serve a similar but not identical >>> purpose. >> >> >> So even though Slony is free and open source and Mammoth Replicator is >> proprietary, you think we should give them equal mention? > > Yes. It is based on best tool for the job, not OSS versus non OSS. > >> >> By that logic, if Powergres was based on 8.0 code, we would mention that >> along with the Win32 port mention? That doesn't make sense to me. > > Yep. See above. > >> (Powergres is threaded so it would have some distinction compared to our >> community Win32 implementation.) ] > > Yes, and if it was based on 8.0 code -- I would probably promote it over our > implementation because it is threaded and in theory would perform better than > our implementation. Obviously I would test and confirm. Up until this, I agreed ... on this one, the press release is about PostgreSQL, the Project ... why would you mention a proprietary alternative to that which you are announcing? This would be like Jan/Afilias PRng Slony and mentioning Mammoth ... that would just be weird ... We aren't annoucing Slony, we are promoting Replication ... so mentioning the various replication solutions does make sense ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Friday 13 August 2004 21:46, Bruce Momjian wrote: > I have replied with my personal opinion in another email. > > Below you have clearly expressed your opinion on the matter and now we > should decide as a community if we should follow your suggested > approach. > Joshua's suggested approach opens a whole can of worms that has been hashed out multiple times before. We provide different avenues for commercial solutions to get they're word out to our community (weekly news and -announce are two), but this doesn't mean that we have to give them space in every avenue (like the home page or a community press release). If we find that a promoting a commercial solution fills a need of the community we will do so, but it is at our discretion. Otherwise yes, proprietary solutions are second class citizens in this community, but you are not shunned by any means. > > However, I also believe that Mammoth Replicator would deserve equal > > mention, especially since Mammoth Replicator is more mature and they > > really are different products that serve a similar but not identical > > purpose. > > > > Also specifically for 8.0 it may be of interest to note that Slony won't > > currently run on what is about to be our most popular platform, Windows. > > However Mammoth Replicator will. > > While this is true as you have described it, it is worth noting that 1) Slony can run on a different machine than the database, so should be able to replicate to/from windows machines as well. 2) The codebase is small enough (and makes use of enough internal pgsql features) that porting it to windows should not be out of the relm of possibility, and I wouldn't be surprised if that happens before 8.1 > > So in answer to your second question, I would say no I don't believe > > that it effects the issue. If there is an OSS component that serves the > > same purpose by all means reflect that. I just feel that we may be > > potentially ignoring a very important piece of the community by not > > highlighting closed source products that utilize PostgreSQL. > > > > I would say, either promote all relevant add on software or promote none. > > So to mention slony in any way we have to mention mammoth replicator, erserver from pgsql inc, erserver from gborg, rserv, dbmirror, usogres, pgpool, pgreplicator, pgcluster, and dbbalancer? Thats just ridculous. Oh, I better mention Clusgres somehwere in here too... Robert Treat > > Sincerely, > > > > Joshua D. Drake > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC > > Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. > > +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com > > Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL > > [ Attachment, skipping... ] > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > > TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings -- Robert Treat Build A Better Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > >>> Does a solution have to be Open Source to be touted? >> >> >> Yes. Open source, free, BSD licensed, etc. You don't see me asking to >> mention Powergres in the press release, and I don't think it makes sense >> to do so. > > That argument doesn't actually work Bruce. Powergres is a circa 7.3 series > product. Even were it 8.0, its a competing product to that which we are announcing, so wouldn't make sense to promote ... any more then promoting Mammoth PostgreSQL *shrug* ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote: >>> >>> We can acknowledge support from commercial entities without promoting >>> their products. >> >> >> Agreed ... we should not be promoting *anyone's* products but that which we >> are releasing ... > > O.k. I can live with this BUT that begs the question about plPerlNG and > plPHP. Both are Command Prompt products that happen to be Open Source. plPerlNG is part of the product that we are releasing, no? I thought it replaced the old plperl we had in 7.4? It isn't a contrib module, its part of the distribution ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Saturday 14 August 2004 00:27, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > Yes. It is based on best tool for the job, not OSS versus non OSS.
> >
> >> By that logic, if Powergres was based on 8.0 code, we would mention that
> >> along with the Win32 port mention? That doesn't make sense to me.
> >
> > Yep. See above.
> >
> >> (Powergres is threaded so it would have some distinction compared to our
> >> community Win32 implementation.) ]
> >
> > Yes, and if it was based on 8.0 code -- I would probably promote it over
> > our implementation because it is threaded and in theory would perform
> > better than our implementation. Obviously I would test and confirm.
>
> Up until this, I agreed ... on this one, the press release is about
> PostgreSQL, the Project ... why would you mention a proprietary
> alternative to that which you are announcing? This would be like
> Jan/Afilias PRng Slony and mentioning Mammoth ... that would just be weird
> ...
>
> We aren't annoucing Slony, we are promoting Replication ... so mentioning
> the various replication solutions does make sense ...
>
But by the above logic, we are promoting windows compatibility, so mentioning
the various windows solutions could be argued for as well. You got that
number for nusphere handy?
--
Robert Treat
Build A Better Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Robert Treat wrote: > On Saturday 14 August 2004 00:27, Marc G. Fournier wrote: >> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote: >>> Yes. It is based on best tool for the job, not OSS versus non OSS. >>> >>>> By that logic, if Powergres was based on 8.0 code, we would mention that >>>> along with the Win32 port mention? That doesn't make sense to me. >>> >>> Yep. See above. >>> >>>> (Powergres is threaded so it would have some distinction compared to our >>>> community Win32 implementation.) ] >>> >>> Yes, and if it was based on 8.0 code -- I would probably promote it over >>> our implementation because it is threaded and in theory would perform >>> better than our implementation. Obviously I would test and confirm. >> >> Up until this, I agreed ... on this one, the press release is about >> PostgreSQL, the Project ... why would you mention a proprietary >> alternative to that which you are announcing? This would be like >> Jan/Afilias PRng Slony and mentioning Mammoth ... that would just be weird >> ... >> >> We aren't annoucing Slony, we are promoting Replication ... so mentioning >> the various replication solutions does make sense ... >> > > But by the above logic, we are promoting windows compatibility, so mentioning > the various windows solutions could be argued for as well. You got that > number for nusphere handy? The Press Release is to announce PostgreSQL 8.0.0 ... by what logic would you promote a competing product? The Press Release is not to announce Slony ... mentioning Slony should be in the context of available replication solutions as add ons ... mentioning that there are more then one replication solution available makes sense, focusing on just one doesn't ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Saturday 14 August 2004 01:05, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Robert Treat wrote:
> > On Saturday 14 August 2004 00:27, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> >> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >>> Yes. It is based on best tool for the job, not OSS versus non OSS.
> >>>
> >>>> By that logic, if Powergres was based on 8.0 code, we would mention
> >>>> that along with the Win32 port mention? That doesn't make sense to
> >>>> me.
> >>>
> >>> Yep. See above.
> >>>
> >>>> (Powergres is threaded so it would have some distinction compared to
> >>>> our community Win32 implementation.) ]
> >>>
> >>> Yes, and if it was based on 8.0 code -- I would probably promote it
> >>> over our implementation because it is threaded and in theory would
> >>> perform better than our implementation. Obviously I would test and
> >>> confirm.
> >>
> >> Up until this, I agreed ... on this one, the press release is about
> >> PostgreSQL, the Project ... why would you mention a proprietary
> >> alternative to that which you are announcing? This would be like
> >> Jan/Afilias PRng Slony and mentioning Mammoth ... that would just be
> >> weird ...
> >>
> >> We aren't annoucing Slony, we are promoting Replication ... so
> >> mentioning the various replication solutions does make sense ...
> >
> > But by the above logic, we are promoting windows compatibility, so
> > mentioning the various windows solutions could be argued for as well.
> > You got that number for nusphere handy?
>
> The Press Release is to announce PostgreSQL 8.0.0 ... by what logic would
> you promote a competing product?
>
The logic that says we are promoting a feature of the "postgresql
project" (replication/win32) and that we should give people the best tool for
the job even if it is commercial (mammoth/powergres)
--
Robert Treat
Build A Better Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
El Vie 13 Ago 2004 20:27, Jussi Mikkola escribió:
> >
> >Thinking about Lamar's words...
> >
> >I notice that in the "first visible portion" of the main web page...
[snip]
> When we think about the press release, I think one of the goals is to
> get people to go and visit the web pages. Since that is usually the
> stage between reading the press release, and downloading and installing
> the software.
Anybody thought (if it's posible in questions of time) to make a double
release of PostgreSQL 8.0 and get the new web site working? If it's posible
(I don't know how the web site development is going), I think it would be
hugh.
--
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On 8/13/2004 12:01 PM, Lamar Owen wrote: > But the fact is 'we' (PGDG) do not 'have' a replication solution; all are > third party, and there are some that are open source. I personally think What part of the Slony-I replication system do 'we' (PGDG) not 'have'? The original design work got published and was up for discussion before the implementation work started, the entire development happened under the BSD license, the project was hosted on gborg from the very beginning and all .c, .h and .sql files in the entire tree are Copyright PGDG. The project lead is a PGDG Core team member and the project team consist of more people outside of Afilias then inside. If that isn't enough, then I would like to know what's left that we could announce at all? Please stop looking at Afilias as a 3rd party. Afilias is a member of the PGDG as everyone else. The problem that even people inside of this community can't imagine a company being just a member of this team doesn't mean that it is impossible. Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Robert Treat wrote: > The logic that says we are promoting a feature of the "postgresql > project" (replication/win32) and that we should give people the best > tool for the job even if it is commercial (mammoth/powergres) The PostgreSQL project doesn't have replication, Slony is an addon developed by Afilias and provided open source to the community ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On 8/14/2004 11:25 AM, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Robert Treat wrote: > >> The logic that says we are promoting a feature of the "postgresql >> project" (replication/win32) and that we should give people the best >> tool for the job even if it is commercial (mammoth/powergres) > > The PostgreSQL project doesn't have replication, Slony is an addon > developed by Afilias and provided open source to the community ... Wrong! Slony is BSD, Copyright PGDG, hosted on gborg. And it allways has been. Could you please explain the difference between the PostgreSQL project and the Slony project with respect to property ownership? I fail to see one myself. Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 18:53, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
Regardless, I don't see where the GPL or BSD should make a difference when it comes to advertising commercial products in an open source press press release. That's the responsibility of the commercial entity, not the community.
How would go about providing what is the best tool for the job? You yourself said the Mammoth Replicator and Slony-I served different purposes, so whose job is which one best for?
-Robby
>>However, I also believe that Mammoth Replicator would deserve equal >>mention, especially since Mammoth Replicator is more mature and they >>really are different products that serve a similar but not identical >>purpose. > > > So even though Slony is free and open source and Mammoth Replicator is > proprietary, you think we should give them equal mention? Yes. It is based on best tool for the job, not OSS versus non OSS. > > By that logic, if Powergres was based on 8.0 code, we would mention that > along with the Win32 port mention? That doesn't make sense to me. Yep. See above. > (Powergres is threaded so it would have some distinction compared to our > community Win32 implementation.) ] Yes, and if it was based on 8.0 code -- I would probably promote it over our implementation because it is threaded and in theory would perform better than our implementation. Obviously I would test and confirm. > Again, you make no distinction between propriety and free software, even > though our community is about free software, and not proprietary > software. That seem like a disconnect to me. Who says the community is all about free software? I don't know any GPLites in the community (o.k. I know a few, but they are the minority). I thought BSD was all about the best tool for the job?
Regardless, I don't see where the GPL or BSD should make a difference when it comes to advertising commercial products in an open source press press release. That's the responsibility of the commercial entity, not the community.
How would go about providing what is the best tool for the job? You yourself said the Mammoth Replicator and Slony-I served different purposes, so whose job is which one best for?
-Robby
-- /*************************************** * Robby Russell | Owner.Developer.Geek * PLANET ARGON | www.planetargon.com * Portland, OR | robby@planetargon.com * 503.351.4730 | blog.planetargon.com * PHP/PostgreSQL Hosting & Development ****************************************/ |
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On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > On 8/14/2004 11:25 AM, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Robert Treat wrote: >> >>> The logic that says we are promoting a feature of the "postgresql project" >>> (replication/win32) and that we should give people the best tool for the >>> job even if it is commercial (mammoth/powergres) >> >> The PostgreSQL project doesn't have replication, Slony is an addon >> developed by Afilias and provided open source to the community ... > > Wrong! > > Slony is BSD, Copyright PGDG, hosted on gborg. And it allways has been. Could > you please explain the difference between the PostgreSQL project and the > Slony project with respect to property ownership? I fail to see one myself. Sorry, I wish I could claim English as a second language, cause I definitely suck at it ... The Press Release we are currently looking at ... is it a Product Announcement, or is it a State of the Union? As a Product Announcement, the focus should be on the *product* we are releasing, which is PostgreSQL 8.0.0 ... As a State of the Union, we should be addressing how the project is moving forward, including "support software" like Slony ... I'm not *for* including 'support software' in a Product Announce, which is what I thought we were working towards ... what does this new version provide. It does not provide Slony, it does not provide plPHP ... it does provide BGwriter, it does provide Nested Transactions, it does provide native Win32, it does provide PITR ... Now, Josh posted earlier an 'brief' of what he envisions as the 'support software' paragraph, which I have no problems with ... but I think that, for instance, the 'blurb' about replication should at least run something like "several replication solutions, with the latest to enter the field being Slony-1" ... even that sort of wording kinda bothers me, but hopefully by stating 'several', ppl don't focus on Slony as being 'the one and only' ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Hi Jan; > > What part of the Slony-I replication system do 'we' (PGDG) not 'have'? > > The original design work got published and was up for discussion > before the implementation work started, the entire development > happened under the BSD license, the project was hosted on gborg from > the very beginning and all .c, .h and .sql files in the entire tree > are Copyright PGDG. The project lead is a PGDG Core team member and > the project team consist of more people outside of Afilias then > inside. If that isn't enough, then I would like to know what's left > that we could announce at all? > > Please stop looking at Afilias as a 3rd party. Afilias is a member of > the PGDG as everyone else. The problem that even people inside of this > community can't imagine a company being just a member of this team > doesn't mean that it is impossible. > While you have a valid point from the perspective of the community, I think there is an issue which is legitimate here. That is that people see the fact that Slony does not come with the PostgreSQL tarball. From this perspective "we" do not have a "replication" solution. Like it or not, this is a viewpoint many evaluators have. To them, this is still a third-party add-on, even though it was developed primarily by core members of the PostgreSQL community. How do we combat this issue? Do we release Slony with PostgreSQL? Does that really make sense (the general concensus seems to be "no")? Do we release a different distribution of PostgreSQL which includes Slony? I think that this would be a good idea, but.... Also, will it be possible to see a Win32 port of Slony at some point? Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting > > Jan >
Hi, As an interested observer watching this thread, and not having any previous experience with new pgsql releases, I am curious. Is there a point at which discussion of what should *not* be said in the press release is considered finished, and discussion of what actually to *say* in the press release begins? ;-) Thanks, Steve
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > On 8/13/2004 12:01 PM, Lamar Owen wrote: > > > But the fact is 'we' (PGDG) do not 'have' a replication solution; all are > > third party, and there are some that are open source. I personally think > > What part of the Slony-I replication system do 'we' (PGDG) not 'have'? > > The original design work got published and was up for discussion before > the implementation work started, the entire development happened under > the BSD license, the project was hosted on gborg from the very beginning > and all .c, .h and .sql files in the entire tree are Copyright PGDG. The > project lead is a PGDG Core team member and the project team consist of > more people outside of Afilias then inside. If that isn't enough, then I > would like to know what's left that we could announce at all? > > Please stop looking at Afilias as a 3rd party. Afilias is a member of > the PGDG as everyone else. The problem that even people inside of this > community can't imagine a company being just a member of this team > doesn't mean that it is impossible. This makes sense to me. -- Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
On 8/14/2004 12:34 PM, Chris Travers wrote: > While you have a valid point from the perspective of the community, I > think there is an issue which is legitimate here. That is that people > see the fact that Slony does not come with the PostgreSQL tarball. From > this perspective "we" do not have a "replication" solution. Like it or > not, this is a viewpoint many evaluators have. To them, this is still a > third-party add-on, even though it was developed primarily by core > members of the PostgreSQL community. As said before, if the sourcecode organization (splitting off interfaces and other non-server-side tools) has such impact, then it is a bad idea. Most users will not download the source tarball. Most users will install some sort of package collection provided by their system distribution. That was one of the fundamental arguments that people used when we where discussing skimming of the PostgreSQL tarball. Following your logic would mean we better state in the 8.0 announcement the *removal of all language interface other than C*. Because that is what happened. If you download the tarball, there is no Perl, Java, C++ or Tcl library. They don't come with the PostgreSQL tarball, therefore from your perspective "we" do not have "any language support other than C". Now fortunately, this spartanic tarball isn't what most users will get if they select PostgreSQL in their OS distribution installer. So the question would rather be *what is our recommendation for package maintainers?* That collection is what hopefully most end users will experience as the PostgreSQL database product, and that is the picture we have to draw in our release announcement. Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Steve Bergman wrote: > Hi, > > As an interested observer watching this thread, and not having any > previous experience with new pgsql releases, I am curious. Is there a > point at which discussion of what should *not* be said in the press > release is considered finished, and discussion of what actually to *say* > in the press release begins? ;-) Not really, but that is why Josh started a seperate thread for what should be said :) ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Jan Wieck wrote: > As said before, if the sourcecode organization (splitting off interfaces > and other non-server-side tools) has such impact, then it is a bad idea. > Most users will not download the source tarball. Most users will install > some sort of package collection provided by their system distribution. > That was one of the fundamental arguments that people used when we where > discussing skimming of the PostgreSQL tarball. Following your logic > would mean we better state in the 8.0 announcement the *removal of all > language interface other than C*. Because that is what happened. If you > download the tarball, there is no Perl, Java, C++ or Tcl library. They > don't come with the PostgreSQL tarball, therefore from your perspective > "we" do not have "any language support other than C". I like that thought, of pointing out that, with this release, the interfaces continue to be moved to gborg/pgfoundry in order to facilitate development (and releases) of such seperately from the core server, in order to ensure that bug fixes and features can get to market faster ... > Now fortunately, this spartanic tarball isn't what most users will get if > they select PostgreSQL in their OS distribution installer. Actually, in FreeBSD ports, this is exactly what happens ... there are seperate ports for the various interfaces: > ls -d postgresql* postgresql-contrib postgresql-libpqxx postgresql-tcltk postgresql-devel postgresql-odbc postgresql7 postgresql-docs postgresql-plruby postgresql72 postgresql-jdbc postgresql-pltcl postgresql73 postgresql-libpq++ postgresql-relay postgresql_autodoc Now, if someone could come up with a libpq only distribution, along side pgxs, a large portion of gborg/pgfoundry could easily find its way into individual packages without having to download the whole source code ... again, that's for those building from source ... but even for packagers, it would be nice to have a "build/libpq" RPM that only included the client libraries, header files and pgxs, and not all the exra binaries ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Jan Wieck wrote: > Now fortunately, this spartanic tarball isn't what most users will > get if they select PostgreSQL in their OS distribution installer. So > the question would rather be *what is our recommendation for package > maintainers?* That collection is what hopefully most end users will > experience as the PostgreSQL database product, and that is the > picture we have to draw in our release announcement. Take a look at, say, KDE or GNOME. Their software is split up in all kinds of ways. Each little program has its own maintainer, version number, etc. Yet, to the general public it surely seems like KDE and GNOME are pretty integrated. Why is that? It's because above all these small parts there is an umbrella organization that provides services to each small part to make them look integrated, such as: - release management - security issue management - localization support - documentation support - bug tracking - packaging support - marketing support ... and more. We don't provide those services. Back in the days when everything was one tarball, we provided those services in an integrated fashion by default, but I can understand why that system doesn't work beyond a certain size. But by gborg or pgfoundry we don't provide these services either. A developer that makes use of gborg basically just rents machine space and bandwidth with some preinstalled software that allows him to set up the above mentioned services for his own project. But that doesn't make it integrated. So, for the issue at hand, no matter how much we like replication, endorse slony, or respect Jan's work, it's not part of PostgreSQL, in the eyes of the public. And a press release or three isn't going to fundamentally change that, because the facts don't back it up. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > source code ... again, that's for those building from source ... but > even for packagers, it would be nice to have a "build/libpq" RPM that > only included the client libraries, header files and pgxs, and not > all the exra binaries ... As a packager, I can tell you that nothing would be easier for packagers than just one huge tarball being released every two years. The more smaller tarballs you release, the more likely you're going to have dependency problems, which, at least in my world, is the first thing you want to avoid when packaging. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Jan Wieck wrote: >> Now fortunately, this spartanic tarball isn't what most users will >> get if they select PostgreSQL in their OS distribution installer. So >> the question would rather be *what is our recommendation for package >> maintainers?* That collection is what hopefully most end users will >> experience as the PostgreSQL database product, and that is the >> picture we have to draw in our release announcement. > > Take a look at, say, KDE or GNOME. Their software is split up in all > kinds of ways. Each little program has its own maintainer, version > number, etc. Yet, to the general public it surely seems like KDE and > GNOME are pretty integrated. Why is that? > > It's because above all these small parts there is an umbrella > organization that provides services to each small part to make them > look integrated, such as: > > - release management > - security issue management > - localization support > - documentation support > - bug tracking > - packaging support > - marketing support > ... and more. > > We don't provide those services. Back in the days when everything was > one tarball, we provided those services in an integrated fashion by > default, but I can understand why that system doesn't work beyond a > certain size. But by gborg or pgfoundry we don't provide these > services either. A developer that makes use of gborg basically just > rents machine space and bandwidth with some preinstalled software that > allows him to set up the above mentioned services for his own project. > But that doesn't make it integrated. > > So, for the issue at hand, no matter how much we like replication, > endorse slony, or respect Jan's work, it's not part of PostgreSQL, in > the eyes of the public. And a press release or three isn't going to > fundamentally change that, because the facts don't back it up. Do we not make some headway towards that with the work on pgxs? I realize that only addresses part of the problem, but it does make a start ... How do we continue to 'bridge the gap', so to say? pginstaller does, I think, a good job of it on the Windows platform, by giving one interface to pull in multiple 'tools' ... any way of mirroring this sort of thing in Unix? ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > Do we not make some headway towards that with the work on pgxs? Build system changes or an installer project aren't going to do anything about the organizational issues that we're facing. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
Bruce, > Sure. I can give someone a contact at Fujitsu Australia and they have a > PR guy who could easily help. I might be able to get info from the > Japan HQ but it would be harder. I'm already working with Gavin and FJ Marketing on the FJ-AU angle. -- Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Robby Russell wrote: > > >Beautifully put. This is a press release of what makes PostgreSQL 8.0 >what it is. What is PostgreSQL and what can it do for me? I'm not >interested in what companies market their own versions. > >Should we expect that when linux kernel 3.0 is out that we'll see >mentions of Red Hat and Novell selling great commercial versions that >use kernel 3.0? > > > I think this is something we as a community should aspire towards, but we are not there yet. There is not reall the concept of a PostgreSQL distribution yet. Also Red Hat and Novell sell commercial *distributions* of Linux. Their versions of the kernel are still completely open source, as they have to be according to the license. >In my opinion, I would stick to what is included in 8.0 when you >download the package off the site. plPerlNG, plPHP, Slony-I, etc are all >ADDONs and should be represented as such. Otherwise you get a bunch of >people who didn't read the release properly, download it..install it and >find that you dont see plPHP in contribs/ and where is this Slony >replication they spoke of? Hmm, not in the source tree. I have to >download it seperately...etc. For someone new to open source and/or >postgresql this might come across as generating too much hype over 3rd >party products (which these are). The 3rd party projects/products don't >make PostgreSQL what is, they only help enhance it. *the cherry on top* > > The Linux kernel without any support software is far less useful than PostgreSQL without any add-ons. So for now, you are right. But as time goes on, I would hope that we will see Mammoth PostgreSQL and other distributions (open source and commercial) will become the way that people get and use the software. But to make this work, I think, we need a community maintained distribution. Right now, PostgreSQL is that distribution, and it has no replication. Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting
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Robby Russell wrote: >On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 09:27, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > >>Command Prompt tries to do the same with the Community. We try >>to take care of the community by: >> >> >> > > > >>In return we "hope" that the community will help take care of us, so we >>can continue to provide these resources. >> >> >> > >Odd, shouldn't it be the other way around? Do you not have a product >line that is based on the efforts of more than 10years (don't recall the >actual number) of development by the community? It would seem like you >would be returning the favor and partaking in the open source efforts >(as you have with plPHP, plPerlNG..). > >The community already takes care of you. ;-) > > > Hi Robby, I believe that the Linux Documentation Project for a long time maintained a list of commercial, proprietary applications for Linux. I believe that this became defunct due to the explosion of ISV support. Such a document served one extremely important advocacy purpose-- the furtherance of the image of a viable platform. I.e. telling your boss that Oracle is supported on Linux is a good argument against the idea that "nobody uses it." People like RMS might disagree with this viewpoint because Oracle is not Free Software, but anything, in my view, which helps to introduce people to Free Software is a good thing, even if it is only half-way at first. I don't think it is a good idea to mention companies in the press release out of a sense of indebtedness. I think that leads to a number of problems down the road that we don't want. There are other ways to thank SRA, Command Prompt, Red Hat, etc. for their contributions. But I think that such a mention could serve two different better purposes. First, it would act as a way of expressing to the community that PostgreSQL has some heavy-hitters behind it, and that there is a community of developers which produce quality add-ons. Secondly, I think it would help to distance PostgreSQL the Project from PostgreSQL, Inc. the Company, and put this in its proper perspective. While I don't think it is our job to promote any projects other than PostgreSQL the Project, I think that mention of the other companies and some of their products will, at present, help substantially to promote PostgreSQL the Project. That is what we are here for. The question is how best do we do it? Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting
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On Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 09:36:13PM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
> No, as Slony-I is not bundled with, or has anything to do with, this
> release ... Slony-I is a seperate, independent project developed by a
> commercial entity (Afilias) and released Open Source very early in its
> lifecycle ...
I want to clear up a possible misconception that I see in that
statement. This is slightly off topic for the thread. Sorry.
Afilias did not completely or even mostly develop Slony-I and then
release it. Slony-I was intended, from the get-go, as a community
project. We wanted the software developed in the community from the
start, so what we did was pay a member of the community to get the
project up and running. Jan released the specs he had and the
prototype code he had before any "heavy lifting" work had been done
on the core Slony system. If people had come along with "here's
another important feature that I want, here's how it fits with the
system and how I can integrate it, and I'm willing to add the code in
this module over here," then that would have been welcomed. That's
what we want to have happen.
Afilias is not an RDBMS company nor a company which wants to spend a
great deal of time in that area. We support these development
projects because it is in our interest to maintain a vibrant
community around them. We are primarily just a user of the software.
That's all we want to be, because our business lies elsewhere. For
the same reason that we participate in IETF working groups (they
produce standards in our industry -- essentially, part of our
infrastructure) we participate in the PostgreSQL community (also part
of our infrastructure).
I know this probably seems like picking nits, but I think the
difference in methodology is extremely important. If you're
interested in the code we're contributing, and want to hack on it,
please do. We are contributing things that scratch our itches, of
course, and we'll continue to do that. But it's every bit as
important to us that nobody get the impression we have a big internal
program which occasionally puts out a complete piece of software to
the community. That's not how we want to (or even how we can)
participate.
A
--
----
Andrew Sullivan 204-4141 Yonge Street
Afilias Canada Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@ca.afilias.info> M2P 2A8
+1 416 646 3304 x4110
Peter Eisentraut wrote: >Chris Travers wrote: > > >>I understand the advantage of kernelization in PostgreSQL, but to >>make this work, perhaps we need a community-maintained distribution >>which includes many of these other add-ons. >> >> > >There are plenty of distributions out there, some community maintained. >Some do a better job at providing a complete set of PostgreSQL >"add-ons" than others. If you're interested in that sort of thing, >join in the effort of your favorite distribution. > >About half a year ago I was thinking exactly the same thing as what you >just wrote. But I realized that there is virtually no room for a >"PostgreSQL distribution" to live between people who always download >the original sources and people who want the full service of their >operating system's package management. I have since joined a community >maintained Linux distribution and now I have no problem getting all the >PostgreSQL software I need. > > > Interesting analysis. You might be right about market size. However, I was approaching this from another angle. This discussion will focus on a hypothetical Pgsql distrobution called "Blue Elephant." People say "PostgreSQL has no replication." They don't count add-ins because they do not come with the product, no matter how we try to convince them otherwise. From a marketing perspective, it would be really nice to say something like "Blue Elephant does have replication." If Blue Elephant is maintained by the community, then this lends additional credibility towards enterprise features in PostgreSQL. From this angle, it is less important how many people *use* Blue Elephant. It is more important how many people are brought into the PostgreSQL community because we can make a more creditable case that our project meets their needs. Blue Elephant then acts as a showcase for what PostgreSQL can be, rather than what the toolkit that it is. Perhaps a better question would be, do people see a showcase enterprise distribution as something worth doing? I do just from a marketing perspective. Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting
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Chris Travers wrote: > > Please stop looking at Afilias as a 3rd party. Afilias is a member of > > the PGDG as everyone else. The problem that even people inside of this > > community can't imagine a company being just a member of this team > > doesn't mean that it is impossible. > > > While you have a valid point from the perspective of the community, I > think there is an issue which is legitimate here. That is that people > see the fact that Slony does not come with the PostgreSQL tarball. From > this perspective "we" do not have a "replication" solution. Like it or > not, this is a viewpoint many evaluators have. To them, this is still a > third-party add-on, even though it was developed primarily by core > members of the PostgreSQL community. > > How do we combat this issue? Do we release Slony with PostgreSQL? Does > that really make sense (the general concensus seems to be "no")? Do we > release a different distribution of PostgreSQL which includes Slony? I > think that this would be a good idea, but.... > > Also, will it be possible to see a Win32 port of Slony at some point? Why would Slony _not_ work on Win32? Has anyone tested it? -- 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
Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > Do we not make some headway towards that with the work on pgxs? > > Build system changes or an installer project aren't going to do anything > about the organizational issues that we're facing. We almost need someone just to help manage the add-on stuff, and the job is so large we almost need a full-time guy from one of the companies supporting us. (Please don't look in my direction.) :-) -- 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
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > So, for the issue at hand, no matter how much we like replication, > > endorse slony, or respect Jan's work, it's not part of PostgreSQL, in > > the eyes of the public. And a press release or three isn't going to > > fundamentally change that, because the facts don't back it up. > > Do we not make some headway towards that with the work on pgxs? I realize > that only addresses part of the problem, but it does make a start ... > > How do we continue to 'bridge the gap', so to say? > > pginstaller does, I think, a good job of it on the Windows platform, by > giving one interface to pull in multiple 'tools' ... any way of mirroring > this sort of thing in Unix? I think Peter gave the wisest analysis: Peter Eisentraut wrote: > About half a year ago I was thinking exactly the same thing as what you > just wrote. But I realized that there is virtually no room for a > "PostgreSQL distribution" to live between people who always download > the original sources and people who want the full service of their > operating system's package management. I have since joined a community > maintained Linux distribution and now I have no problem getting all the > PostgreSQL software I need. Meaning we can't provide a merged product without knowing OS details, and those require people on each platform to provide such solutions. -- 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
On 8/14/2004 5:26 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Chris Travers wrote: >> > Please stop looking at Afilias as a 3rd party. Afilias is a member of >> > the PGDG as everyone else. The problem that even people inside of this >> > community can't imagine a company being just a member of this team >> > doesn't mean that it is impossible. >> > >> While you have a valid point from the perspective of the community, I >> think there is an issue which is legitimate here. That is that people >> see the fact that Slony does not come with the PostgreSQL tarball. From >> this perspective "we" do not have a "replication" solution. Like it or >> not, this is a viewpoint many evaluators have. To them, this is still a >> third-party add-on, even though it was developed primarily by core >> members of the PostgreSQL community. >> >> How do we combat this issue? Do we release Slony with PostgreSQL? Does >> that really make sense (the general concensus seems to be "no")? Do we >> release a different distribution of PostgreSQL which includes Slony? I >> think that this would be a good idea, but.... >> >> Also, will it be possible to see a Win32 port of Slony at some point? > > Why would Slony _not_ work on Win32? Has anyone tested it? > Windows doesn't have pthreads. The thread usage in Slony is very basic, nothing really pthread specific. So I don't think there'd be a big issue in porting it. But it hasn't been done yet. Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #
Jan Wieck wrote: > On 8/14/2004 5:26 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > Chris Travers wrote: > >> > Please stop looking at Afilias as a 3rd party. Afilias is a member of > >> > the PGDG as everyone else. The problem that even people inside of this > >> > community can't imagine a company being just a member of this team > >> > doesn't mean that it is impossible. > >> > > >> While you have a valid point from the perspective of the community, I > >> think there is an issue which is legitimate here. That is that people > >> see the fact that Slony does not come with the PostgreSQL tarball. From > >> this perspective "we" do not have a "replication" solution. Like it or > >> not, this is a viewpoint many evaluators have. To them, this is still a > >> third-party add-on, even though it was developed primarily by core > >> members of the PostgreSQL community. > >> > >> How do we combat this issue? Do we release Slony with PostgreSQL? Does > >> that really make sense (the general concensus seems to be "no")? Do we > >> release a different distribution of PostgreSQL which includes Slony? I > >> think that this would be a good idea, but.... > >> > >> Also, will it be possible to see a Win32 port of Slony at some point? > > > > Why would Slony _not_ work on Win32? Has anyone tested it? > > > > Windows doesn't have pthreads. The thread usage in Slony is very basic, > nothing really pthread specific. So I don't think there'd be a big issue > in porting it. But it hasn't been done yet. Ah, OK. libpq is Win32 thread-safe, but doesn't use pthreads on Win32 so it would require some work to add Win32 thread calls to Slony. -- 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
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Peter Eisentraut wrote: >> Marc G. Fournier wrote: >>> Do we not make some headway towards that with the work on pgxs? >> >> Build system changes or an installer project aren't going to do anything >> about the organizational issues that we're facing. > > We almost need someone just to help manage the add-on stuff, and the job > is so large we almost need a full-time guy from one of the companies > supporting us. (Please don't look in my direction.) :-) Huh? Shouldn't the project maintainers manage the add on stuff? Or are you meaning something that I'm not cluing into? I *think* Peter is more refering to 'infrastruture' ... for instance, in KDE's case, their "central bug tracking system" includes all of the various sub-projects ... so if you want to report a bug for KDE, you go to their bug tracking system, and assign it to one of the "projects" ... For instance, I run KDE ... when I install kdemultimedia out of FreeBSD ports, that includes a sub-project/application called noatrun ... when I go to the bug tracking system for KDE, I submit a bug that is not assigned to 'kde', but to noatrun specifically ... but it is all at the KDE web site, not at a noatrun project page ... Think of it in terms of going to pgFoundry and being able to view all bugs with all applications, or click on a 'submit bug report' link without having to go find the specific application first ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
chris@metatrontech.com (Chris Travers) writes:
> From this angle, it is less important how many people *use* Blue
> Elephant. It is more important how many people are brought into the
> PostgreSQL community because we can make a more creditable case that
> our project meets their needs. Blue Elephant then acts as a
> showcase for what PostgreSQL can be, rather than what the toolkit
> that it is.
The only "Blue Elephant" approach I can think of as practical is to
build something akin to a Knoppix-based distribution that includes the
lot of PostgreSQL "stuff," and that has the unfortunate effect of
restricting this 'official' release of a PostgreSQL 'distribution' to
that.
What strikes me as more interesting is to see what the packagers for
some reasonably small subset of package-oriented systems wind up
doing. Let's consider the set of PostgreSQL "add-ons" that are known
to be well-packaged for all of:
a) FreeBSD Ports
b) Debian testing
c) Fedora
d) RHAS/RHES
e) SuSE Linux
f) MandrakeSoft Linux
That certainly isn't a comprehensive list of all platforms on which
PostgreSQL runs, but it's a big enough list to cover a LOT of likely
users. The "common add-on list" won't get vastly more credible if I
add Gentoo and Slackware to the list.
They're certainly all packaging DBI and Pg; many of them already have
some packaging of even such "esoterica" as pg_autovacuum. I believe
there's a BSD Port for Slony-I, and no doubt people are already
starting to think about RPM/dpkg packaging for it.
There is Debian packaging for many of the additional server-side
languages, going as far as including R. Java is conspicuously absent;
the ambiguity about "freeness" makes it a bit tough to make too
terribly much stuff depend on it.
--
output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "cbbrowne.com")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/spreadsheets.html
"A statement is either correct or incorrect. To be *very* incorrect
is
like being *very* dead ... "
-- Herbert F. Spirer
Professor of Information Management
University of Conn.
(DATAMATION Letters, Sept. 1, 1984)
>How do we continue to 'bridge the gap', so to say? > >pginstaller does, I think, a good job of it on the Windows >platform, by >giving one interface to pull in multiple 'tools' ... any way >of mirroring >this sort of thing in Unix? Dunno about that. pginstaller uses the Windows Installer service, which is the standard on windows for installing software. The same thing on Linux would be RPM or DEB or whatever the distro uses. And I guess ports on freebsd (not having experience with that platform, can't be sure). The problem is that they don't provide the same kind of tweaking that Windows Installer does (for good and for bad). I guess someone could write a "RPM frontend" that would allow for easy picking of which RPMs to install, and then some scripting around it to set passwords, install PLs, change settings etc in an interactive manner. But it'd certainly have to be quite different for each different platform. But it certainly could be done. There's also the issue of "vendor RPMs" vs "pg RPMs". I haven't installed pg from RPM for ages (alwys do source builds myself), so that may be solved by now, but it used to be a bit of a bother back then. //Magnus
>Think of it in terms of going to pgFoundry and being able to >view all bugs >with all applications, or click on a 'submit bug report' link without >having to go find the specific application first ... The issue is, IMHO, all about appearance. Who cares where the stuff is located, as long as it can be found from a single place. Which should be www.postgresql.org. If users have to guess they may need to look at pgfoundry (first they have to know it exists!), or maybe gborg (again, need to know it exists! newbies probabyl don't), or pgadmin.org, or xyz.org, they're going to go away saying "they don't have this and that" because they can't find it. I think the most important part of it is accessing the product, meaning the download page. Sure, it's nice if they can bug-report at one place, but that's not nearly as important as actually getting the product in the first place. It'd probably pay off a lot quicker to focus on that part, and the other might fall out automatically. I've sure heard a lot of people saying there is no decent GUI and/or web-GUI to admin a pgsql server. Then I show them pgadmin or phppgadmin, and they're stunned. But they just didn't *find* it. //Magnus
Magnus Hagander wrote: > > I've sure heard a lot of people saying there is no decent GUI and/or > web-GUI to admin a pgsql server. Then I show them pgadmin or phppgadmin, > and they're stunned. But they just didn't *find* it. I only can stress what Magnus says. The pginstaller will partially fix this for win32, but the issue is basically the same for all os, and other tools and important modules (Slony-1). Having one-stop-shopping for users, there's also the issue for one-stop-bugreporting. I already saw several pgadmin3 bugs posted to -hackers or -bugs; although we provide a prominently placed menu entry for bug reporting, people still don't read it <sigh> It's not easy enough to find out how to post pgsql bugs. Can't we have a "Bugs" link in the line where "Download", "Mirrors" reside? Regards, Andreas
On Tue, 17 Aug 2004, Andreas Pflug wrote: > Magnus Hagander wrote: > > >> >> I've sure heard a lot of people saying there is no decent GUI and/or >> web-GUI to admin a pgsql server. Then I show them pgadmin or phppgadmin, >> and they're stunned. But they just didn't *find* it. > > I only can stress what Magnus says. > The pginstaller will partially fix this for win32, but the issue is basically > the same for all os, and other tools and important modules (Slony-1). > > Having one-stop-shopping for users, there's also the issue for > one-stop-bugreporting. I already saw several pgadmin3 bugs posted to -hackers > or -bugs; although we provide a prominently placed menu entry for bug > reporting, people still don't read it <sigh> > > It's not easy enough to find out how to post pgsql bugs. Can't we have a > "Bugs" link in the line where "Download", "Mirrors" reside? I believe I've asked this before, but I may be mis-remembering ... What would it take to have a more 'dynamic' build system? And now that I've worded that badly, let me explain what I'm "thinking" ... From a packagers perspective, smaller chunks are easier to deal with ... at least in so far as FreeBSD ports is concerned ... having to download a 12Meg tar ball to pull out <1Meg of source files for a build is a waste ... optimally, there would be a 'libpq.tar.gz' tar file that could be downloaded to give the client libraries, that would be used to build everything else ... Now, what would it take to make it possible to pull in external packages and make a 'mega-distribution'? For instance, when I build a release, there is a .tar.gz file that is created that includes *everything*, and there is a -base.tar.gz, -contrib.tar.gz, etc ... would it be possible to have part of the make target pull down a copy of, say, slony and include that under contrib? I can easily do the cvs login for Slony's CVSROOT, so that a cvs checkout would work, and I can easily put that into the proper directory ... but the infrastructure is not that to, say, have a ./configure --enable-slony or something like that option if contrib/slony exists ... I don't know if this is possible or not ... The same could apply for JDBC, pgadmin3, etc, etc ... whatever is deemed appropriate ... each project would still have their own development environments on pgfoundry, their own list of developers and access controls, and their own release cycles *between* PostgreSQL (the server) releases ... but, say, when we go into feature freeze/beta for the main server, they are required to branch and provide us with the *stable* branch TAG that is meant for the release ... if they can't, then that package would be quickly pulled from the distribution for that release ... Is this something that could be done? ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Am Montag, 16. August 2004 17:18 schrieb Chris Browne: > What strikes me as more interesting is to see what the packagers for > some reasonably small subset of package-oriented systems wind up > doing. Let's consider the set of PostgreSQL "add-ons" that are known > to be well-packaged for all of: > [various operating systems] The overall trend is that community-maintained operating systems (e.g., Debian, FreeBSD, Gentoo) have a complete set of PostgreSQL add-ons packaged, whereas the commercial distributors of free operating systems tend to do more poorly, more so in the "enterprise" variants, which have an even more restricted set of packages. Still, you can easily google for more add-on packages from third-party sites. Really, the availability is not the problem, it's the organization on the provider side and the public impression created by it. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
On Saturday 14 August 2004 14:27, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > source code ... again, that's for those building from source ... but > > even for packagers, it would be nice to have a "build/libpq" RPM that > > only included the client libraries, header files and pgxs, and not > > all the exra binaries ... > As a packager, I can tell you that nothing would be easier for packagers > than just one huge tarball being released every two years. The more > smaller tarballs you release, the more likely you're going to have > dependency problems, which, at least in my world, is the first thing > you want to avoid when packaging. Agreed 100%. -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu
On Saturday 14 August 2004 10:25, Jan Wieck wrote: > On 8/13/2004 12:01 PM, Lamar Owen wrote: > > But the fact is 'we' (PGDG) do not 'have' a replication solution; all are > > third party, and there are some that are open source. I personally think > What part of the Slony-I replication system do 'we' (PGDG) not 'have'? > The original design work got published and was up for discussion before > the implementation work started, the entire development happened under > the BSD license, the project was hosted on gborg from the very beginning > and all .c, .h and .sql files in the entire tree are Copyright PGDG. The > project lead is a PGDG Core team member and the project team consist of > more people outside of Afilias then inside. If that isn't enough, then I > would like to know what's left that we could announce at all? Then WHY are we not bundling this? If WE have it, then WE need to integrate it. It is not integrated; this is the issue. > Please stop looking at Afilias as a 3rd party. Afilias is a member of > the PGDG as everyone else. The problem that even people inside of this > community can't imagine a company being just a member of this team > doesn't mean that it is impossible. Well, looks like I hit a nerve. Not intentionally, mind you, but all this talk in this thread has made Slony look to be third party. If it is not third party, then it needs more visibility. To answer your next message, yes, I think this is an effect of unbundling from the main tarball things and stuffing them out to gborg to languish. I for one am excited about Slony's prospects. This package, once I get up to speed with it, is going to make my life a lot easier. I do, however, wish it were more prominently announced and, yes, I do wish it were more tightly integrated. -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu
On 8/17/2004 1:56 PM, Lamar Owen wrote: > Well, looks like I hit a nerve. Not intentionally, mind you, but all this > talk in this thread has made Slony look to be third party. If it is not > third party, then it needs more visibility. Not your fault, and I don't think that anybody tries intentionally to let it look like third party. It is probably a common misconception that "company did development ... ergo result must be commercial or 3rd party contribution". Not everyone is used to think of companies as legal persons that can have the same rights and responsibilities as a natural person within a group. > > To answer your next message, yes, I think this is an effect of unbundling from > the main tarball things and stuffing them out to gborg to languish. > > I for one am excited about Slony's prospects. This package, once I get up to > speed with it, is going to make my life a lot easier. I do, however, wish it > were more prominently announced and, yes, I do wish it were more tightly > integrated. I have repeatedly stated that I think the PG version independance of Slony makes it a rather bad idea to shrinkwrap the two together. But that shouldn't mean that it can't be a substantial feature we consider "available for PostgreSQL". It comes under the same license from the same copyright holder. So wherever those two aren't an issue for using PostgreSQL, using Slony can only be limited by technical reasons. Jan -- #======================================================================# # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. # # Let's break this rule - forgive me. # #================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #