Thread: The naming question (Postgres vs PostgreSQL)

Liam O'Duibhir wrote:
> +1 I vote in favour of the name change.
> ...
> Personally, I think if the new name takes 5 (or even more) years to
> ‘settle in’ and become the norm, that will be a reasonable outcome.

Indeed.   HP Sales people and support don't yell at customers
for calling them Hewlett Packard even today - and hp.com still
shows "Official Hewlett-Packard site" in it's Meta Description tags.

Decibel! wrote:
> I vote we just make the change without any fuss, ASAP.

+1 for the name change, start now.

I can help with docs, just show me where to start.
--
gabrielle
Miss Quell mySqealed when she got run over by myCycle.

On 9/1/2007 7:02 PM, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> PostgreSQL is the *formal name*, while Postgres is the *trade name* ... call it
> whichever you want, people will know what you are talking about ... get over it.

I could get over it, if this topic as well as the ugly Postgre sh*t it
causes as a side effect would ever stop popping up. But it seems to me
however often we "get over it", the problem only submerges to pop up
again for the next release. Could it be that "getting over it" is kinda
like playing ostrich - AGAIN, and that the numerous times we "got over
it" only made the situation worse by reinforcing a mistake made long ago?

I suggest we someday stop "getting over it" and instead "get done with
it". Because rest assured, otherwise it'll be back again ... and again.


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 9/1/07, Jan Wieck <JanWieck@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I could get over it, if this topic as well as the ugly Postgre sh*t it
> causes as a side effect would ever stop popping up. But it seems to me
> however often we "get over it", the problem only submerges to pop up
> again for the next release. Could it be that "getting over it" is kinda
> like playing ostrich - AGAIN, and that the numerous times we "got over
> it" only made the situation worse by reinforcing a mistake made long ago?

I agree.

> I suggest we someday stop "getting over it" and instead "get done with
> it". Because rest assured, otherwise it'll be back again ... and again.

Again, I agree.  Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it;
a seemingly continual trend in the Postgres community whether it's
feature or business-related.  Ignoring a problem does not make it
disappear.

Throughout this discussion, it seems like the majority of people
against the name change, with the exception of those from Greenplum
and EnterpriseDB, are those who have a financial stake in it.  And, as
JD suggested that EnterpriseDB's brand could be strengthened by the
name change, I just wanted to say that EnterpriseDB has never
suggested, in any way, that its community members should support the
Postgres name.  It is my own personal opinion that Postgres is a
better name.

I understand the valid concerns made by the Postgres user groups and
by Gabriele Bartolini over printed PostgreSQL stuff like shirts and
materials.  Trust me, it *will* be fine to distribute them until they
run out.  Perhaps a lot of people here haven't been on eBay lately,
because collectible IT stuff goes quickly.  No one will have a problem
accepting a PostgreSQL t-shirt if the name changes to Postgres.

Don't get me wrong.  It will cost money to redo all the marketing
material if people feel that it's required immediately; which I don't.
 Will CMD have to change it's tagline from, "The PostgreSQL Company"
to, "The Postgres Company"?  That's a *business decision* for CMD, not
something that should affect a *community decision*.

Frankly, from what I've seen in the 7 or so years I've been working
with Postgres, the name PostgreSQL is definitely a problem.  When all
of us were at the 10th anniversary, I don't recall a single person
talking about Postgres in discussion as PostgreSQL.  If I had a dollar
for the number of times I heard it pronounced Postgre, I'd be quite
rich.  The name PostgreSQL is just plain difficult for people.

IMHO, keeping the status quo will only continue to perpetuate advocacy
issues.  Regardless, this thread has gone on for a *long* time and all
the debatable topics seem to be on the table.  At some point, a vote
needs to be made.

I think the first decision should be on whether the name needs to be
changed.  If it is decided to be changed, the next vote should be to
decide on when the name should be changed (8.3, 8.4, 9.0).

--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation            | fax: 732.331.1301
33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor            | jharris@enterprisedb.com
Iselin, New Jersey 08830            | http://www.enterprisedb.com/

Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On 9/1/07, Jan Wieck <JanWieck@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I could get over it, if this topic as well as the ugly Postgre sh*t it
>> causes as a side effect would ever stop popping up. But it seems to me
>> however often we "get over it", the problem only submerges to pop up
>> again for the next release. Could it be that "getting over it" is kinda
>> like playing ostrich - AGAIN, and that the numerous times we "got over
>> it" only made the situation worse by reinforcing a mistake made long ago?
>
> I agree.
>
>> I suggest we someday stop "getting over it" and instead "get done with
>> it". Because rest assured, otherwise it'll be back again ... and again.
>
> Again, I agree.  Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it;
> a seemingly continual trend in the Postgres community whether it's
> feature or business-related.  Ignoring a problem does not make it
> disappear.

same goes for ignoring problems the move might cause - like we had
several of the large communities (french,italian and japanese) already
objecting for a switch like that hurting them.
And one other aspect is very much a problem too - we have WAY less
control over a number of key postgres.* domains (postgres.jp is not
registered, postgres.eu is registered to some weird place as is say
postgres.at or postgres.us).
And I suspect this is only the tip of the iceberg of related problems.


>
> Throughout this discussion, it seems like the majority of people
> against the name change, with the exception of those from Greenplum
> and EnterpriseDB, are those who have a financial stake in it.  And, as
> JD suggested that EnterpriseDB's brand could be strengthened by the
> name change, I just wanted to say that EnterpriseDB has never
> suggested, in any way, that its community members should support the
> Postgres name.  It is my own personal opinion that Postgres is a
> better name.

it might be a better name(or not) but a switch like that involves much
more than simply saying "oh this is our new name" - I'm fairly convinced
that playing games with our name will hurt us (and the active community
at a large) for a while in a period where postgresql is gaining insight
into a lot of places that it had not before and I'm not sure that
changing names after years of years of having another will give
confidence to (management style) people.

>
> I understand the valid concerns made by the Postgres user groups and
> by Gabriele Bartolini over printed PostgreSQL stuff like shirts and
> materials.  Trust me, it *will* be fine to distribute them until they
> run out.  Perhaps a lot of people here haven't been on eBay lately,
> because collectible IT stuff goes quickly.  No one will have a problem
> accepting a PostgreSQL t-shirt if the name changes to Postgres.

well those people invested a lot of personal time and money into all
that stuff (and I'm sure all that attended say pgday.it will fully
agree) and either way you phrase it it will cost them money and time to
come up with replacement merchandising.
This is time and money invested from people on there own pocket not
employed or supported by one of the dedicated postgresql companies or
being payed to work on postgresql full time so you are actually asking a
lot for here.


Stefan

Hi,

I don't agree on some things people opposing the name change
continue saying.

Stefan, you just mentioned two of them, and I can't
resist... ;)


> it might be a better name(or not) but a switch like that involves much
> more than simply saying "oh this is our new name" - I'm fairly convinced
> that playing games with our name will hurt us (and the active community
> at a large) for a while in a period where postgresql is gaining insight
> into a lot of places that it had not before and I'm not sure that
> changing names after years of years of having another will give
> confidence to (management style) people.

This would be a good argument against changing name to something
completeley different - say - "SushiDB".

Going from PostgreSQL -> Postgres, you wouldn't loose any brand
recognization, would you?

What about "Oracle9i" -> "Oracle Database 10g" then?


> well those people invested a lot of personal time and money into all
> that stuff (and I'm sure all that attended say pgday.it will fully
> agree) and either way you phrase it it will cost them money and time to
> come up with replacement merchandising.
> This is time and money invested from people on there own pocket not
> employed or supported by one of the dedicated postgresql companies or
> being payed to work on postgresql full time so you are actually asking a
> lot for here.

Replacement merchandising?
There's no sense *throwing away* PostgreSQL T-shirts and stuff if the
name changes. 90% of people who get them do it in support of the project and
will get them anyway.

I will personally buy 10 T-Shirts from Gabriele if the name changes ;)


Bye,
Chris.

On 9/2/2007 8:19 AM, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
> same goes for ignoring problems the move might cause - like we had
> several of the large communities (french,italian and japanese) already
> objecting for a switch like that hurting them.

Can it be that both camps exaggerate a little about their own "pain" and
try to play down the others? I am well known for doing that, but who
else is willing to admit it?

> And one other aspect is very much a problem too - we have WAY less
> control over a number of key postgres.* domains (postgres.jp is not
> registered, postgres.eu is registered to some weird place as is say
> postgres.at or postgres.us).

That is almost the only aspect of changing the name, that won't solve
itself by time going by alone. Maybe some of our wealthier community
members will be able to help those in need. Nobody asked to get rid of
all references to PostgreSQL shortly. It is a process that will take a
few years for sure.

On the other side, the "Postgre" thing won't ever go away no matter what
we do or say as long as we keep PostgreSQL. So is everyone, who is
against the change, willing to add something like this to the FAQ:

   "A natural result of our project name is that it is frequently
   referred to as Postgre. The name Postgre has therefore officially
   been adopted as another accepted abbreviation of the formal project
   name Postgre SQL. In an effort to reduce the number of names referring
   to our project, we discourage from using Postgres and all other names
   in favor of Postgre and Postgre SQL."

Well, maybe without the last sentence, but anyway, are people fine with
our database being called Postgre all over the place? Because that is
what is happening and it will never stop if we keep PostgreSQL, so we
might as well stop trying to make people using that abbreviation look
like bloody noobs who don't even know the name of the database they are
trying to use.

And we should post this for a while in frequent intervals on all our
mailing lists in order to stop folks from telling others "there is no
such thing as Postgre".

So my question really is, is everyone out there who does not want to
change to Postgres now willing to officially accept Postgre as well?


Jan

--
#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #

> ------- Original Message -------
> From: Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
> To: Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc>
> Sent: 02/09/07, 16:18:47
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] The naming question (Postgres vs PostgreSQL)
>
> So my question really is, is everyone out there who does not want to
> change to Postgres now willing to officially accept Postgre as well?
>

Isn't that akin to you declaring that Jan with a hard J is an acceptable way for people to refer to you, despite the
factthat you're a 6' 3" European bloke, and not a woman call Janet? 

I think we should change to Postgres or do nothing. Postgre is absolutely horrendous imho.

/D

Dave Page wrote:
>
> Isn't that akin to you declaring that Jan with a hard J is an acceptable way for people to refer to you, despite the
factthat you're a 6' 3" European bloke, and not a woman call Janet? 
>
> I think we should change to Postgres or do nothing. Postgre is absolutely horrendous imho.

Although I don't want to change the name. I agree that Postre is pretty
horrendous.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
> /D
>

Chris Mair wrote:
> Hi,
>

> Going from PostgreSQL -> Postgres, you wouldn't loose any brand
> recognization, would you?
>
> What about "Oracle9i" -> "Oracle Database 10g" then?
>

You are confusing company names, product names and brand names.

Joshua D. Drake


>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
>

Andy Astor wrote:
> Commercial Benefit
> ------------------
> EnterpriseDB will receive zero commercial benefit from the name change.

All due respect Andy but that is simply not true. You have EnterpriseDB
Postgres, there is name correlation. That is business value. You know
better.

> Command Prompt may or may not. But none of this has anything to do with my
> opinion on this topic. EnterpriseDB has already taken the position that we
> wish to use Postgres in the name of the distribution we promote, and we have
> moved forward with that. I don't believe there will be any problem *or* any
> advantage if PostgreSQL/Postgres changes its name or not. I assure you all
> that my motivation is simply to make a better, simpler, more pronounceable
> name that doesn't call attention to a feature that is 10 years old.

I don't question your motivation (just to be clear) all I am saying is
that *our* motivation is marred about our obvious potential business
possibilities made by the change.

We need to be listening to the community as a whole and our community
that doesn't speak English natively is screaming loud and clear that
they don't want this to happen.

>
> Non-English Groups
> ------------------
> I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the non-English
> PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this proposal mentioned
> that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his (Spanish)
> perspective.

Yes but the current Spanish community versus the current Italian, French
and Japanese communities is a different matter in terms of size and
activity.

Sincerely.

Joshua D. Drake

On 9/2/2007 11:33 AM, Dave Page wrote:
>
>> ------- Original Message -------
>> From: Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
>> To: Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc>
>> Sent: 02/09/07, 16:18:47
>> Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] The naming question (Postgres vs PostgreSQL)
>>
>> So my question really is, is everyone out there who does not want to
>> change to Postgres now willing to officially accept Postgre as well?
>>
>
> Isn't that akin to you declaring that Jan with a hard J is an acceptable way for people to refer to you, despite the
factthat you're a 6' 3" European bloke, and not a woman call Janet? 

Nah, that is just laziness on my side. And I'm only a 6'1'' european
bloke. Maybe I should change the spelling to Yann when I apply for
citizenship?

>
> I think we should change to Postgres or do nothing. Postgre is absolutely horrendous imho.

The point is that we already DID change the name to Postgre. We just
didn't realize it back then and some don't want to realize it even now.

Look at the IRC channels, the mailing lists and all sorts of blogs and
articles published. If you're confident about your stomach, google for
"Postgre SQL" (with the double quotes). There are tons and tons of
references to "Postgre-SQL" and "Postgre SQL". You even see Marc using
"Postgre SQL" on the first result page (okay, it was a forwarded email
and he might not have noticed - but precious as an example anyway).

People back then might not, but today most of them do recognize SQL as
the abbreviation for Structured Query Language. Or at least it is
something they do recognize and interpret separate from the rest of the
word. They remove the acronym and logically come to Postgre as the base
name of our project. We will never be able to stop that unless we remove
the root cause of it, the letters SQL attached to the name Postgre.

We don't have the choice of doing nothing, because not changing back to
Postgres means you have to accept Postgre. And that's not exactly
"nothing" to me. It turns my guts upside down, but it is what seems
logically our name, so it has every right to be officially accepted.


Jan

--
#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #

Just a couple of points that I'd like to emphasize...

The EnterpriseDB Naming Poll
----------------------------
To those who haven't gone to the poll at postgres.enterprisedb.com, I'd
encourage you to do so. A freely available self-selected poll is a good
measurement approximation that is at least as good as the 100+ emails in
this thread.

I'm really not sure why, when invited to vote, people would stay away from
this poll. Isn't it the simplest way to get a quick view of how the people
in the discussion feel? Of course it's not scientifically and statistically
significant. It's an indicator, that's all. Just like the rest of this email
thread. If there's any concern about EnterpriseDB stuffing the vote, I
assure you that we simply put it up and left it at that.

Commercial Benefit
------------------
EnterpriseDB will receive zero commercial benefit from the name change.
Command Prompt may or may not. But none of this has anything to do with my
opinion on this topic. EnterpriseDB has already taken the position that we
wish to use Postgres in the name of the distribution we promote, and we have
moved forward with that. I don't believe there will be any problem *or* any
advantage if PostgreSQL/Postgres changes its name or not. I assure you all
that my motivation is simply to make a better, simpler, more pronounceable
name that doesn't call attention to a feature that is 10 years old.

Non-English Groups
------------------
I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the non-English
PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this proposal mentioned
that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his (Spanish)
perspective.

Summary
-------
My take on the matter (one man's opinion, but based I think on reasonably
objective observation) is that there is a majority of support for the end
result of changing the name, and significant disagreement about timing and
implementation. To me, that suggests the need for a small task force to
develop an implementation strategy and plan. EnterpriseDB would be happy to
provide resources to help on this front.

I hope this is helpful.

    -- Andy




On 9/2/07 8:19 AM, "Stefan Kaltenbrunner" <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc> wrote:

> Jonah H. Harris wrote:
>> On 9/1/07, Jan Wieck <JanWieck@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I could get over it, if this topic as well as the ugly Postgre sh*t it
>>> causes as a side effect would ever stop popping up. But it seems to me
>>> however often we "get over it", the problem only submerges to pop up
>>> again for the next release. Could it be that "getting over it" is kinda
>>> like playing ostrich - AGAIN, and that the numerous times we "got over
>>> it" only made the situation worse by reinforcing a mistake made long ago?
>>
>> I agree.
>>
>>> I suggest we someday stop "getting over it" and instead "get done with
>>> it". Because rest assured, otherwise it'll be back again ... and again.
>>
>> Again, I agree.  Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it;
>> a seemingly continual trend in the Postgres community whether it's
>> feature or business-related.  Ignoring a problem does not make it
>> disappear.
>
> same goes for ignoring problems the move might cause - like we had
> several of the large communities (french,italian and japanese) already
> objecting for a switch like that hurting them.
> And one other aspect is very much a problem too - we have WAY less
> control over a number of key postgres.* domains (postgres.jp is not
> registered, postgres.eu is registered to some weird place as is say
> postgres.at or postgres.us).
> And I suspect this is only the tip of the iceberg of related problems.
>
>
>>
>> Throughout this discussion, it seems like the majority of people
>> against the name change, with the exception of those from Greenplum
>> and EnterpriseDB, are those who have a financial stake in it.  And, as
>> JD suggested that EnterpriseDB's brand could be strengthened by the
>> name change, I just wanted to say that EnterpriseDB has never
>> suggested, in any way, that its community members should support the
>> Postgres name.  It is my own personal opinion that Postgres is a
>> better name.
>
> it might be a better name(or not) but a switch like that involves much
> more than simply saying "oh this is our new name" - I'm fairly convinced
> that playing games with our name will hurt us (and the active community
> at a large) for a while in a period where postgresql is gaining insight
> into a lot of places that it had not before and I'm not sure that
> changing names after years of years of having another will give
> confidence to (management style) people.
>
>>
>> I understand the valid concerns made by the Postgres user groups and
>> by Gabriele Bartolini over printed PostgreSQL stuff like shirts and
>> materials.  Trust me, it *will* be fine to distribute them until they
>> run out.  Perhaps a lot of people here haven't been on eBay lately,
>> because collectible IT stuff goes quickly.  No one will have a problem
>> accepting a PostgreSQL t-shirt if the name changes to Postgres.
>
> well those people invested a lot of personal time and money into all
> that stuff (and I'm sure all that attended say pgday.it will fully
> agree) and either way you phrase it it will cost them money and time to
> come up with replacement merchandising.
> This is time and money invested from people on there own pocket not
> employed or supported by one of the dedicated postgresql companies or
> being payed to work on postgresql full time so you are actually asking a
> lot for here.
>
>
> Stefan

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



- --On Saturday, September 01, 2007 18:34:49 -0400 Jan Wieck
<JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
wrote:


> Do you have any clue how many countless hours of useless discussion this name
> has cost us already? Unproductive hours that community members could
> otherwise have spent doing something useful. And I guarantee you, this
> nonsense will continue as long as the community as a whole is clinging to the
> situation as it is, driven by the fear factor you and others are using to
> encourage resisting change.

Yet you are *still* driven to fuel the debate, even though *three* foreign
language user groups, including probably our *largest* community of users
(Tatsuo and JPUG) have explicitly stated that they do *not* want to see the
name change ...

... wouldn't patch review to get 8.3 out the door be a much more productive use
of your time?  Like, is anyone saying you *can't* use Postgres as a suitable
name when talking about it?

... its funny how the chief argument for change (difficult to pronounce)
doesn't seem to affect either the Japanese, French or Italian communities ...
in fact, I'd almost say that the whole drive is being pushed by "da English",
or those that would derive an immediate marketing (and, at the same time,
financial) benefit to seeing such a change come to pass (which, again, tend to
be "da English") ...

And of course, nobody who is pushing for this are even thinking of the myriad
of projects out there that actually *use* the PostgreSQL name in some form or
another, in either product name, or marketing materials ... but, of course,
that doesn't affect you, cause its not *your* money being flushed down the
drain ...

PostgreSQL is the *formal name*, while Postgres is the *trade name* ... call it
whichever you want, people will know what you are talking about ... get over it.

- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Jan Wieck wrote:
> We don't have the choice of doing nothing, because not changing back to
> Postgres means you have to accept Postgre. And that's not exactly
> "nothing" to me. It turns my guts upside down, but it is what seems
> logically our name, so it has every right to be officially accepted.

If we do nothing and "Postgre" continues to become a defacto standard
name, people could add a QL feature so "Postgre's QL" could justify
the current pronunciation and domain names.  :-)

Jan Wieck wrote:
> We don't have the choice of doing nothing, because not changing back to
> Postgres means you have to accept Postgre. And that's not exactly
> "nothing" to me. It turns my guts upside down, but it is what seems
> logically our name, so it has every right to be officially accepted.

If we do nothing and "Postgre" continues to become a defacto standard
name, people could add a QL feature so "Postgre's QL" could justify
the current pronunciation and domain names.  :-)

>> Non-English Groups
>> ------------------
>> I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the non-English
>> PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this proposal mentioned
>> that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his (Spanish)
>> perspective.
>
> Yes but the current Spanish community versus the current Italian, French
> and Japanese communities is a different matter in terms of size and
> activity.

You're putting this as if there had been an official vote against the change
by the Italian, French and Japanese communities. This is not the case -
or at least I'm sure it's not the case for the Italian community, which I'm part
of.

I'd say core should vote: if they don't do anything now the topic will come up
every 6 months from now on. If they vote the rest of us will accept any outcome
(except postgre ;).

After reading the different arguments, personally, now I'd go with Postgres,
low-profile change, not at a major release and - as Gabriele suggested - with
some heads-up time ahead for the community (so nobody does a conference with the
wrong title because they didn't know).


Bye,
Chris.

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Andy Astor wrote:
>> Commercial Benefit
>> ------------------
>> EnterpriseDB will receive zero commercial benefit from the name change.
>
> All due respect Andy but that is simply not true. You have EnterpriseDB
> Postgres, there is name correlation. That is business value. You know
> better.

If that was the aim we would have branded it as "EnterpriseDB
PostgreSQL" from the outset. At the time that was decided this
reincarnation of the topic was far in the future so there was no reason
for us to suspect a possible name change.

/D

Jan Wieck wrote:
> Nah, that is just laziness on my side. And I'm only a 6'1'' european
> bloke.

Oh? you look taller in real life. Or maybe I'm shrinking.

> Maybe I should change the spelling to Yann when I apply for
> citizenship?

:-)

> We don't have the choice of doing nothing, because not changing back to
> Postgres means you have to accept Postgre. And that's not exactly
> "nothing" to me. It turns my guts upside down, but it is what seems
> logically our name, so it has every right to be officially accepted.

Damn you and your logic!! You're right of course, but it doesn't mean I
have to like it :-)

/D

Dave Page wrote:
> If that was the aim we would have branded it as "EnterpriseDB
> PostgreSQL" from the outset.

Or "EnterpriSQL", along with flaming customers who say "Enterpri".

IMHO the only reason we tolerate PostgreSQL is we're so numb to it.

To our execs, customers, and competitors "PostgreSQL" is just
as absurd as "EnterpriSQL".

Andy Astor escribió:

> Non-English Groups
> ------------------
> I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the non-English
> PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this proposal mentioned
> that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his (Spanish)
> perspective.

One thing to note, though, is that we don't have as much activity as the
other groups.  In particular we haven't produced any swag with the
PostgreSQL name, or even anything as a "PostgreSQL Day".

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

Quite a long thread, this. My full support for the idea of taking it
into an online poll and perhaps having a comment feature so people
could leave their rationale.

FWIW, everyone I have ever spoken to calls it Postgres. They always
write PostgreSQL, with the correct spelling. I am in Asia and work
with people from all over the world.

As for Google, I think people misunderstand. It works through
references and semantic interpolations in the background. If
"postgres.org" becomes the *official* domain name and the site
mentions both postgres and postgresql in its header, it'll be a cinch
for Google to associate all the legacy sites talking about
"postgresql" with the new shorter name. So using search engines' stash
as an argument for or against the name change doesn't hold any water.
Just look at the name changes in other DB or software camps.

Shanx

On Sep 2, 2007, at 5:54 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Andy Astor escribió:
>
>> Non-English Groups
>> ------------------
>> I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the non-
>> English
>> PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this proposal
>> mentioned
>> that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his (Spanish)
>> perspective.
>
> One thing to note, though, is that we don't have as much activity
> as the
> other groups.  In particular we haven't produced any swag with the
> PostgreSQL name, or even anything as a "PostgreSQL Day".

Again, we need to quit worrying about material that's been printed.
There's no reason to throw existing stuff out. And it seems a big
part of the argument from the foreign groups centers around marketing
material.

Pronouncibility for English speakers is a *HUGE* problem with the
current name. Why doesn't that exist for other languages? Because
it's a foreign name to begin with! Would Americans care one wit if
Mitsubishi was instead called Samsung? No, because they'd just learn
how to pronounce the name (yes, I know that's an inaccurate example,
but I had to pick another Japanese name everyone knows how to
pronounce).

At *worst*, Postgres is just an un-pronouncible in a foreign tongue
as PostgreSQL is; but I'll bet that in many languages Postgres is
going to be better, just like in English.
--
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        decibel@decibel.org
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

On Monday 3 September 2007 06:55, Gabriele Bartolini wrote:
> P.S.: Chris, do you really want to buy 10 shirts? :)

I think it would be cool to offer swag at conference that came from different parts of the community at a single booth
:-)

Robert

2007-09-02_22:14:43-0400 Shashank Tripathi <shashank.tripathi@gmail.com>:

> FWIW, everyone I have ever spoken to calls it Postgres.

So if the name changes, it will be alright if everyone else continues to
call it PostgreSQL.

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

Gabriele Bartolini escribió:

> Also, I am not aware of any Spanish community at the moment - actually
> nobody from Spain ever took part to the organisation of PGDay and the
> European Group or even marginally got involved.

Yeah, people from Spain is scarce.  When we say "the spanish community"
what we actually mean is "the spanish-speaking community", which
includes Latin America.  A lot of them have never travelled outside
their own countries, let alone Europe.  There is people from Spain in
there too but not very much, it seems.

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

Jim Nasby escribió:

> Pronouncibility for English speakers is a *HUGE* problem with the current
> name. Why doesn't that exist for other languages? Because it's a foreign
> name to begin with!

Actually, it is a problem in spanish too.  Postgres even sounds like a
regular word, and is easily pronounceable; PostgreSQL is just a weird
construct and not many people know what to do with it (except mashing it
into something else for saying out loud).

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

On 9/3/07, Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com> wrote:
> 2007-09-02_22:14:43-0400 Shashank Tripathi <shashank.tripathi@gmail.com>:
>
> > FWIW, everyone I have ever spoken to calls it Postgres.
>
> So if the name changes, it will be alright if everyone else continues to
> call it PostgreSQL.

Having used <whatevertheheckyouwannacallit> since the early 90s, and
the days pre-SQL with Quel, I've always called it Postgres, everyone
I've run into in the commercial/federal world who uses it calls it
Postgres. I've seen multiple people comment on how verbally it is
called Postgres, but in writing it's called PostgreSQL. Is it really
that hard to understand that this is a major issue among the
non-technical?

To put it quite bluntly, I've never been stopped from using Postgres
by a technical person; it has always been a manager. Often it involves
long winded explanations of why he's never heard of it, where it came
from, and sometimes, why it has a dumb (yes, dumb) name.

Every time I write anything, I have to go back and make sure I used to
dumb name, and not the one that makes sense. Today, in 2007, nobody is
going to suddenly assume that we don't support SQL, and while a
majority of the databases in the open source world are burdened with
SQL in their name, this isn't true in the commercial world:

  * Oracle
  * Sybase
  * DB/2
  * SQL Server
  * Teradata

That's what people call them in the "open" world outside an
echo-chamber. At some point, they might say "Oracle 10g", though I've
never heard anyone say "DB/2 UDB", and truthfully never hear anyone
say "Sybase" in any form any more.

The argument about issues in other languages are moot.
Postgres/PostgreSQL are vaguely English words, and will always be
foreign to someone in Japan, regardless of which you choose. Extra
care will be taken inversely proportional to the lack of care in the
English-speaking world.
Last I looked around, we're the only community having this confusion
and discussion, which should tell you more than any one person's
opinion that it will continue to occur, over and over, until something
is done about it.

Better now than later.

Chris
--
| Christopher Petrilli
| petrilli@gmail.com

1. most people would rather see the name changed, and that
2. most people want to ensure that we do the change thoughtfully and correctly.
   

Ciao Andy,

Non-English Groups
------------------
I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the non-English
PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this proposal mentioned
that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his (Spanish)
perspective.

If you carefully read my post, I was not objecting the change of the name itself, for which I leave myself to a democratic decision (I even suggested the core team to take this decision).

I personally agree that "Postgres" sounds heaps better than "PostgreSQL" in Italian - we discussed this during PGDay too. And that's the name that people normally use to refer to it in Italy. I am sure that's the same issue for the latin speaking countries (including Spanish, French and Portuguese), but that does not mean that a name change is required.

As you can see, from a purely language based point of view, you get no objections from me: "Postgres" is better than "PostgreSQL". But you can't ignore the communities problems that - at least in the short term - we will face. I believe that's a bit disrispectful and it cannot be left to the case.

Also, I am not aware of any Spanish community at the moment - actually nobody from Spain ever took part to the organisation of PGDay and the European Group or even marginally got involved.

I am objecting the way this change will eventually occur. It must be planned and it must be promoted, because it takes time to re-organise everything, and I believe:

1) this is morally *due* to the national communities (yes, I think it is the least that can be done)
2) this looks way more *professional* at the eyes of the companies

Thank you.

Ciao,
Gabriele

P.S.: Chris, do you really want to buy 10 shirts? :)

>Ciao Andy,
>
>Non-English Groups
>> ------------------
>> I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the
>non-English
>> PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this
>proposal
>> mentioned
>> that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his
>(Spanish)
>> perspective.
>>
>
>If you carefully read my post, I was not objecting the change of
>the name
>itself, for which I leave myself to a democratic decision (I even
>suggested
>the core team to take this decision).
>
>I personally agree that "Postgres" sounds heaps better than
>"PostgreSQL" in
>Italian - we discussed this during PGDay too. And that's the name
>that
>people normally use to refer to it in Italy. I am sure that's the
>same issue
>for the latin speaking countries (including Spanish, French and
>Portuguese),
>but that does not mean that a name change is required.
>
>As you can see, from a purely language based point of view, you
>get no
>objections from me: "Postgres" is better than "PostgreSQL". But
>you can't
>ignore the communities problems that - at least in the short term -
> we will
>face. I believe that's a bit disrispectful and it cannot be left
>to the
>case.
>
>Also, I am not aware of any Spanish community at the moment -
>actually
>nobody from Spain ever took part to the organisation of PGDay and
>the
>European Group or even marginally got involved.
>
>I am objecting the way this change will eventually occur. It must
>be planned
>and it must be promoted, because it takes time to re-organise
>everything,
>and I believe:
>
>1) this is morally *due* to the national communities (yes, I think
>it is the
>least that can be done)
>2) this looks way more *professional* at the eyes of the companies
>
>Thank you.
>
>Ciao,
>Gabriele

I agree with you. But I still think we could change the name with
minor impact...

 soon: make postgres an "officially" blessed alternative
 name

 some point in the future (with proper notice to the community):
 declared postgres to be the preferred name

> P.S.: Chris, do you really want to buy 10 shirts? :)

If they name changes and you still have t-shirts left, yes, I'll buy
10 :)

Bye,
Chris.

>> P.S.: Chris, do you really want to buy 10 shirts? :)
>
>I think it would be cool to offer swag at conference that came
>from different parts of the community at a single booth :-)

Yes!
I'd love to get a japanese shirt with the turtle ;)

Bye,
Chris.

On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 04:02:27PM +0200, Chris Mair wrote:
>
> >> P.S.: Chris, do you really want to buy 10 shirts? :)
> >
> >I think it would be cool to offer swag at conference that came
> >from different parts of the community at a single booth :-)
>
> Yes!
> I'd love to get a japanese shirt with the turtle ;)

Those of use that have them consider them VIP only for non-japanese ;-)

//Magnus

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Dave Page wrote:
> >
> > Isn't that akin to you declaring that Jan with a hard J is an acceptable way for people to refer to you, despite
thefact that you're a 6' 3" European bloke, and not a woman call Janet? 
> >
> > I think we should change to Postgres or do nothing. Postgre is absolutely horrendous imho.
>
> Although I don't want to change the name. I agree that Postre is pretty
> horrendous.

Oh, and that e needs an accent, Postgre' (Post-gray)

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Andy Astor escribi?:
>
> > Non-English Groups
> > ------------------
> > I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the non-English
> > PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this proposal mentioned
> > that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his (Spanish)
> > perspective.
>
> One thing to note, though, is that we don't have as much activity as the
> other groups.  In particular we haven't produced any swag with the
> PostgreSQL name, or even anything as a "PostgreSQL Day".

Agreed, but basing a name change on swag value seems unwise.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > Non-English Groups
> > ------------------
> > I've carefully read all the objections, including those of the non-English
> > PG organizations. But I don't believe anyone against this proposal mentioned
> > that Alvaro strongly supported the name change from his (Spanish)
> > perspective.
>
> Yes but the current Spanish community versus the current Italian, French
> and Japanese communities is a different matter in terms of size and
> activity.

Joshua, it is hard to gauge the foreign communities when there are only
a handful active in this discussion.  I would guess there is as much
variance in those communities as in the English-speaking community.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Oh, one more thing.  I think it is illustrative to look at the areas we
_didn't_ change when we went from "Postgres95" to "PostgreSQL":  the
super-user name and the backend binary name.  Those were kept as
"postgres", and I remember no questions about why those are "postgres".

What that means to me is that "Postgres" was easily associates with
"PostgreSQL", and if we change our name to "Postgres", "PostgreSQL" will
still be easily associates with the project, so perhaps we don't need to
change the name of the download binaries or postgresql.conf.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Bruce Momjian escribió:
> Oh, one more thing.  I think it is illustrative to look at the areas we
> _didn't_ change when we went from "Postgres95" to "PostgreSQL":  the
> super-user name and the backend binary name.  Those were kept as
> "postgres", and I remember no questions about why those are "postgres".

Well, that's easy: those correspond to "postgresql" truncated to 8 chars ;-)

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

I have downloaded the Advocacy email archive for August and September
and looked at all emails with the subject "naming".  I read each email
and totalled the opinions of all the posters.  Of course, this is not
scientific but it does represent everyone on advocacy who felt the need
to comment on the thread.

The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".  The
number who favored "PostgresQL" were minimal.  If you have additions or
corrections, please email me privately and I will repost the list.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


PostgreSQL (15 total)
----------
Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
Brian Hurt <bhurt@janestcapital.com>
Dawid Kuroczko <qnex42@gmail.com>
Gevik Babakhani <pgdev@xs4all.nl>
Gevik Babakhani <pgdev@xs4all.nl>
Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume@lelarge.info>
Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>
Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com>
Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com>
Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com>
Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc>
Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@postgresql.org>


Postgres (30 total)
--------
Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
Andy Astor <andy.astor@enterprisedb.com>
Bob Zurek <bob.zurek@enterprisedb.com>
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Chris Mair <chris@1006.org>
Christopher Petrilli <petrilli@gmail.com>
Dave Page <dpage@postgresql.org>
Derek Rodner <derek.rodner@enterprisedb.com>
Federico <rotellaro@gmail.com>
Gabriele Bartolini <gabriele.bartolini@gmail.com>
Gavin M. Roy <gmr@myyearbook.com>
Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>
Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>
Greg Smith <gsmith@gregsmith.com>
Harald Armin Massa <haraldarminmassa@gmail.com>
Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
Jim Nasby (Decibel!) <decibel@decibel.org>
Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com>
Jonah H. Harris <jonah.harris@gmail.com>
Liam O'Duibhir <liamod@fast.fujitsu.com.au>
Luke Lonergan <LLonergan@greenplum.com>
Ned Lilly <ned@nedscape.com>
Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Raymond O'Donnell <rod@iol.ie>
Robert Bernier <robert.bernier5@sympatico.ca>
Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com>
Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com>
Roth, Gabrielle <gabrielle.roth@xo.com>
Shane Ambler <pgsql@Sheeky.Biz>


--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 01:20:38PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> I have downloaded the Advocacy email archive for August and September
> and looked at all emails with the subject "naming".  I read each email
> and totalled the opinions of all the posters.  Of course, this is not
> scientific but it does represent everyone on advocacy who felt the need
> to comment on the thread.
>
> The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".  The
> number who favored "PostgresQL" were minimal.  If you have additions or
> corrections, please email me privately and I will repost the list.

+1 for changing to Postgres, and including mine, that's 12 unique
opinions for keeping PostgreSQL, 29 for changing it.

Cheers,
David.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> PostgreSQL (15 total)
> ----------
> Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
> Brian Hurt <bhurt@janestcapital.com>
> Dawid Kuroczko <qnex42@gmail.com>
> Gevik Babakhani <pgdev@xs4all.nl>
> Gevik Babakhani <pgdev@xs4all.nl>
> Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume@lelarge.info>
> Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
> Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
> Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
> Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>
> Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com>
> Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com>
> Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com>
> Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc>
> Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@postgresql.org>
>
>
> Postgres (30 total)
> --------
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
> Andy Astor <andy.astor@enterprisedb.com>
> Bob Zurek <bob.zurek@enterprisedb.com>
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
> Chris Mair <chris@1006.org>
> Christopher Petrilli <petrilli@gmail.com>
> Dave Page <dpage@postgresql.org>
> Derek Rodner <derek.rodner@enterprisedb.com>
> Federico <rotellaro@gmail.com>
> Gabriele Bartolini <gabriele.bartolini@gmail.com>
> Gavin M. Roy <gmr@myyearbook.com>
> Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>
> Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>
> Greg Smith <gsmith@gregsmith.com>
> Harald Armin Massa <haraldarminmassa@gmail.com>
> Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
> Jim Nasby (Decibel!) <decibel@decibel.org>
> Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com>
> Jonah H. Harris <jonah.harris@gmail.com>
> Liam O'Duibhir <liamod@fast.fujitsu.com.au>
> Luke Lonergan <LLonergan@greenplum.com>
> Ned Lilly <ned@nedscape.com>
> Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
> Raymond O'Donnell <rod@iol.ie>
> Robert Bernier <robert.bernier5@sympatico.ca>
> Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com>
> Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com>
> Roth, Gabrielle <gabrielle.roth@xo.com>
> Shane Ambler <pgsql@Sheeky.Biz>
>
>
> --
>   Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
>   EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com
>
>   + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend

--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778        AIM: dfetter666
                              Skype: davidfetter

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> I have downloaded the Advocacy email archive for August and September
> and looked at all emails with the subject "naming".  I read each email
> and totalled the opinions of all the posters.  Of course, this is not
> scientific but it does represent everyone on advocacy who felt the need
> to comment on the thread.
>
> The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".  The
> number who favored "PostgresQL" were minimal.  If you have additions or
> corrections, please email me privately and I will repost the list.

Oops, I had a few duplicates in that list.  Here is the right one.
(Seems I need to use a database with unique constraints.)

This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.

Of course, this is not a vote on _how_ to implement the change.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


PostgreSQL (12 total)
----------
Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
Brian Hurt <bhurt@janestcapital.com>
Dawid Kuroczko <qnex42@gmail.com>
Gevik Babakhani <pgdev@xs4all.nl>
Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume@lelarge.info>
Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>
Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com>
Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc>
Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@postgresql.org>


Postgres (28 total)
--------
Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
Andy Astor <andy.astor@enterprisedb.com>
Bob Zurek <bob.zurek@enterprisedb.com>
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Chris Mair <chris@1006.org>
Christopher Petrilli <petrilli@gmail.com>
Dave Page <dpage@postgresql.org>
Derek Rodner <derek.rodner@enterprisedb.com>
Federico <rotellaro@gmail.com>
Gabriele Bartolini <gabriele.bartolini@gmail.com>
Gavin M. Roy <gmr@myyearbook.com>
Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>
Greg Smith <gsmith@gregsmith.com>
Harald Armin Massa <haraldarminmassa@gmail.com>
Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
Jim Nasby (Decibel!) <decibel@decibel.org>
Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com>
Jonah H. Harris <jonah.harris@gmail.com>
Liam O'Duibhir <liamod@fast.fujitsu.com.au>
Luke Lonergan <LLonergan@greenplum.com>
Ned Lilly <ned@nedscape.com>
Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Raymond O'Donnell <rod@iol.ie>
Robert Bernier <robert.bernier5@sympatico.ca>
Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com>
Roth, Gabrielle <gabrielle.roth@xo.com>
Shane Ambler <pgsql@Sheeky.Biz>

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 01:30:54PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > I have downloaded the Advocacy email archive for August and September
> > and looked at all emails with the subject "naming".  I read each email
> > and totalled the opinions of all the posters.  Of course, this is not
> > scientific but it does represent everyone on advocacy who felt the need
> > to comment on the thread.
> >
> > The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".  The
> > number who favored "PostgresQL" were minimal.  If you have additions or
> > corrections, please email me privately and I will repost the list.
>
> Oops, I had a few duplicates in that list.  Here is the right one.
> (Seems I need to use a database with unique constraints.)
>
> This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.
>
> Of course, this is not a vote on _how_ to implement the change.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask... can we now at least agree
to change the name to Postgres, stop debating that point, and start
thinking about *how* to change the name?
--
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        decibel@decibel.org
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

Decibel! wrote:
-- Start of PGP signed section.
> On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 01:30:54PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > I have downloaded the Advocacy email archive for August and September
> > > and looked at all emails with the subject "naming".  I read each email
> > > and totalled the opinions of all the posters.  Of course, this is not
> > > scientific but it does represent everyone on advocacy who felt the need
> > > to comment on the thread.
> > >
> > > The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".  The
> > > number who favored "PostgresQL" were minimal.  If you have additions or
> > > corrections, please email me privately and I will repost the list.
> >
> > Oops, I had a few duplicates in that list.  Here is the right one.
> > (Seems I need to use a database with unique constraints.)
> >
> > This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.
> >
> > Of course, this is not a vote on _how_ to implement the change.
>
> I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask... can we now at least agree
> to change the name to Postgres, stop debating that point, and start
> thinking about *how* to change the name?

Yea, I think that is a limb.  People have thrown all sort of ideas on
why/why not to make the change, so I think we need to give more time for
that.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 02:50:58PM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > Bruce Momjian escribi??:
> >> Oh, one more thing.  I think it is illustrative to look at the areas we
> >> _didn't_ change when we went from "Postgres95" to "PostgreSQL":  the
> >> super-user name and the backend binary name.  Those were kept as
> >> "postgres", and I remember no questions about why those are "postgres".
> >
> > Well, that's easy: those correspond to "postgresql" truncated to 8 chars ;-)
>
> Actually, on FreeBSD, super user is pgsql, not postgres ...

Speaking of which... is the maintainer someone in our community? It's
always drove me nuts that it's pgsql in FreeBSD, because if you try and
move the dump anywhere else it's a huge PITA. And you can't do a simple
search and replace because of plpgsql.
--
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        decibel@decibel.org
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 01:59:30PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Decibel! wrote:
> -- Start of PGP signed section.
> > On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 01:30:54PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > > I have downloaded the Advocacy email archive for August and September
> > > > and looked at all emails with the subject "naming".  I read each email
> > > > and totalled the opinions of all the posters.  Of course, this is not
> > > > scientific but it does represent everyone on advocacy who felt the need
> > > > to comment on the thread.
> > > >
> > > > The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".  The
> > > > number who favored "PostgresQL" were minimal.  If you have additions or
> > > > corrections, please email me privately and I will repost the list.
> > >
> > > Oops, I had a few duplicates in that list.  Here is the right one.
> > > (Seems I need to use a database with unique constraints.)
> > >
> > > This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.
> > >
> > > Of course, this is not a vote on _how_ to implement the change.
> >
> > I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask... can we now at least agree
> > to change the name to Postgres, stop debating that point, and start
> > thinking about *how* to change the name?
>
> Yea, I think that is a limb.  People have thrown all sort of ideas on
> why/why not to make the change, so I think we need to give more time for
> that.

Ok, well, at the least then we really need to focus discussion on
"Should we change the name" and quit worrying about how we'll actually
do it.
--
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        decibel@decibel.org
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

Hi,

On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 13:20 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> PostgreSQL (15 total)

Make it +1 for me.

Cheers,
--
Devrim GÜNDÜZ
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
Managed Services, Shared and Dedicated Hosting
Co-Authors: plPHP, ODBCng - http://www.commandprompt.com/

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



- --On Monday, September 03, 2007 12:39:28 -0400 Alvaro Herrera
<alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:

> Bruce Momjian escribió:
>> Oh, one more thing.  I think it is illustrative to look at the areas we
>> _didn't_ change when we went from "Postgres95" to "PostgreSQL":  the
>> super-user name and the backend binary name.  Those were kept as
>> "postgres", and I remember no questions about why those are "postgres".
>
> Well, that's easy: those correspond to "postgresql" truncated to 8 chars ;-)

Actually, on FreeBSD, super user is pgsql, not postgres ...

- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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- --On Monday, September 03, 2007 13:20:39 -0500 Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org>
wrote:

> Ok, well, at the least then we really need to focus discussion on
> "Should we change the name" and quit worrying about how we'll actually
> do it.

The other option is that EDB creates a Postgres community, GPLs the code and
puts it all into Subversion, and run it in parallel to the PostgreSQL community
... then everyone that wants to keep the status quo can stick around and
continue marketing and pushing PostgreSQL, and those that "want change" can
just move over to that new project ...

Now, *that* would be an interesting experiment ...


- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Hash: SHA1



- --On Monday, September 03, 2007 13:19:38 -0500 Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org>
wrote:

> Speaking of which... is the maintainer someone in our community? It's
> always drove me nuts that it's pgsql in FreeBSD, because if you try and
> move the dump anywhere else it's a huge PITA. And you can't do a simple
> search and replace because of plpgsql.

We just do a 'createuser' for postgres as superuser in those few times it
happens ... *shrug*  Its a simple command, comes with all installs of
postgresql :)

- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Hi,

On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 13:20 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".

So ~ 45 votes among hundreds of subscribers? Even this low number proves
that this discussion is useless, IMHO. -- let's spend our time for
better things. Will this change make PostgreSQL faster? Or will it add a
big major feature that will attract thousands of new users? I don't
think so.

Regards,
--
Devrim GÜNDÜZ
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
Managed Services, Shared and Dedicated Hosting
Co-Authors: plPHP, ODBCng - http://www.commandprompt.com/

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.

Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
subset of the community most interested in this change and least
interested in the ensuing costs.

            regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.
>
> Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
> subset of the community most interested in this change and least
> interested in the ensuing costs.

It seems there were a significant number of people with swag who will
pay the cost somehow.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On 9/3/07, Devrim GÜNDÜZ <devrim@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> So ~ 45 votes among hundreds of subscribers? Even this low number proves
> that this discussion is useless, IMHO. -- let's spend our time for
> better things. Will this change make PostgreSQL faster? Or will it add a
> big major feature that will attract thousands of new users? I don't
> think so.

On the other hand, if advocacy continues to stumble, perhaps there
will be no one to give a damn about, "big major feature X".

I agree, there is a lot of discussion here that may lead to nowhere.
Nevertheless, it's a discussion that needs to happen sooner-or-later.

--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation            | fax: 732.331.1301
33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor            | jharris@enterprisedb.com
Iselin, New Jersey 08830            | http://www.enterprisedb.com/

Tom,

With all respect, I think the -advocacy group is *very* interested in the
ensuing costs, and is willing to pitch in.

As I see it, -advocacy is the group most interested in the public face of
PostgreSQL, and is very appropriate for this kind of debate.

andy


On 9/3/07 3:43 PM, "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
>> This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.
>
> Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
> subset of the community most interested in this change and least
> interested in the ensuing costs.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
>        subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your
>        message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
>

Devrim GÜNDÜZ wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 13:20 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".
>
> So ~ 45 votes among hundreds of subscribers? Even this low number proves
> that this discussion is useless, IMHO. -- let's spend our time for
> better things. Will this change make PostgreSQL faster? Or will it add a
> big major feature that will attract thousands of new users? I don't
> think so.

On that basis we'd never be able to make *any* decisions.

/D

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
>> This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.
>
> Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
> subset of the community most interested in this change and least
> interested in the ensuing costs.

Eh? They're the very people who spend time raising cash and designing,
sourcing, purchasing and selling the swag that will be affected.

/D

Them who vote are them that make the decisions for them that don't. That's
how it works. The fact that <50% of the American population vote for its
president (with apologies for the US-centric view) doesn't make the vote
invalid or the group voting inappropriate.

I suggest we all just sit back and respect each others' views and opinions,
rather than trashing the very idea of the discussion.

Andy


On 9/3/07 3:39 PM, "Devrim GÜNDÜZ" <devrim@CommandPrompt.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 13:20 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> The totals are 15 for no change and 30 for a change to "Postgres".
>
> So ~ 45 votes among hundreds of subscribers? Even this low number proves
> that this discussion is useless, IMHO. -- let's spend our time for
> better things. Will this change make PostgreSQL faster? Or will it add a
> big major feature that will attract thousands of new users? I don't
> think so.
>
> Regards,

On 9/3/07, Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org> wrote:
> The other option is that EDB creates a Postgres community, GPLs the code and
> puts it all into Subversion, and run it in parallel to the PostgreSQL community
> ... then everyone that wants to keep the status quo can stick around and
> continue marketing and pushing PostgreSQL, and those that "want change" can
> just move over to that new project ...

Was that a joke or have you gone completely off the deep-end?!?

--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation            | fax: 732.331.1301
33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor            | jharris@enterprisedb.com
Iselin, New Jersey 08830            | http://www.enterprisedb.com/

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
>> subset of the community most interested in this change and least
>> interested in the ensuing costs.

> It seems there were a significant number of people with swag who will
> pay the cost somehow.

That's adopting exactly the view I thought it was, that only directly
marketing-related costs matter.  Again, this seems to be considering
only advocacy-related concerns.

I'll confine my reply to one point: do you have any idea what will
happen if I try to change the default PGDATA location on Red Hat
from /var/lib/pgsql to something else?

            regards, tom lane

On 9/3/07, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> That's adopting exactly the view I thought it was, that only directly
> marketing-related costs matter.  Again, this seems to be considering
> only advocacy-related concerns.

No.

> I'll confine my reply to one point: do you have any idea what will
> happen if I try to change the default PGDATA location on Red Hat
> from /var/lib/pgsql to something else?

Um, I thought it was already briefly discussed that directories and
config file names could and should remain the same?

--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation            | fax: 732.331.1301
33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor            | jharris@enterprisedb.com
Iselin, New Jersey 08830            | http://www.enterprisedb.com/

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
> >> subset of the community most interested in this change and least
> >> interested in the ensuing costs.
>
> > It seems there were a significant number of people with swag who will
> > pay the cost somehow.
>
> That's adopting exactly the view I thought it was, that only directly
> marketing-related costs matter.  Again, this seems to be considering
> only advocacy-related concerns.
>
> I'll confine my reply to one point: do you have any idea what will
> happen if I try to change the default PGDATA location on Red Hat
> from /var/lib/pgsql to something else?

As I said about the username and binary name still being "postgres", I
would think PostgreSQL (pgsql) would be fine to remain unchanged in many
places.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

I don't follow your logic.  Most people on here earn their living with
Postgres in one way or another, and a large percentage of the vocal
people on this list are very active in promotion.  Who would see the
direct cost more than those who are spending the money and time in
pushing higher adoption rates and advocating to attract users?  In
addition, who better to have this conversation than those who have an
active interest in the future marketing direction of the application?

Gavin

On 9/3/07, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.
>
> Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
> subset of the community most interested in this change and least
> interested in the ensuing costs.
>
>                         regards, tom lane
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
>        subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your
>        message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
>

This isn't an EDB push, even tough several EDB people have advocated
the change.  Bringing the project up to the times, technology wise
wouldn't be a bad idea, imho. Command Prompt already maintains the
technical end of what you're proposing, though not in the interest of
carrying a parallel community, afaik.

I haven't heard anyone interested in GPL'ing the code, and EDB would
have the least to gain from a GPL fork.  Your comments seem to be more
flame bait than anything else, along with the argument that FreeBSD
breaks the username standard so we shouldn't change the project name.

Gavin

On 9/3/07, Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
>
> - --On Monday, September 03, 2007 13:20:39 -0500 Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Ok, well, at the least then we really need to focus discussion on
> > "Should we change the name" and quit worrying about how we'll actually
> > do it.
>
> The other option is that EDB creates a Postgres community, GPLs the code and
> puts it all into Subversion, and run it in parallel to the PostgreSQL community
> ... then everyone that wants to keep the status quo can stick around and
> continue marketing and pushing PostgreSQL, and those that "want change" can
> just move over to that new project ...
>
> Now, *that* would be an interesting experiment ...
>
>
> - ----
> Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
> Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
> Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD)
>
> iD8DBQFG3FJL4QvfyHIvDvMRAh0AAKCiy/aKN/RtpiLJjb4l0bCtxyU4cgCght0h
> 8/T2YI+Gr9ad2F+iHl1DrqQ=
> =KfKA
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
>

On 9/3/2007 11:58 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Oh, one more thing.  I think it is illustrative to look at the areas we
> _didn't_ change when we went from "Postgres95" to "PostgreSQL":  the
> super-user name and the backend binary name.  Those were kept as
> "postgres", and I remember no questions about why those are "postgres".

More to the point, looking at our recommended upgrade strategy (use new
pg_dump against old Postmaster), wouldn't it be actually wise to somehow
encode the major version number into the installation directory? I mean
seriously, we didn't have a real problem ever, but what if some day the
new pg_dump against the old postmaster produces complete garbage ... and
the upgrade just wiped the data directory with an initdb?


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 Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 10:39:49PM +0300, Devrim G?ND?Z wrote:
> better things. Will this change make PostgreSQL faster? Or will it add a
> big major feature that will attract thousands of new users? I don't

Yes, it'll give us a name that's pronouncable and not confusing.
--
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        decibel@decibel.org
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

Hi,

On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 15:53 -0500, Decibel! wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 10:39:49PM +0300, Devrim G?ND?Z wrote:
> > better things. Will this change make PostgreSQL faster? Or will it
> add a
> > big major feature that will attract thousands of new users? I don't
>
> Yes, it'll give us a name that's pronouncable and not confusing.

So? :)

Cheers,
--
Devrim GÜNDÜZ
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
Managed Services, Shared and Dedicated Hosting
Co-Authors: plPHP, ODBCng - http://www.commandprompt.com/

I'm breaking my promise not to post in this thread, because I'm being
counted wrong.

On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 01:20:38PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> PostgreSQL (15 total)
> ----------
> Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>

I think you have completely misunderstood my point, which is not,
"Don't change the name," but rather, "If we're going to change the
name, we need a _plan_." I don't oppose changing the name as such.  I
oppose changing the name _now_, or _gradually_, or any of the other
go-small answers that have been proposed.  If we want to change the
name, then we need to design the name change in the same careful way
that we would expect new features to be designed.

(This lack of nuance is why I think the poll on the EnterpriseDB web
site is a bad one: it isn't a question of a specific proposal of how
or when to change the name, but merely whether we ought to.  If we're
going to do it, can we please have a poll on a serious and complete
proposal?)

A

--
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
Users never remark, "Wow, this software may be buggy and hard
to use, but at least there is a lot of code underneath."
        --Damien Katz

Tom Lane wrote:
>
> I'll confine my reply to one point: do you have any idea what will
> happen if I try to change the default PGDATA location on Red Hat
> from /var/lib/pgsql to something else?

This seems 100% orthogonal to the naming conversation.

Unless, perhaps Red Hat was in the middle of an
expensive migration to  /var/lib/PostgreSQL
that noone told their customers about.

If you wanted, a completely separate conversation could
be whether distros should convert various less common
short form (like pgsql) to some set of brand names - but
I think both the PostgreSQL and Postgres and even Postgre
advocates would say it's silly to rename pgsql to any
of those 3 terms.

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
>> This shows 70% in favor of a change to "Postgres", so far.
>
> Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
> subset of the community most interested in this change and least
> interested in the ensuing costs.

I think the community that most needs to be polled are
actually external to the community.   IMHO The people
most harmed by the non-intuitive name today are:

* IT Customers who have a problem with the Postgre they got
bundled with some CRM software they bought and need to
ask for help.

* Execs and sales people telling their customers that they're
selling products based on Postgre's QL.

* VC's wasting their time discussing pronunciation trivia
with startups looking for funding instead of discussing
the products and businesses of the startup.



I think -advocacy is indeed a better place than -hackers
to discuss it too.   As far as I can tell, no changes
discussed would touch the actual code.
No processes renamed.
No paths renamed.
No libraries renamed.
No variables renamed.

Note also, most proposals I've seen in the discussion
include both Postgres and PostgreSQL as acceptable terms
so the only place that really really needs to change
is the FAQ, and *gradually* the web site and docs.

Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> I'm breaking my promise not to post in this thread, because I'm being
> counted wrong.
>
> On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 01:20:38PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > PostgreSQL (15 total)
> > ----------
> > Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
>
> I think you have completely misunderstood my point, which is not,
> "Don't change the name," but rather, "If we're going to change the
> name, we need a _plan_." I don't oppose changing the name as such.  I
> oppose changing the name _now_, or _gradually_, or any of the other
> go-small answers that have been proposed.  If we want to change the
> name, then we need to design the name change in the same careful way
> that we would expect new features to be designed.
>
> (This lack of nuance is why I think the poll on the EnterpriseDB web
> site is a bad one: it isn't a question of a specific proposal of how
> or when to change the name, but merely whether we ought to.  If we're
> going to do it, can we please have a poll on a serious and complete
> proposal?)

As I understand it, the idea was to see if enough people want to
_explore_ a change, and then we can start discussing details.   I will
remove you from the vote list until I hear otherwise.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

I really struggle with the idea that changing the brand name mandates the
programmers/core team to propagate the brand name back into the PostgreSQL
source code or package structure.

I would be interested in hearing why someone might think that?

Regards,

Liam
_____________________________________________
Liam O'Duibhir - Programme Manager - Open Source Software
Fujitsu Australia Software Technology
14 Rodborough Road, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086
Tel: (61-2) 9452 9068 Fax: (61-2) 9975 3779
Mob: 0423 025 852 Email: LiamOD@fast.fujitsu.com.au
postgresql.fastware.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-advocacy-owner@postgresql.org [mailto:pgsql-advocacy-
> owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Tom Lane
> Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 6:00 AM
> To: Bruce Momjian
> Cc: PostgreSQL advocacy
> Subject: Re: [CORE] Re: [pgsql-advocacy] The naming question (Postgres vs
> PostgreSQL)
>
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Of course, that's 70% of -advocacy, which by nature is going to be the
> >> subset of the community most interested in this change and least
> >> interested in the ensuing costs.
>
> > It seems there were a significant number of people with swag who will
> > pay the cost somehow.
>
> That's adopting exactly the view I thought it was, that only directly
> marketing-related costs matter.  Again, this seems to be considering
> only advocacy-related concerns.
>
> I'll confine my reply to one point: do you have any idea what will
> happen if I try to change the default PGDATA location on Red Hat
> from /var/lib/pgsql to something else?
>
>             regards, tom lane
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?
>
>                http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq

Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> I think you have completely misunderstood my point, which is not,
> "Don't change the name," but rather, "If we're going to change the
> name, we need a _plan_." I don't oppose changing the name as such.  I
> oppose changing the name _now_, or _gradually_, or any of the other

Regardless of the intent and of the best efforts of core and
the entire community the name is changing _now_ and _gradually_.

Now - because even if it be decided in a fancy plan that the
name will change only after some date; people will begin adopt
adopting the new usage immediately after it's made official.

Gradually - because core doesn't control the world.   There
are thousands of times more powerpoints in various sales
organizations in thousands companies around the world that
will be refreshed at the leisure of the sales people.  Whether
core changes all of docs+web+comments-in-source in a day or
a month or a year or a decade; the real life usage of the
terms will take time to change.

Even if a plan says "burn all PostgreSQL swag", or "don't
say 'Postgres' without 'QL' until 9.2 is released" - in
reality the effect will start when a decision is made,
and be gradual.

> go-small answers that have been proposed.

I don't think "now" or "gradually" are "go-small".  In contrast
I think they recognize that the change is something bigger
than what the postgresql project has direct control over.

Ron Mayer wrote:
> Regardless of the intent and of the best efforts of core and
> the entire community the name is changing _now_ and _gradually_.

Jan says our name is already being changed to Postgre`.  I thought that
was pretty funny.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

2007-09-03_15:52:14-0400 Andy Astor <andy.astor@enterprisedb.com>:

> As I see it, -advocacy is the group most interested in the public face
> of PostgreSQL, and is very appropriate for this kind of debate.

Well, you could subtract me from that assessment.  It doesn't take much
to simply join a maillist.  I just stumbled into this list for purely
selfish reasons: I was looking for feedback on an article I was
submitting, and happened upon this discussion.  (I recieved none, BTW.)
I certainly do have an opinion on the subject, but I must be honest -
I'm really the last person who should have any say in the matter.  So
subtract me from the -advocacy group who should matter.  Anyone else
care to abrogate their authority?  Who _really_ stands to lose or gain
the most here?  Not me, I'll say that.

I still think the people best qualified to say what should be done are
the people who have demonstrably already done the most; and that would
core.  I'd also listen to the people who have been spending their own
time and money traveling, speaking, and otherwise hinging their
livelyhood on this project - but that's a much harder boundry to
delimit.  I don't think anyone would argue with a pronouncment from
core.  I think no matter what the decision, if it were made by any other
group, it would lack gravity, and lead to resentments.

I must say that it is at least funny to watch people getting frustrated
and sputtering while they try to rationalize irrational political
problems.

BTW, the best color is red.  Blue is stupid.

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

2007-09-03_15:55:09-0400 Andy Astor <andy.astor@enterprisedb.com>:

> Them who vote are them that make the decisions for them that
> don't. That's how it works. The fact that <50% of the American
> population vote for its president (with apologies for the US-centric
> view) doesn't make the vote invalid or the group voting inappropriate.

You can't vote for anarchy.  ;)

> I suggest we all just sit back and respect each others' views and
> opinions, rather than trashing the very idea of the discussion.

True that.

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

On 03/09/07, Christopher Petrilli <petrilli@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Every time I write anything, I have to go back and make sure I used to
> dumb name, and not the one that makes sense. Today, in 2007, nobody is
> going to suddenly assume that we don't support SQL, and while a
> majority of the databases in the open source world are burdened with
> SQL in their name, this isn't true in the commercial world:
>
>   * Oracle
>   * Sybase
>   * DB/2
>   * SQL Server
>   * Teradata
</snip>

If it's any consolation, DB2 (proper form - no slash) seems to be
burdened with a name that continues to suffer from branding confusion
with the defunct OS/2. Even IBMers get it wrong.

I don't expect they'll be changing the name, though.

--
Dan Scott
Laurentian University

2007-09-03_20:36:44-0400 Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com>:

> BTW, the best color is red.  Blue is stupid.

(...in the interest of pre-emptively dousing any flames, I'd just like
to say that this comment has nothing to do with any particular
products...  If it helps, reverse the colors..)

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

2007-09-03_16:53:20-0400 Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org>:

> Yes, it'll give us a name that's pronouncable and not confusing.

I would guess that the vast majority of communication about the product
is written, not spoken.

I think PostgreSQL looks better, and looks should matter more...  ;)

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

On Monday 03 September 2007 19:34, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Ron Mayer wrote:
> > Regardless of the intent and of the best efforts of core and
> > the entire community the name is changing _now_ and _gradually_.
>
> Jan says our name is already being changed to Postgre`.  I thought that
> was pretty funny.

Really? It's actually true. According to the google analytics report on
keywords that drive traffic to our site, the top four are:

postgresql    14%
postgres        7%
postgre        2%
postgre sql    1%

I should also bring up again the survey of postgresql community members where
we asked how people pronounced "PostgreSQL" the top four were:

post-gres-q-l        45%
postgres            30%
postgres-sequal    11%
post-gree            7%

As you can see from both cases, while the numbers are still on the lower end,
they are significant enough to show up clearly on the radar.  In fact, it
wouldn't suprise me if within the next year or two, postgree actually becomes
a more popular pronounciation than postgres-sequal; a lot of non-native
english speakers (Indians for example) see an obvious split between postgre
and sql in the name. For them postgre is no more wierd than postgres, so as
thier numbers grow as users of the software, expect to see thier
pronounciation more and more.

Personally I also think it is worth noting that of the 55% of community
members who do think the SQL is significant in the name, even they don't
agree on how it should be pronounced, but that's kind of a side issue.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

scrappy@hub.org ("Marc G. Fournier") writes:
> --On Monday, September 03, 2007 13:20:39 -0500 Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Ok, well, at the least then we really need to focus discussion on
>> "Should we change the name" and quit worrying about how we'll actually
>> do it.
>
> The other option is that EDB creates a Postgres community, GPLs the code and
> puts it all into Subversion, and run it in parallel to the PostgreSQL community
> ... then everyone that wants to keep the status quo can stick around and
> continue marketing and pushing PostgreSQL, and those that "want change" can
> just move over to that new project ...
>
> Now, *that* would be an interesting experiment ...

Ah, and I think that represents an interesting gedanken experiment as
to what proposal for change will get the wildest responses.

I'd sum that one up in two words:
  In
   and
  sane.
--
(format nil "~S@~S" "cbbrowne" "cbbrowne.com")
http://linuxdatabases.info/info/lisp.html
"Consistency  is  the  single  most important  aspect  of  *ideology.*
Reality is not nearly so consistent." - <cbbrowne@hex.net>

Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
>
> --On Monday, September 03, 2007 13:20:39 -0500 Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Ok, well, at the least then we really need to focus discussion on
>> "Should we change the name" and quit worrying about how we'll actually
>> do it.
>
> The other option is that EDB creates a Postgres community, GPLs the code and
> puts it all into Subversion, and run it in parallel to the PostgreSQL community
> ... then everyone that wants to keep the status quo can stick around and
> continue marketing and pushing PostgreSQL, and those that "want change" can
> just move over to that new project ...
>
> Now, *that* would be an interesting experiment ...

Won't happen - we use CVS, not Subversion.

;-)

Regards, Dave

Hi,

Bruce Momjian wrote:
 > I have downloaded the Advocacy email archive for August and September
 > and looked at all emails with the subject "naming".  I read each email
 > and totalled the opinions of all the posters.  Of course, this is not
 > scientific but it does represent everyone on advocacy who felt the
 > need to comment on the thread.

If that poll is still running: +1 for "Postgres", because Germans simply
fail to pronounce PostgreSQL. And I really hate the sound of post-gree,
which definitely *is* how most Germans abbreviate PostgreSQL.

And.. well, yes, also because it's Postgres-R and not PostgreSQL-R. ;-)

Regards

Markus

dpage@postgresql.org (Dave Page) writes:
> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>
>>
>> --On Monday, September 03, 2007 13:20:39 -0500 Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Ok, well, at the least then we really need to focus discussion on
>>> "Should we change the name" and quit worrying about how we'll actually
>>> do it.
>>
>> The other option is that EDB creates a Postgres community, GPLs the code and
>> puts it all into Subversion, and run it in parallel to the PostgreSQL community
>> ... then everyone that wants to keep the status quo can stick around and
>> continue marketing and pushing PostgreSQL, and those that "want change" can
>> just move over to that new project ...
>>
>> Now, *that* would be an interesting experiment ...
>
> Won't happen - we use CVS, not Subversion.
>
> ;-)

There's the part that *isn't* insane.

I believe CMD already has a Subversion repository tracking CVS, so
it's possible, albeit duplicative.

There's plenty of interest in figuring out the relative merits of
other SCMs, so the idea of having an alternate repository does have
merit.

I think there would be more value in having a *different* repository,
say using Git, Mercurial, Darcs, or such, so that there would be
better opportunity to do relative comparisons between them.

The license fork, on the other hand ;-).
--
(format nil "~S@~S" "cbbrowne" "cbbrowne.com")
http://linuxdatabases.info/info/
Epistemology in One Lesson
Reality ruthlessly selects out creatures that embody hypotheses too
inconsistent with reality. Our only choice is whether we participate
by being selected out, or (in Popper's great phrase) by "letting our
ideas die in our stead."
-- Mark Miller

All,

From my perspective, this whole discussion ... and the EDB survey, and the
headcount on this thread, etc., is pretty much entirely moot.  40+ people are
arguing about what color to paint the bike shed, and not one person has
picked up a brush.

When someone steps forward with a concrete proposal, some market research (and
no, unscientific surveys of the existing community is not market research),
and allocations of volunteer time to do the work necessary for a name change
(something I'd peg at 150 to 250 hours combined work over the next year),
this whole discussion is pretty darned pointless.

I'll point out, for example, that despite identifying needs to work on both
the PostgreSQL "about" pages and the 8.3 press release, it's still the 5-6
old regulars doing 100% of the actual writing and development.   And the old
regulars do NOT have the spare time to even think about a name change.

So Ron, Andy, others who are hot to change to Postgres: let's see a concrete
proposal, and one that comes up with new resources to do the new work.
Otherwise, let's terminate these threads and move on to some actual promoting
PostgreSQL.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Am Dienstag, 4. September 2007 18:16 schrieb Josh Berkus:
> From my perspective, this whole discussion ... and the EDB survey, and the
> headcount on this thread, etc., is pretty much entirely moot.  40+ people
> are arguing about what color to paint the bike shed, and not one person has
> picked up a brush.

Why would anyone pick up a brush if the color isn't decided yet?  I think it's
reasonable to assume that once the color is decided, brushes can be located
quickly.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

In the various threads I've seen several people who have said they
will step up and do parts of the work.  I will help on site design
issues.  Heck I've even gone as far as to show how the current header
image would look.  It obviously would need more work.  I think the
decision has to be made as to if there will be a change to get any
farther down the road.  If it's not going to happen, then any amount
of planning is a waste of time.

Is it too much, or the wrong question of Core to have a decision if
it's even possible/probable - should a good plan emerge on how to make
the change and who will do the work?

Gavin

On 9/4/07, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> All,
>
> From my perspective, this whole discussion ... and the EDB survey, and the
> headcount on this thread, etc., is pretty much entirely moot.  40+ people are
> arguing about what color to paint the bike shed, and not one person has
> picked up a brush.
>
> When someone steps forward with a concrete proposal, some market research (and
> no, unscientific surveys of the existing community is not market research),
> and allocations of volunteer time to do the work necessary for a name change
> (something I'd peg at 150 to 250 hours combined work over the next year),
> this whole discussion is pretty darned pointless.
>
> I'll point out, for example, that despite identifying needs to work on both
> the PostgreSQL "about" pages and the 8.3 press release, it's still the 5-6
> old regulars doing 100% of the actual writing and development.   And the old
> regulars do NOT have the spare time to even think about a name change.
>
> So Ron, Andy, others who are hot to change to Postgres: let's see a concrete
> proposal, and one that comes up with new resources to do the new work.
> Otherwise, let's terminate these threads and move on to some actual promoting
> PostgreSQL.
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
> PostgreSQL @ Sun
> San Francisco
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
>

On Tuesday 4 September 2007 12:16, Josh Berkus wrote:
> From my perspective, this whole discussion ... and the EDB survey, and the
> headcount on this thread, etc., is pretty much entirely moot.  40+ people are
> arguing about what color to paint the bike shed, and not one person has
> picked up a brush.

Please reread the posts. I did volunteer.

Am Dienstag, 4. September 2007 18:33 schrieb Gavin M. Roy:
> Is it too much, or the wrong question of Core to have a decision if
> it's even possible/probable

The core team appears to be about as much divided on this issue as those who
have spoken out on this mailing list.  If someone wants to drive this forward
then they will have to organize a campaign from below.  (Hint: This mailing
list is not quite low enough.)

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

On Tuesday 4 September 2007 12:58, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Am Dienstag, 4. September 2007 18:33 schrieb Gavin M. Roy:
> > Is it too much, or the wrong question of Core to have a decision if
> > it's even possible/probable
>
> The core team appears to be about as much divided on this issue as those who
> have spoken out on this mailing list.  If someone wants to drive this
forward
> then they will have to organize a campaign from below.  (Hint: This mailing
> list is not quite low enough.)


Which is why I suggested at the begining of this thread (which seems such as
long time ago) that we make a public announcement that we are installing a
poll on the postgresql.org website and ask for input from the general public.
The poll will help focus the community as well as increase the postgres
profile at there in the grand world too.

Well put, Peter.

Josh, we simply need to decide if we want to do it or not. Lots of people
have volunteered to help (including us), and the implementation project plan
can be a team effort of those people.

Andy

On 9/4/07 12:38 PM, "Peter Eisentraut" <peter_e@gmx.net> wrote:

> Am Dienstag, 4. September 2007 18:16 schrieb Josh Berkus:
>> From my perspective, this whole discussion ... and the EDB survey, and the
>> headcount on this thread, etc., is pretty much entirely moot.  40+ people
>> are arguing about what color to paint the bike shed, and not one person has
>> picked up a brush.
>
> Why would anyone pick up a brush if the color isn't decided yet?  I think it's
> reasonable to assume that once the color is decided, brushes can be located
> quickly.

Josh Berkus wrote:
> When someone steps forward with a concrete proposal

My concrete proposal.   I want one simple statement from
the project that it's OK for people to say both "Postgres"
and "Postgre" so every customer, salesguy, and executive I
deal with doesn't get stuck in a terminology flame-war
evertime they use the obvious short form of PostgreSQL.

Here's a patch.



% diff -c faqs.FAQ.html faqs.FAQ.proposed
*** faqs.FAQ.html    Tue Sep  4 10:59:34 2007
--- faqs.FAQ.proposed    Tue Sep  4 10:59:01 2007
***************
*** 232,238 ****     <h3 id="item1.1">1.1) What is PostgreSQL? How is it pronounced?</h3>
     <p>PostgreSQL is pronounced <i>Post-Gres-Q-L</i>, and is also sometimes
!     referred to as just <i>Postgres</i>. An audio file is available in     <a
href="http://www.postgresql.org/files/postgresql.mp3">MP3format</a> for     those would like to hear the
pronunciation.</p>

--- 232,242 ----     <h3 id="item1.1">1.1) What is PostgreSQL? How is it pronounced?</h3>
     <p>PostgreSQL is pronounced <i>Post-Gres-Q-L</i>, and is also sometimes
!     referred to as just <i>Postgres</i>.
!     The unofficial pronunciations of <i>Post-gree</a> and
!     <i>Post-gray</a> are also acceptable and should not be
!     objected to when used by new users or customers.
!     An audio file is available in     <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/files/postgresql.mp3">MP3 format</a> for
thosewould like to hear the pronunciation.</p> 

%

Hi Josh,

I think you are absolutely right. If there would be a name change, then
there would first need to be a plan of what needs to be done. It does
not make sense to start with looking volunteers, before it is known what
needs to be done, since the people who would like to help, would also
need to be able to do it.

But I do disagree with the 150-250 hours amount of work. That would be
about 6 weeks full time. I don't think it will happen that easily. I bet
150 hours is already spent on this thread. Of course, if you meant that
you would need to use that time on it, yes, that might be true. Though I
am not sure, even if that would be enough. From marketing perspective,
changing the name is probably one of the biggest tasks around.

Let's say you would have 10 interviews about the name change. You would
use 1 hour for preparing to them and 1 hour on them. That would already
be 20 hours. Then let's say that you are in 2 public events talking
about the topic. Travelling 15 hours per event, talking 1 hour each.
Together that would be already over 50 hours of your time, and I think
that you would need to do something else too.

Rgs,

Jussi



Josh Berkus wrote:
> All,
>
> >From my perspective, this whole discussion ... and the EDB survey, and the
> headcount on this thread, etc., is pretty much entirely moot.  40+ people are
> arguing about what color to paint the bike shed, and not one person has
> picked up a brush.
>
> When someone steps forward with a concrete proposal, some market research (and
> no, unscientific surveys of the existing community is not market research),
> and allocations of volunteer time to do the work necessary for a name change
> (something I'd peg at 150 to 250 hours combined work over the next year),
> this whole discussion is pretty darned pointless.
>
> I'll point out, for example, that despite identifying needs to work on both
> the PostgreSQL "about" pages and the 8.3 press release, it's still the 5-6
> old regulars doing 100% of the actual writing and development.   And the old
> regulars do NOT have the spare time to even think about a name change.
>
> So Ron, Andy, others who are hot to change to Postgres: let's see a concrete
> proposal, and one that comes up with new resources to do the new work.
> Otherwise, let's terminate these threads and move on to some actual promoting
> PostgreSQL.
>
>

Andy, Ron, Peter, etc.:

> Josh, we simply need to decide if we want to do it or not. Lots of
> people have volunteered to help (including us), and the implementation
> project plan can be a team effort of those people.

Ok, that didn't come out right.

To restate:

The next step of this process is NOT a poll.  The next step of "should we
do it or not" is a rough draft of a plan which shows all of the "costs" of
changing the name and how we're going to meet them, as well as the Pros
and Cons of changing vs. not changing.

There is no point in even talking further about changing the name of the
project if we don't have the resources to do the change.  There's
particularly no point in doing a survey of people's uninformed opinions
about the issue; community members need to see a cost-benefit analysis
*first,* not after a vote.

In other words, before we take a vote on whether the bike shed should be
red, we should first check to see if we can afford red paint.

Such a proposal should also include other options like Ron Mayer's very
sensible 20-minute solution (e.g. "Postgres and Postgre are acceptable
alternate names").


--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

2007-09-04_12:16:42-0400 Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>:

> So Ron, Andy, others who are hot to change to Postgres

Umm, you've got me on the wrong side of the issue.  I've also said I
don't think my opinion should really count anyway..

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160


      <p>PostgreSQL is pronounced <i>Post-Gres-Q-L</i>, and is also sometimes
!     referred to as just <i>Postgres</i>.
!     The unofficial pronunciations of <i>Post-gree</a> and
!     <i>Post-gray</a> are also acceptable and should not be
!     objected to when used by new users or customers.
!     An audio file is available in
      <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/files/postgresql.mp3">MP3 format</a> for
      those would like to hear the pronunciation.</p>

Uh, no, the idea is to simplify things, not make them worse. We don't need
four different ways to refer to the project. For the record, I've never heard
"Post-gray" and "Post-gree" used in the wild. "Postgres" is simple,
unambiguous, easy to remember, and is already used quite widely verbally.
The other alternatives will simply remind people of the original ill-fated
decision. I've already put forth my own FAQ patch earlier in this thread.

> But I do disagree with the 150-250 hours amount of work.

As do I. I think it would be about 4 hours of 'work'. We change the FAQ,
write a press release stating the name is changing, stop scolding people
in various forums for using Postgres instead of PostgreSQL, and slowly
start moving things over. If the domain name stays at postgresql.org for
six years, or more, that's okay. People can use the name PostgreSQL for
as long as they want, and nobody in the community should yell at them.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200709041503
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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=5fzB
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Ron Mayer wrote:
> Josh Berkus wrote:
> > When someone steps forward with a concrete proposal
>
> My concrete proposal.   I want one simple statement from
> the project that it's OK for people to say both "Postgres"
> and "Postgre" so every customer, salesguy, and executive I
> deal with doesn't get stuck in a terminology flame-war
> evertime they use the obvious short form of PostgreSQL.

> --- 232,242 ----
>       <h3 id="item1.1">1.1) What is PostgreSQL? How is it pronounced?</h3>
>
>       <p>PostgreSQL is pronounced <i>Post-Gres-Q-L</i>, and is also sometimes
> !     referred to as just <i>Postgres</i>.
> !     The unofficial pronunciations of <i>Post-gree</a> and
> !     <i>Post-gray</a> are also acceptable and should not be
> !     objected to when used by new users or customers.
> !     An audio file is available in
>       <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/files/postgresql.mp3">MP3 format</a> for
>       those would like to hear the pronunciation.</p>

You gotta be kidding.  I would reword this as

What is Postgres?  How is it pronounced?

Postgres is pronounced Post-Gres, and is sometimes referred to in
written form as PostgreSQL (which is not normally said out aloud).

--
Alvaro Herrera                         http://www.flickr.com/photos/alvherre/
"La naturaleza, tan frágil, tan expuesta a la muerte... y tan viva"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160


> The next step of this process is NOT a poll.  The next step of "should we
> do it or not" is a rough draft of a plan which shows all of the "costs" of
> changing the name and how we're going to meet them, as well as the Pros
> and Cons of changing vs. not changing.

Excellent point, Josh, I think we've outgrown a mailing list.  I made a
quick wiki page. Pleae let Neil or myself know if anyone needs editing privs:

http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200709041537
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

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UHp5rrEF0qGLkMJuJ69pyPA=
=/gHX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
>> But I do disagree with the 150-250 hours amount of work.
>
> As do I. I think it would be about 4 hours of 'work'.

The total amount of _OPTIONAL_ and downright
unnecessary work is immense:* Salespeople using the product across the  world "having" to update all their
powerpoints.*Renaming Josh D's company (to "Command PromptSQL" so  people don't forget they do SQL?).* Sending out
recallnotices so everyone who received  swag with the old names.* Scouring the source code to remove "pgsql" and
replacingit with "pgs".* Tracking down all the instances of PostgreSQL on  the web site. 
But none of those need to happen so long as everyone
agrees PostgreSQL is still accepted.  And arguably
none of these should ever happen.

The minimal required amount of work is much less than even
the 4 hours.   It's about 30 seconds.   A simple email
to the lists from core saying:  "We will move to Postgres in the future.   We welcome patches.   For those new to
submittingpatches, here's where to   submit patches to web and docs" 
is, IMHO, enough.   Yes, reviewing and accepting the
patches is more work, but that can happen at the leisure
of the committers over the next dozen years.


The only way I see it actually being a lot of required
work is if someone proposes banning PostgreSQL -- but
I've not ever seen any proposal that includes that.

On 9/4/2007 3:02 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:
> There is no point in even talking further about changing the name of the
> project if we don't have the resources to do the change.  There's
> particularly no point in doing a survey of people's uninformed opinions
> about the issue; community members need to see a cost-benefit analysis
> *first,* not after a vote.

While I 100% agree that further discussion or polls or votes or anything
are pointless until we have a reasonably detailed plan, I totally doubt
that it can contain something even remotely resembling a cost-benefit
analysis. Sure, one can estimate the cost and outline the "expected"
benefits, but cost is expressed in man hours while the benefits of a
name change are speculative expressed in name branding, recognition, all
the things associated with a nice name. And you can't really put a price
tag on that, so that analysis would be apples to elephants comparison.


Jan

--
#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #

Ron,

> The total amount of _OPTIONAL_ and downright
> unnecessary work is immense:
<snip>
> But none of those need to happen so long as everyone
> agrees PostgreSQL is still accepted.  And arguably
> none of these should ever happen.

This puts us in the worst of all possible worlds: one in which some things
are labelled "Postgres" and somethings are labelled "PostgreSQL" and
nobody can count on, from release to release, what is what.  If you think
we have project name problems *now*, that's nothing compared to the kind
of total branding chaos you're proposing.

Issues not addressed above:
path names
file names
package names
server strings (which all have to be translated into 11 languages)
re-designing marketing materials
links from external sites
contacting packagers, commercial distributors and downstream projects so
they all know about the name change
graphics redesign

I agree with the idea that Postgres and Postgre ought to be officially
blessed "abbreviations" or "nicknames".  I don't agree that the project
should have different names depending on which page of the web site you're
looking at.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

greg@turnstep.com ("Greg Sabino Mullane") writes:
>> The next step of this process is NOT a poll.  The next step of "should we
>> do it or not" is a rough draft of a plan which shows all of the "costs" of
>> changing the name and how we're going to meet them, as well as the Pros
>> and Cons of changing vs. not changing.
>
> Excellent point, Josh, I think we've outgrown a mailing list.  I made a
> quick wiki page. Pleae let Neil or myself know if anyone needs editing privs:
>
> http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres

I added a section to it documenting "Tasks in the Upgrading The Name
Project."

It may make sense to start by populating that with some set of
"brainstormed" items.

It might then make sense to classify those between:
- Tasks that are Certainly Necessary
- Tasks that are Certainly Unnecessary

I put in a few things that I thought of, but haven't attempted
classification, as that seems premature.
--
output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "linuxfinances.info")
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/lisp.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #173. "Although it would provide amusement,
I  will not  confess  to  the hero's  rival  that I  was  the one  who
committed the heinous act for which he blames the hero."
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>

On Tuesday 04 September 2007 16:47, Josh Berkus wrote:

I think you're inflating this a bit.

> Issues not addressed above:
> path names

path names are the purview of the packagers. We don't have a consistent path
setup now, and the closest thing to one is pgsql, which need not change.

> file names

I think general agreement is that the filenames need not change. Personally
the only file I can think of that matters is the postgresql.conf, which I do
think we should change, but probably would not matter if we didnt. We already
have lived with our primary binary being callled the postmaster for many
years (which thankfully is now just postgres).

> package names

this one is tricker, but i dont think it is all that hard. I'd suspect that in
8.4, packagers would rename thier packages to postgres, with dependencies
pointing to postgresql packages. Yeah, it's probably trickier than this, but
it really depends on the packaging system. (Perhaps a packager wants to wiegh
in on this point?)

> server strings (which all have to be translated into 11 languages)

I feel confident that I can translate PostgreSQL to Postgres in the majority
of languages that are involved.

> re-designing marketing materials

Generally things probably wont have to be redesigned, just updated. Those that
want to redesign are welcome to do it, but if you but the scope of the name
change toward an 8.4 time frame, you realize that most marketing material
will have to be changed by then anyway.

> links from external sites

We control all of the postgresql domains, and I see no reason we would
relinquish them, so we only need a bit of redirection to preserve links.

> contacting packagers, commercial distributors and downstream projects so
> they all know about the name change

again, if you push this to a 8.4 timeframe, this unlikely to be a problem.
Certainly we have ways to contact the majority of packagers very quickly to
let them know what is happening.

> graphics redesign
>

I have a little bit of concern for this one, because we mave have some
graphics that say postgresql in fonts / sources we can't easily update. So
this one might be an issue (let people not forget a number of the powered by
postgresql buttons would need updating).

So of your list, I see very few items that are actually significant work. I
think the next step for anyone who seriously wants to push this forward needs
to do is see about how available the various domain names we need to aquire
are, and also to contact a good number of packagers to get thier input on how
much effort this will involve for them.  Those two things could be show
stoppers, but nothing on your list looks like one to me.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
>
> I made a
> quick wiki page. Pleae let Neil or myself know if anyone needs editing privs:
>
> http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres

I'm happy to add them myself if you wanted to add naming privs; or
I can just email them here if you guys want to choose which ones to add.


Some more pros and cons for that page .. mostly from earlier in the thread.

[More] Pros for changing the name to "Postgres" * Some friendly companies already using this term would benefit.

[More] Cons for changing the name to "Postgres" * Some friendly companies using PostgreSQL term would lose benefits
orhave to rephrase their taglines or other references to PostgreSQL. 

Perhaps also add a section

"Things that may need to be changed if the name is not changed"* Make "Postgre" an officially acceptable short form
becauseit's the  obvious short form of PostgreSQL; which will prevent some of the  abuse of new members, users, and
customersof the product.* or, Fund a marketing campaign to educate the world that  we're not Postgre.* Rename paths and
filenamesand processes from postgres to postgresql.* Update paths on website that use "pgsql" instead of "PostgreSQL".*
Producenew swag as the old inventory is used up.* Make links use PostgreSQL.org instead of postgresql.org to
re-enforcethe brand.* Update the mailing list names from "pgsql-advocacy"  to "postgresql-advocacy" 
Obviously some of these  don't have to change here any more
than they would have to with the name Postgres; but if people
add them to the list of work for the new name, seems they should
be there for the old name too.

Perhaps also add a section

"Alternatives to changing to Postgres"
* Moving to PostgresQL - which keeps domain names, etc but  encourages the preferred short form.* Approving of
"Postgre".*A marketing campaign to educate the world against "Postgre" 

Add to external links:
* http://svr5.postgresql.org/pgsql-novice/2006-07/msg00063.php  Which has the interesting quote:  "Arguably, the 1996
decisionto call it PostgreSQL instead  of reverting to plain Postgres was the single worst mistake  this project ever
made."


I also think it'd be worth adding an example that illustrates
why PostgreSQL is so awkward to people who haven't gotten years
getting numb to the term.   Perhaps comparing to EnterpriSQL
would help illustrate this; or perhaps a sentence like"PerhapSQL Josh BerkuSQL iSQL going to say yeSQL and blesSQL this
projectif he seeSQL how new userSQL parse wordSQL with mixed case." 
would server better.

Hello,

new to this list but long term postgres user.

David Fetter mentioned the discussion in his weekly update that gets
posted to the german list and he called it civilized. That made me
reading certainly some hundred posts from the archive, maybe half
of the thread and finally joining the list to participate in this
discussion. I came to the conclusion that it is not friendly at all.

Can there really be people who search for misspelled semicolons in
their source files as a day job, blaming others to make a lot of hot
air out of nothing when arguing about pronounciation of the project
name? I can hardly believe.

Pronounciation might be only one single argument compared to so
many arguments against a name change. And it is a soft point com-
pared to a missing semicolon that inevitably stops your query.
But that doesnt make it be a weak argument. For me, there can
hardly be anything more striking.

Working code is of utmost importance, but all the bruhaha around
doesnt count less I believe. And if marketing oriented people have
a strong opinion about that issue, constantly neglecting the im-
portance of their input feels rather destructive. Some day, they
will leave you coders alone and the project might decline.


I personally like to pronounce the RDBMS as Postgres-Qu-El but am
too lazy to write the whole thing, so actually I do just the opposite
of what seems to be common use. But when reminded of the problems with
the two names I can recall the hurdles that they exposed in the be-
ginning. And that was long before I asked anybody about it in a face
to face talk on a fair.
It was really disturbing when googling for a solution on an issue
I had, never to know exactly whether the results referring to postgres
would really apply to the postgresql thing I was using as well.

Name confusion is not a minor thing and having postfix and postgres
running on the same machine (postfix is the default MTA under MacOS X)
caused confusion with the postmaster process showing in top and ps
when I expected it not to run, only to find out that it was not what
it seemed to be. And finally, you took action, great.

The strangest solution to the problem I found in this thread was
renaming to PostgresQL. Sorry, but there is no such thing as a
separate Postgres Query Language, incompatible with Standard SQL
as implied by this name. This would certainly bring confusion to
a new level. And please, do not install a committee to decide on
that - these are kind of solutions that come from such circles.

For me the discussion seems to be the type of thing where you keep
to say "no" until the day where you finally say yes. Its in the air.
I dont like postgres much better or better at all, but it is obvious
that it will be the official name sooner or later. It needs to happen
some day. The sooner the better.


 From my point of view, the marketing name move should not be tied to
the next major release. Doing so puts pressure on the decision what
might be worth a major number and when it should happen (ASAP). This
is not appropriate for a project, where quality standards should
drive the decision for final release dates.

On the other hand, I share the doubts with package renaming. I use
the macports project for updating my system and in this package
management system the port to be installed is called postgresql8.
Renaming this to postgres8 would break all ports depending on it.
Most ports will continue to use an old version that does not receive
security fixes any more. But with the advent of postgres 9, there
will be a separate package named postgersql9 or postgres9 anyway,
because some other package maintainer might decide to stay with
the older release. Nobody will mind the name change then.
I guess this is the same with freebsd ports, debian apt-get,
redhat rpm, gentoo and myriad of other package management repos.

Under these circumstances, a big bang solution does not seem feasable.
The big bang type of name change usually happens only with companies
that have the bang to do so. But even they sometimes decide for a
incremental change. Rebranding the german mobile carrier Mannesmann D2
to vodafone was an example for this strategy and renaming the electric
power company HEW to Vattenfall also took more then a year and several
big sports events to make sure the transition works smoothly and people
dont refuse to pay to a company they never contracted with.

But, this does not mean necessarily that we need to switch silently.
I tend to use the elephants trunk and trumpet it out, but I have to
admit that it does not fit perfectly with an incremental strategy.


As with the all the work that needs to be done on the marketing side,
I dont understand these objections completely, because they should be
mentioned by those who would have to deal with it and not by the coders
who are opposed to a change. I bet, that people who do care for a good
name will take care for a good visual appearance as well. I guess that
the artwork stuff will be done in no time by people who are happy to
contribute. FreeBSD ran such a thing for their website relaunch as
their first Google Summer of Code project some years ago IIRC - just
a proposal.

Regarding printed paper, it was already mentioned that it usually
grows old before a year is over. T-Shirts are certainly different,
but they get a pale stripe across the breast when exposed to the sun
and dont look good after a while as well. Everybody who buys marketing
stuff for more then a year in advance will regret this decision some
day, whether the name changes or not, because of the cash drain, the
waste of storage and all this. And if somebody comes moaning to a
booth on a fair, complaining that the name on the booth and the website
are different, what better time to ask for some money to change this?

The only thing that I saw that is a real obstacle besides dullness were
the legal issues raised by the fact that a company holds rights to the
name but is not willing to explain what they intend to do with it. This
could become a complete showstopper. But I am not a lawyer and there
will be others who might find a way to deal with that.

This was more then two cents I admit, but spending hours reading,
I could not resist and keep my mouth shut.

Bye, Christian

All,

I've updated the wiki with my task list and the suggestions/comments from
others on this mailing list.  You can now see where my estimate of 150-250
hours comes from, which I now think is probably rather low.
http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres

Now, that's as much time as I'm planning to spend on that until after 8.3 is
out.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Josh Berkus wrote:
> All,
>
> I've updated the wiki with my task list and the suggestions/comments from
> others on this mailing list.  You can now see where my estimate of 150-250
> hours comes from, which I now think is probably rather low.
> http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres

It seems most of those tasks are just as required with
the current state of PostgreSQL as official and Postgres
as an accepted alternative -- i.e. all
the "pgsql -> [official_name]" changes in the list;
and clarification between postgres and progress and ingress.

Or are you suggesting that you see those as unnecessary
because there's so much confusion today (pgfoundry even
mentions PostgresSQL with 2 ss's) that there's no hope,
but you see it as achievable with the new name?

Some of the "Cons" seem quite artificial too - "Some corporate
supporters may be unhappy about renaming materials/marketing/packaging".
Of course - we know Josh D is.   On the other hand, some corporate
sponsors may be unhappy with the current name too.

> Now, that's as much time as I'm planning to spend on that until after 8.3 is
> out.

Yeah - This is tiring; but I'm just taking comfort in the fact that
over the years Postgres usage is consistently gaining on PostgreSQL
(as is Postgre) so the change will come sooner or later anyway.

If it seems the current name'll stick around at least for the months
your "Further Information Needed" section will take, would you like
patches to convert some of the "pgsql"'s and "postgres"'s in the code
and website to "PostgreSQL"'s?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



- --On Wednesday, September 05, 2007 11:05:07 -0700 Ron Mayer
<rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com> wrote:


> It seems most of those tasks are just as required with
> the current state of PostgreSQL as official and Postgres
> as an accepted alternative -- i.e. all
> the "pgsql -> [official_name]" changes in the list;

Nope, pgsql is, and always has been, an accepted and logical short form of
PostgreSQL ... pg is as close as you get if you try and shorten Postgres ...


- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 19:34 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Ron Mayer wrote:
> > Regardless of the intent and of the best efforts of core and
> > the entire community the name is changing _now_ and _gradually_.
>
> Jan says our name is already being changed to Postgre`.  I thought that
> was pretty funny.

The correct original pronunciation of the name Ingres does not sound the
trailing "s". Most language students attempting to say the name
correctly will do this, whether we call it Postgres or PostgreSQL.

I vote "Postgres". However much we advertise differently, most *users*
read what they see when they type "ps", and they see "postgres".

My suggested plan would be to just start using the name Postgres. Don't
make a broad industry announcement, just start using it and let the
older name tail away slowly. If asked, we just say we clarified the name
to avoid confusion between the two versions PostgreSQL and Postgres.
PostgreSQL need not be "wrong" its just the less preferred version now;
if people know the name PostgreSQL they can continue using it without
feeling stupid for getting it "wrong". Roughly the same as we would do
when we deprecate any commonly used feature.

My perspective is that the only incorrect spelling of Postgres is
"MySQL", etc.

--
  Simon Riggs
  2ndQuadrant  http://www.2ndQuadrant.com

Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> Nope, pgsql is, and always has been, an accepted and logical short form of
> PostgreSQL ... pg is as close as you get if you try and shorten Postgres ...

Indeed - but "ps" seems like the most logical short form of PostgreSQL.
Or when pronounced out loud "Postgres Q L", "pq" would be.  Perhaps
that's where libpq came from?

On 9/5/07, Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com> wrote:
> Indeed - but "ps" seems like the most logical short form of PostgreSQL.
> Or when pronounced out loud "Postgres Q L", "pq" would be.  Perhaps
> that's where libpq came from?

Actually, libpq is a throwback to Ingres.

Ingres has libq (otherwise known as the EQUEL runtime library) and
Postgres got libpq (the Postgres front-end library).

--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation            | fax: 732.331.1301
33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor            | jharris@enterprisedb.com
Iselin, New Jersey 08830            | http://www.enterprisedb.com/

On 9/5/2007 5:51 PM, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On 9/5/07, Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com> wrote:
>> Indeed - but "ps" seems like the most logical short form of PostgreSQL.
>> Or when pronounced out loud "Postgres Q L", "pq" would be.  Perhaps
>> that's where libpq came from?
>
> Actually, libpq is a throwback to Ingres.
>
> Ingres has libq (otherwise known as the EQUEL runtime library) and
> Postgres got libpq (the Postgres front-end library).

Close.

Postgres' original query language was PostQUEL, an extended version of
University Ingres' QUEL. You can still see some of the original verbiage
in the query rule rewriter ... things like fireRIRrules() and the like.
RIR is short for "retrieve instead retrieve", and RETRIEVE was the
command replaced today by SELECT. An RIR rule is what implements a view.


Jan

--
#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #

Hi,

Simon Riggs wrote:
> My suggested plan would be to just start using the name Postgres. Don't
> make a broad industry announcement, just start using it and let the
> older name tail away slowly.

*nod*

Let's simply start a slow migration, where everyone can participate and
help make it happen. That's much more in the spirit of OSS.

Regards

Markus

Agree with Postgres as the name and the just use it with a slow fade of
the old.

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-advocacy-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-advocacy-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Markus
Schiltknecht
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 3:18 AM
To: Simon Riggs
Cc: Bruce Momjian; Ron Mayer; Andrew Sullivan;
pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] The naming question (Postgres vs
PostgreSQL)

Hi,

Simon Riggs wrote:
> My suggested plan would be to just start using the name Postgres.
Don't
> make a broad industry announcement, just start using it and let the
> older name tail away slowly.

*nod*

Let's simply start a slow migration, where everyone can participate and
help make it happen. That's much more in the spirit of OSS.

Regards

Markus

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Andy, Ron, Peter, etc.:
>
> > Josh, we simply need to decide if we want to do it or not. Lots of
> > people have volunteered to help (including us), and the implementation
> > project plan can be a team effort of those people.
>
> Ok, that didn't come out right.
>
> To restate:
>
> The next step of this process is NOT a poll.  The next step of "should we
> do it or not" is a rough draft of a plan which shows all of the "costs" of
> changing the name and how we're going to meet them, as well as the Pros
> and Cons of changing vs. not changing.
>
> There is no point in even talking further about changing the name of the
> project if we don't have the resources to do the change.  There's
> particularly no point in doing a survey of people's uninformed opinions
> about the issue; community members need to see a cost-benefit analysis
> *first,* not after a vote.
>
> In other words, before we take a vote on whether the bike shed should be
> red, we should first check to see if we can afford red paint.
>
> Such a proposal should also include other options like Ron Mayer's very
> sensible 20-minute solution (e.g. "Postgres and Postgre are acceptable
> alternate names").

OK, looks like we now have a list of items to address _if_ we change the
name:

    http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres

I believe the next step we discussed was to get feedback from the
'general' email list.  Correct?

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Friday 14 September 2007 11:00, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Josh Berkus wrote:
> > Andy, Ron, Peter, etc.:
> > > Josh, we simply need to decide if we want to do it or not. Lots of
> > > people have volunteered to help (including us), and the implementation
> > > project plan can be a team effort of those people.
> >
> > Ok, that didn't come out right.
> >
> > To restate:
> >
> > The next step of this process is NOT a poll.  The next step of "should we
> > do it or not" is a rough draft of a plan which shows all of the "costs"
> > of changing the name and how we're going to meet them, as well as the
> > Pros and Cons of changing vs. not changing.
> >
> > There is no point in even talking further about changing the name of the
> > project if we don't have the resources to do the change.  There's
> > particularly no point in doing a survey of people's uninformed opinions
> > about the issue; community members need to see a cost-benefit analysis
> > *first,* not after a vote.
> >
> > In other words, before we take a vote on whether the bike shed should be
> > red, we should first check to see if we can afford red paint.
> >
> > Such a proposal should also include other options like Ron Mayer's very
> > sensible 20-minute solution (e.g. "Postgres and Postgre are acceptable
> > alternate names").
>
> OK, looks like we now have a list of items to address _if_ we change the
> name:
>
>     http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres
>
> I believe the next step we discussed was to get feedback from the
> 'general' email list.  Correct?

I'd say no. Someone should talk to the packagers to asses viability, and
someone should review domain names, to asses viability. If those seem viable,
then open it up. If not, people need to know before they decide.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Robert Treat wrote:
> > > In other words, before we take a vote on whether the bike shed should be
> > > red, we should first check to see if we can afford red paint.
> > >
> > > Such a proposal should also include other options like Ron Mayer's very
> > > sensible 20-minute solution (e.g. "Postgres and Postgre are acceptable
> > > alternate names").
> >
> > OK, looks like we now have a list of items to address _if_ we change the
> > name:
> >
> >     http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres
> >
> > I believe the next step we discussed was to get feedback from the
> > 'general' email list.  Correct?
>
> I'd say no. Someone should talk to the packagers to asses viability, and
> someone should review domain names, to asses viability. If those seem viable,
> then open it up. If not, people need to know before they decide.

Are you saying we should ask the packagers email list?  I don't see any
other way to ask them.

I heard we were OK with domain names.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Bruce,

>>> I believe the next step we discussed was to get feedback from the
>>> 'general' email list.  Correct?

Wrong.  Competely and totally wrong.

Look at the amount of stuff on that page which is listed as "more
information needed":

===========
Need an inventory of graphics containing "PostgreSQL"
Poll non-users to find out if name has any effect on adoption
Poll corporate supporters
Check with press contacts / analysis on likely press reaction
Poll downstream projects on reaction to name change
Poll regional/language groups & packagers
Check for legal issues
Detailed listing of all materials which need changing.
===========

While some of this could wait until after we decide to change, some of
it absolutely cannot.  We could easily discover that most of our
corporate supporters oppose the change, the distros will hate us, press
reaction would be bad, and that there are numerous legal issues ... in
which case the name-changing idea is dead no matter what the folks on
-general think.

Please stop thinking of the name change as something to be done over an
idle weekend, and start thinking of it as a major feature like WAL,
Schema or HOT.  It's going to require just as much work, if not more.

I'll also point out that not one of the people who said they'd "do
whatever it takes" has yet stepped forward to research any of these topics.


--Josh Berkus

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> >>> I believe the next step we discussed was to get feedback from the
> >>> 'general' email list.  Correct?
>
> Wrong.  Completely and totally wrong.

Are you trying to throw up roadblocks?  That is my analysis.  I was just
suggesting we ask the general list.  Now maybe if you said I was "100%
wrong" I would think twice, but for "completely and totally wrong" I
think I will just barrel ahead.  ;-)

You stated:

> There's particularly no point in doing a survey of people's uninformed
> opinions about the issue; community members need to see a cost-benefit
> analysis *first,* not after a vote.

Seems we have cost/benefit list already.  Based on your list below I
think asking 'general' should be done before "Poll non-users to find out
if name has any effect on adoption" because unless we are more serious
about the change no one wants to do more work.

I realize some people are trying to minimize the work involved, but some
are trying to maximize it too.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Look at the amount of stuff on that page which is listed as "more
> information needed":
>
> ===========
> Need an inventory of graphics containing "PostgreSQL"
> Poll non-users to find out if name has any effect on adoption
> Poll corporate supporters
> Check with press contacts / analysis on likely press reaction
> Poll downstream projects on reaction to name change
> Poll regional/language groups & packagers
> Check for legal issues
> Detailed listing of all materials which need changing.
> ===========
>
> While some of this could wait until after we decide to change, some of
> it absolutely cannot.  We could easily discover that most of our
> corporate supporters oppose the change, the distros will hate us, press
> reaction would be bad, and that there are numerous legal issues ... in
> which case the name-changing idea is dead no matter what the folks on
> -general think.
>
> Please stop thinking of the name change as something to be done over an
> idle weekend, and start thinking of it as a major feature like WAL,
> Schema or HOT.  It's going to require just as much work, if not more.
>
> I'll also point out that not one of the people who said they'd "do
> whatever it takes" has yet stepped forward to research any of these topics.
>
>
> --Josh Berkus
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Josh Berkus wrote:
>> Bruce,
>>
>>>>> I believe the next step we discussed was to get feedback from the
>>>>> 'general' email list.  Correct?
>> Wrong.  Completely and totally wrong.
>
> Are you trying to throw up roadblocks?

Now he is trying to make you realize what level of job this really is. A
great many people on this list have already proven excessively ignorant
to the scope of work the name change proposal is.

> That is my analysis.  I was just
> suggesting we ask the general list.  Now maybe if you said I was "100%

Bruce... consider the length of this thread on advocacy. Now you want to
take it to general? Don't we currently have better things to do? Like,
say getting 8.3 out the door?


> You stated:
>
>> There's particularly no point in doing a survey of people's uninformed
>> opinions about the issue; community members need to see a cost-benefit
>> analysis *first,* not after a vote.
>
> Seems we have cost/benefit list already.  Based on your list below I
> think asking 'general' should be done before "Poll non-users to find out

Are you also going to communicate with the hundreds of thousands of
users that having nothing to do with the PostgreSQL lists? If so.. how?

>
> I realize some people are trying to minimize the work involved, but some
> are trying to maximize it too.

No, they are trying to make sure it is done right, without barreling
ahead and ignoring the requirements of others. A *lot* of people have
put a huge vested interest in PostgreSQL and you in your arrogance are
completely ignoring that.

Our largest community has said "no". Our budding communities in Italy
and France have said, "no. The only people that seem to really be
wanting the name change are those whom it won't effect, like you Bruce.

It won't effect you. You don't have to do anything but possibly change a
couple of words in FAQ. Let's be realistic and look at the things and
people this is going to effect, in a severe way.


Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake
- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Josh Berkus wrote:
> >> Bruce,
> >>
> >>>>> I believe the next step we discussed was to get feedback from the
> >>>>> 'general' email list.  Correct?
> >> Wrong.  Completely and totally wrong.
> >
> > Are you trying to throw up roadblocks?
>
> Now he is trying to make you realize what level of job this really is. A
> great many people on this list have already proven excessively ignorant
> to the scope of work the name change proposal is.
>
> > That is my analysis.  I was just
> > suggesting we ask the general list.  Now maybe if you said I was "100%
>
> Bruce... consider the length of this thread on advocacy. Now you want to
> take it to general? Don't we currently have better things to do? Like,
> say getting 8.3 out the door?

I think we have to decide if we really want to do this, and I don't see
how we can do that without asking general.  I can ask people to email me
directly and put up a web page with comments, or just set up a web page
wiki to add comments.

> > You stated:
> >
> >> There's particularly no point in doing a survey of people's uninformed
> >> opinions about the issue; community members need to see a cost-benefit
> >> analysis *first,* not after a vote.
> >
> > Seems we have cost/benefit list already.  Based on your list below I
> > think asking 'general' should be done before "Poll non-users to find out
>
> Are you also going to communicate with the hundreds of thousands of
> users that having nothing to do with the PostgreSQL lists? If so.. how?

Well, we change things in every major release without asking
_everybody_.  I have seen few complaints about that processes.

> > I realize some people are trying to minimize the work involved, but some
> > are trying to maximize it too.
>
> No, they are trying to make sure it is done right, without barreling
> ahead and ignoring the requirements of others. A *lot* of people have
> put a huge vested interest in PostgreSQL and you in your arrogance are
> completely ignoring that.

Arrogance is one of my strong points.  You should see my weakness list.  :-)

> Our largest community has said "no". Our budding communities in Italy
> and France have said, "no. The only people that seem to really be
> wanting the name change are those whom it won't effect, like you Bruce.
>
> It won't effect you. You don't have to do anything but possibly change a
> couple of words in FAQ. Let's be realistic and look at the things and
> people this is going to effect, in a severe way.

Using your own measurements, you didn't ask everyone in those
communities either.

My basic issue is we can't use "asking for more details" to forever
block this change.  That's how organizations stop growing.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1

> My basic issue is we can't use "asking for more details" to forever
> block this change.  That's how organizations stop growing.
>

5000 bucks and a case of whatever you drink says, that if we drop this
topic, PostgreSQL won't stop growing.

Joshua D. Drake

- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > My basic issue is we can't use "asking for more details" to forever
> > block this change.  That's how organizations stop growing.
> >
>
> 5000 bucks and a case of whatever you drink says, that if we drop this
> topic, PostgreSQL won't stop growing.

True, but will a name change increase growth?

The bottom line is I am fine with accepting whatever the group wants on
this, but I don't want our institutional momentum to prevent a change
if a change is overall beneficial.  Institutional momentum can be a very
dangerous thing.  I am sure we have all seen its effects.

I think one of our big strengths is a lack of institutional friction in
forward momentum.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Bruce,

> I think we have to decide if we really want to do this, and I don't see
> how we can do that without asking general.  I can ask people to email me
> directly and put up a web page with comments, or just set up a web page
> wiki to add comments.

What are you planning to ask -general, exactly?

Unless it's a call for volunteers, anything you ask -general at this point
will be nothing but a straw poll.  You can't even regard it as a vote,
because the folks on -general don't have enough information to make an
informed decision.

When local government has the citizens vote on a bond or initiative, the
voter booklet contains the controller's estimate of the costs of the bond.
This happens *before* anyone takes a vote, because citizens can't vote to
spend city money if they don't know how much they're really spending.

If the question is, do we have enough interest in changing the name to
warrant research into what it will really "cost", then the answer is
"yes", we already have that. The only way in which a poll of -general
would be useful is if most people said they didn't want to change.

I've been waiting for the main proponents of changing the name to step up
and do that research.  This will be a good litmus test of whether those
people will actually follow through to do the work required to change the
name.  So far, I've seen nothing but e-mail posts.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>> My basic issue is we can't use "asking for more details" to forever
>>> block this change.  That's how organizations stop growing.
>>>
>> 5000 bucks and a case of whatever you drink says, that if we drop this
>> topic, PostgreSQL won't stop growing.
>
> True, but will a name change increase growth?

Probably not. Consider the number of projects out there with odd names
that are doing just fine.

- From a commercial perspective, people don't purchase PostgreSQL, they
purchase a commercial equivalent.

>
> The bottom line is I am fine with accepting whatever the group wants on
> this, but I don't want our institutional momentum to prevent a change
> if a change is overall beneficial.

That is a good point, a really good point honestly. How about we
eliminate the need for vacuum instead? There is some institutional
momentume that is preventing change that would be overall beneficial.

*** STOP ***

I do not want a thread about what I just said, I was just making a point.


>  Institutional momentum can be a very
> dangerous thing.  I am sure we have all seen its effects.
>

Absolutely. The:

We already tried that, it failed... mentality is a horribly destructive
thing.

I still say we need to focus on our core strengths, the "Name" isn't
relevant in that argument. Instead of expending energy on that, we
should expending energy on doing everything we can to:

Get windowing queries running
Get real partitioning
Get read only standbys

Yes, yes, yes... someone is already working on those... Really? Where is
the code... where is the review, where is the spec?

Oh and of course there is that little thing called 8.3 that isn't done
yet :)...

Seriously, let's focus on something really important versus something
that has zero technical ballast.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


> I think one of our big strengths is a lack of institutional friction in
> forward momentum.
>


- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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Josh Berkus wrote:
> Bruce,
>
>
>> I think we have to decide if we really want to do this, and I don't see
>> how we can do that without asking general.  I can ask people to email me
>> directly and put up a web page with comments, or just set up a web page
>> wiki to add comments.
>>
>
> What are you planning to ask -general, exactly?
>
> Unless it's a call for volunteers, anything you ask -general at this point
> will be nothing but a straw poll.  You can't even regard it as a vote,
> because the folks on -general don't have enough information to make an
> informed decision.
>

I think we should ask -general:  Do you think this is a good idea?  What
sort of concerns do you have?  Are there any specific issues you feel
would need to be addressed?

However, I think you are right that this thread here *and* the thread on
-general are not things that should be used as a mandate for the core
team.  It is simply a feedback mechanism and a way to understand what
people think about the process.

IMO, certain decisions, such as name changes, should not be made
democratically.  They should be made by the body which is responsible
for governing the project (though democratic feedback can and should be
a part of the process).  *If* the core team wanted to endorse such a
name change, then there would be a call for volunteers.

So here is my only concern:  If the project changes names, it is going
to require a lot of grunt work.  We do not want this work to cause
delays in future versions of the software.  In my estimation, this may
draw out the transition time by months or even years.  However, this is
not a bad thing because it means that there is greater community
awareness that the change is happening and more time to transition the
advocacy efforts.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

I suppose I should weight in on this.

I think the first question is:  Is this the best way to go, long-run?
If it is, then we need to decide that first, and build a commitment to
"eventually get there."  For this, I think core *should* get feedback on
-general, but I also think this decision needs to be made by the core
team alone based on their review of the costs involved.

If the answer is yes to the above:

The second question is:  What sort of priority should this be?  This is
going to be a complex decision based on other priorities (building the
codebase, etc).   The community may be able to help speed things up, but
the core team will *also* need to answer this based on all the costs
involved.

Personally, I think the name change would be a good idea.  My major
hesitation is that I think that it will probably take a year or two
after such a commitment to actually switch everything over unless we
want the project to suffer delays as a result. :-)

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
with PostgreSQL.

I personally don't think that this would cause any substantial
confusion, and would avoid the work involved in a full name change.
Then, down the road, if we want to, we can revisit the decision.

This would seem to give everyone what they want.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Chris Travers wrote:
> Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
> promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
> course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
> with PostgreSQL.

Add to FAQ:

Q. What is the official name of the project?
A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as a official shortened version.

Issue resolved and hopefully more productive things actually start to
happen.

Joshua D. Drake


>
> I personally don't think that this would cause any substantial
> confusion, and would avoid the work involved in a full name change.
> Then, down the road, if we want to, we can revisit the decision.
>
> This would seem to give everyone what they want.
>
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives?
>
>               http://archives.postgresql.org
>


- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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Hash: RIPEMD160


Josh Berkus writes:

> What are you planning to ask -general, exactly?
>
> Unless it's a call for volunteers, anything you ask -general at this point
> will be nothing but a straw poll.  You can't even regard it as a vote,
> because the folks on -general don't have enough information to make an
> informed decision.

I see -general as our user base, not as a bunch of uninformed 'folks' who
wouldn't know advocacy from a hole in the ground. This is supposed to be a
transparent project, and something like this should be put to the community
at large. The most effective way we have to do that right now is the
- -general list. Consider it a way to talk to the community, and see if anyone
has any pros and cons that this list may not have thought of yet.

> I've been waiting for the main proponents of changing the name to step up
> and do that research.  This will be a good litmus test of whether those
> people will actually follow through to do the work required to change the
> name.  So far, I've seen nothing but e-mail posts.

You are presupposing that your list of "research/work required" is the same as
everyone elses, especially those in the "Postgres" camp. I, for example,
have always advocated a gradual approach - a FAQ item, a news release,
and we're done. Graphics, etc. can come at their own pace. The project
has been living on two names for a long time now (more, if you count all
the misspellings), it can surely survive with the same top two names swapped
in officialness for a little while.

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Probably not. Consider the number of projects out there with odd names
> that are doing just fine.

Are they doing fine _despite_ their name? Let's be really honest, which
project has a worse name than ours?

> I still say we need to focus on our core strengths, the "Name" isn't
> relevant in that argument. Instead of expending energy on that, we
> should expending energy on doing everything we can to:
>
> Get windowing queries running
...
> Seriously, let's focus on something really important versus something
> that has zero technical ballast.

It's not a zero-sum game. Certainly the number of people who can work
on windowing queries are a very small percentage of our community. Nobody
is advocating that we stop Tom and Simon from coding and make them
recreate our handful of graphics.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200709141356
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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Chris Travers wrote:
> IMO, certain decisions, such as name changes, should not be made
> democratically.  They should be made by the body which is responsible
> for governing the project (though democratic feedback can and should be
> a part of the process).  *If* the core team wanted to endorse such a
> name change, then there would be a call for volunteers.
>
> So here is my only concern:  If the project changes names, it is going
> to require a lot of grunt work.  We do not want this work to cause
> delays in future versions of the software.  In my estimation, this may
> draw out the transition time by months or even years.  However, this is
> not a bad thing because it means that there is greater community
> awareness that the change is happening and more time to transition the
> advocacy efforts.

There seems to be a lot of valid concern about having manpower for this.
I am willing to take the lead and form a team to accomplish this goal if
we decide we want it.  I did the Win32 port so this should be doable.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Chris Travers wrote:
> Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
> promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
> course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
> with PostgreSQL.
>
> I personally don't think that this would cause any substantial
> confusion, and would avoid the work involved in a full name change.
> Then, down the road, if we want to, we can revisit the decision.
>
> This would seem to give everyone what they want.

Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
visible.  Can anyone see a good way to do that?
--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Hash: SHA1

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Chris Travers wrote:
>> Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
>> promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
>> course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
>> with PostgreSQL.
>>
>> I personally don't think that this would cause any substantial
>> confusion, and would avoid the work involved in a full name change.
>> Then, down the road, if we want to, we can revisit the decision.
>>
>> This would seem to give everyone what they want.
>
> Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
> visible.  Can anyone see a good way to do that?

Amend FAQ... that's all.

Most people use it anyway ;)


Joshua D. Drake



- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Chris Travers wrote:
> >> Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
> >> promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
> >> course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
> >> with PostgreSQL.
> >>
> >> I personally don't think that this would cause any substantial
> >> confusion, and would avoid the work involved in a full name change.
> >> Then, down the road, if we want to, we can revisit the decision.
> >>
> >> This would seem to give everyone what they want.
> >
> > Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
> > visible.  Can anyone see a good way to do that?
>
> Amend FAQ... that's all.
>
> Most people use it anyway ;)

Is this something we can do now, no matter the outcome of the discussion?

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Chris Travers wrote:
>> IMO, certain decisions, such as name changes, should not be made
>> not a bad thing because it means that there is greater community
>> awareness that the change is happening and more time to transition the
>> advocacy efforts.
>
> There seems to be a lot of valid concern about having manpower for this.
> I am willing to take the lead and form a team to accomplish this goal if
> we decide we want it.  I did the Win32 port so this should be doable.

What the heck Bruce, post to -general but make sure you post to the
following as well:

brasil-usuarios      Brazilian Portuguese PostgreSQL community
Yahoo Groups     Chinese PostgreSQL community
pgsql-nl-algemeen     Dutch PostgreSQL community
pgsql-eu-general     European Union PostgreSQL community
pgsql-fr-generale     French PostgreSQL community
pgsql-de-allgemein     German PostgreSQL community
postgresql_indo     Indonesian PostgreSQL community
http://postgresql.linuxtime.it/     Italian PostgreSQL community
pgsql-jp     Japanese PostgreSQL community
pgsql-ru-general     Russian PostgreSQL community
pgsql-es-ayuda     Spanish PostgreSQL community
pgsql-tr-genel     Turkish PostgreSQL community
persianpug     Persian PostgreSQL community
pdxpug      Portland, USA
sfpug     San Francisco, USA
sydpug     Sydney, Australia

Let's just get it out there.


Joshua D. Drake




- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>> Chris Travers wrote:
>>>> Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
>>>> promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
>>>> course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
>>>> with PostgreSQL.
>>>>
>>>> I personally don't think that this would cause any substantial
>>>> confusion, and would avoid the work involved in a full name change.
>>>> Then, down the road, if we want to, we can revisit the decision.
>>>>
>>>> This would seem to give everyone what they want.
>>> Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
>>> visible.  Can anyone see a good way to do that?
>> Amend FAQ... that's all.
>>
>> Most people use it anyway ;)
>
> Is this something we can do now, no matter the outcome of the discussion?
>

Why not? I have zero problem with the FAQ amendment I suggested.

Q. What is the official name of the project?
A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as an official shortened version.

I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly different).

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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On 9/14/07, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> > Is this something we can do now, no matter the outcome of the discussion?
> >
>
> Why not? I have zero problem with the FAQ amendment I suggested.
>
> Q. What is the official name of the project?
> A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as an official shortened version.
>
> I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
> mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly different).

Agreed, I don't think anyone has contested the FAQ change.

--
Jonah H. Harris, Sr. Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation                | fax: 732.331.1301
499 Thornall Street, 2nd Floor          | jonah.harris@enterprisedb.com
Edison, NJ 08837                        | http://www.enterprisedb.com/

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >>>> This would seem to give everyone what they want.
> >>> Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
> >>> visible.  Can anyone see a good way to do that?
> >> Amend FAQ... that's all.
> >>
> >> Most people use it anyway ;)
> >
> > Is this something we can do now, no matter the outcome of the discussion?
> >
>
> Why not? I have zero problem with the FAQ amendment I suggested.
>
> Q. What is the official name of the project?
> A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as an official shortened version.
>
> I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
> mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly different).

OK, FAQ wording updated from:

!     <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, and is also sometimes
!     referred to as just <I>Postgres</I>. An audio file is available in

to:

!     <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, but can also be
!     referred to as simply <I>Postgres</I>. An audio file is available in


--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Sep 14, 2007, at 11:25 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>
>> Is this something we can do now, no matter the outcome of the
>> discussion?
>>
>
> Why not? I have zero problem with the FAQ amendment I suggested.
>
> Q. What is the official name of the project?
> A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as an official shortened
> version.
>
> I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
> mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly
> different).

It seems like a good FAQ addition. The only downside I can see
to adopting the two names as equally valid ways to describe PG is:

Q. So... what is "QL" then?
A. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Cheers,
   Steve

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Hash: SHA1

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>>>>> This would seem to give everyone what they want.

>> I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
>> mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly different).
>
> OK, FAQ wording updated from:
>
> !     <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, and is also sometimes
> !     referred to as just <I>Postgres</I>. An audio file is available in
>
> to:
>
> !     <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, but can also be
> !     referred to as simply <I>Postgres</I>. An audio file is available in
>

Cool, now let's move forward :)

Joshua D. Drake



- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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>> I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
>> mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly
>> different).
>
> It seems like a good FAQ addition. The only downside I can see
> to adopting the two names as equally valid ways to describe PG is:
>
> Q. So... what is "QL" then?
> A. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

I humbly submit that those who would actually ask that, just be kindly
asked to move on to MySQL and leave us alone.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
> Cheers,
>   Steve
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives?
>
>               http://archives.postgresql.org
>


- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > >>>> This would seem to give everyone what they want.
> > >>> Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
> > >>> visible.  Can anyone see a good way to do that?
> > >> Amend FAQ... that's all.
> > >>
> > >> Most people use it anyway ;)
> > >
> > > Is this something we can do now, no matter the outcome of the discussion?
> > >
> >
> > Why not? I have zero problem with the FAQ amendment I suggested.
> >
> > Q. What is the official name of the project?
> > A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as an official shortened version.
> >
> > I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
> > mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly different).
>
> OK, FAQ wording updated from:
>
> !     <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, and is also sometimes
> !     referred to as just <I>Postgres</I>. An audio file is available in
>
> to:
>
> !     <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, but can also be
> !     referred to as simply <I>Postgres</I>. An audio file is available in

I trimmed down the paragraph a little:

    <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, but can also be
    referred to as simply <I>Postgres</I>, particularly in conversation.
    (For those curious about how to say "PostgreSQL", an
    <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/files/postgresql.mp3">audio file</a>
    is available.)</P>

Changes?

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On 9/14/07, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> I humbly submit that those who would actually ask that, just be kindly
> asked to move on to MySQL and leave us alone.

:)


--
Jonah H. Harris, Sr. Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation                | fax: 732.331.1301
499 Thornall Street, 2nd Floor          | jonah.harris@enterprisedb.com
Edison, NJ 08837                        | http://www.enterprisedb.com/

Bruce,

>     <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, but can also be
>     referred to as simply <I>Postgres</I>, particularly in conversation.
>     (For those curious about how to say "PostgreSQL", an
>     <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/files/postgresql.mp3">audio
> file</a> is available.)</P>

Looks good to me.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Greg,

> Consider it a way to talk to the community,
> and see if anyone has any pros and cons that this list may not have
> thought of yet.

Sure.  But that's still not taking a "vote", which is what I want to make
clear, and doesn't significantly move forward actually doing a name
change.

> You are presupposing that your list of "research/work required" is the
> same as everyone elses, especially those in the "Postgres" camp. I, for
> example, have always advocated a gradual approach - a FAQ item, a news
> release, and we're done.

And, again, I regard this whole viewpoint as myopically unrealistic.  What
sense does it make to have Postgres as the "official" name if the packages
are still named "PostgreSQL", the documentation still says "PostgreSQL",
and the website is still at www.postgresql.org?

Really, you're not proposing anything other than the "official nickname"
approach, which I agree doesn't require any real work.  But it's not
changing our "official name".

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> I trimmed down the paragraph a little:
>
>     <P>PostgreSQL is pronounced <I>Post-Gres-Q-L</I>, but can also be
>     referred to as simply <I>Postgres</I>, particularly in conversation.
>     (For those curious about how to say "PostgreSQL", an
>     <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/files/postgresql.mp3">audio file</a>
>     is available.)</P>
>
> Changes?
>

Looks great to me.

Joshua D. Drake

- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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2007-09-14_14:06:22-0400 Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>:

> Are they doing fine _despite_ their name? Let's be really honest, which
> project has a worse name than ours?

XFCE

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

> 2007-09-14_14:06:22-0400 Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>:
>
>> Are they doing fine _despite_ their name? Let's be really honest, which
>> project has a worse name than ours?

Have you ever tried telling your boss that you're going to use "The Gimp" to
design the new corporate logo?

And then there's the saga of Mozilla a.k.a. Firefox a.k.a. Iceweasel or
whatever it is this week.

And of course there's "don't say OpenOffice" OpenOffice.org.

Whatever the marketing people tell you, software names really just don't
matter much.

--
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com

Am 14.09.2007 um 21:51 schrieb Gregory Stark:

>> 2007-09-14_14:06:22-0400 Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>:
>>
>>> Are they doing fine _despite_ their name? Let's be really honest,
>>> which
>>> project has a worse name than ours?
>
> Have you ever tried telling your boss that you're going to use "The
> Gimp" to design the new corporate logo?
>
> And then there's the saga of Mozilla a.k.a. Firefox a.k.a.
> Iceweasel or
> whatever it is this week.
>
> And of course there's "don't say OpenOffice" OpenOffice.org.
>
> Whatever the marketing people tell you, software names really just
> don't
> matter much.

Great examples, but wrong conclusion I believe.

Gimp is a perfect example of a Project where the name
is part of the problem.

Firefox became successful incidentally at the time when
the monsterous Mozilla was left behind. The Iceweasel
is a result of being too strict in the way they take
care for the name, but that does not make the general
direction worse. If the marketing people from Firefox
foundation would take time to understand Debian better,
they would allow them to do their packaging and let
them use the common name. And they probably will some
day. Especially as Ubuntu is becoming more and more
the overall preferred desktop distribution.

And OpenOffice, well, this example is perfect because
it is exactly the same case. Never heard anybody say
OpenOffice.org. Thats ridiculous. .org <-> QL ?

Bye, Christian

"Christian Voelker" <C.Voelker@gmx.net> writes:

> Great examples, but wrong conclusion I believe.
>
> Gimp is a perfect example of a Project where the name
> is part of the problem.

What problem?

--
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com

Hello,

Am 14.09.2007 um 22:46 schrieb Gregory Stark:

>> Gimp is a perfect example of a Project where the name
>> is part of the problem.
>
> What problem?

I fear, it is getting off topic.

But to answer your question:
My impression is that Gimp suffered from a
usability problem for a long time. New users
come from Photoshop and expect it to be some-
thing like this. It is somewhat more since
version 2 which is quite some time now, but
it has not been adopted the way Firefox or
OpenOffice did which are used in companies
now and holf measurable market shares. To be
honest, there is also most likely much more
money behind these projects.

The second issue are color management and
color conversion tables which are essential
in professional use. I dont know the current
state, but this was far from useful when I
looked at it last time. This is essential
whereas feature completeness regarding the
x-th permution of blur filters is not.
That said, Gimp is cool but it is not as
successful as it could be keeping in mind
that Image editing is a very common app.

I bet this thread will slow down now for
a week or two and then go on with the
next step like "any objections if I start
to change the documentation?" from one
promoter of the name change. I am in fond
of this, but it is also fun to see how
such things go.

Bye, Christian

On Friday 14 September 2007 1:46 pm, Gregory Stark wrote:
> "Christian Voelker" <C.Voelker@gmx.net> writes:
> > Great examples, but wrong conclusion I believe.
> >
> > Gimp is a perfect example of a Project where the name
> > is part of the problem.
>
> What problem?
In the US gimp is a derogatory name for a person with a handicap.
--
Adrian Klaver
aklaver@comcast.net

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- --On Friday, September 14, 2007 11:37:22 -0700 "Joshua D. Drake"
<jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
>>> I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
>>> mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly
>>> different).
>>
>> It seems like a good FAQ addition. The only downside I can see
>> to adopting the two names as equally valid ways to describe PG is:
>>
>> Q. So... what is "QL" then?
>> A. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!
>
> I humbly submit that those who would actually ask that, just be kindly
> asked to move on to MySQL and leave us alone.

+1

Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Chris Travers wrote:
>
>
> Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
> visible.  Can anyone see a good way to do that?
>

First of all, this project has 3 names which are used in marketing:
PostgreSQL
Postgres
Pg

It isnt hard to draw up a list of things which could be moved from
either of the other two to Postgres.

Postgres Day, Postgres T-shirts, you get the picture.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

On Friday 14 September 2007 11:49, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Robert Treat wrote:
> > > > In other words, before we take a vote on whether the bike shed should
> > > > be red, we should first check to see if we can afford red paint.
> > > >
> > > > Such a proposal should also include other options like Ron Mayer's
> > > > very sensible 20-minute solution (e.g. "Postgres and Postgre are
> > > > acceptable alternate names").
> > >
> > > OK, looks like we now have a list of items to address _if_ we change
> > > the name:
> > >
> > >     http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Postgres
> > >
> > > I believe the next step we discussed was to get feedback from the
> > > 'general' email list.  Correct?
> >
> > I'd say no. Someone should talk to the packagers to asses viability, and
> > someone should review domain names, to asses viability. If those seem
> > viable, then open it up. If not, people need to know before they decide.
>
> Are you saying we should ask the packagers email list?  I don't see any
> other way to ask them.
>

That would be one way that would give apretty good sampling.

> I heard we were OK with domain names.

Hmm, I'm not so sure,  I believe a number of our international communities
might have issues.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

On Friday 14 September 2007 14:25, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >>> Chris Travers wrote:
> >>>> Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
> >>>> promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
> >>>> course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
> >>>> with PostgreSQL.
> >>>>
> >>>> I personally don't think that this would cause any substantial
> >>>> confusion, and would avoid the work involved in a full name change.
> >>>> Then, down the road, if we want to, we can revisit the decision.
> >>>>
> >>>> This would seem to give everyone what they want.
> >>>
> >>> Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
> >>> visible.  Can anyone see a good way to do that?
> >>
> >> Amend FAQ... that's all.
> >>
> >> Most people use it anyway ;)
> >
> > Is this something we can do now, no matter the outcome of the discussion?
>
> Why not? I have zero problem with the FAQ amendment I suggested.
>
> Q. What is the official name of the project?
> A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as an official shortened version.
>
> I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
> mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly different).
>

Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in college,
so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is weakening the
brand, and adding confusion to the market place. . We already suffer from
this now, and promoting two names only makes this worse.

Why does this matter? When you go to google to search for answers to your
problems, you get different results depending on which version of the name
you choose. This is bad for community members and especially bad for new
users. The same problem happens in places like monster.com.  Or for folks
trying to set up news alerts.

Honestly I can't believe that people would think the solution to having a poor
project name is to have two project names. Especially when the two project
names really means we continue on with four project names, as people continue
to use postgres-sequal and postgre.  Furthermore, it is obvious that an FAQ
entry cannot solve this problem, if it could, we wouldn't have the problem to
begin with, since the "how to pronounce" question has been there for years,
along with an MP3 example.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Hi,

Robert Treat wrote:
> Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in college,

Why should that be unfortunate? :-)  Anyway...

> so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is weakening the
> brand, and adding confusion to the market place. . We already suffer from
> this now, and promoting two names only makes this worse.

We *still* suffer from this, despite having promoted PostgreSQL for long
enough. From that very same marketing perspective, I'd say it's about
time to clarify and shorten the name, so as to strengthen the brand.

> Honestly I can't believe that people would think the solution to having a poor
> project name is to have two project names.

We already *have* at least two (PostgreSQL and Postgres) commonly used
names. Let's get rid of one of them!

> Especially when the two project
> names really means we continue on with four project names, as people continue
> to use postgres-sequal and postgre.

..which isn't any worse than now.

> Furthermore, it is obvious that an FAQ
> entry cannot solve this problem, if it could, we wouldn't have the problem to
> begin with, since the "how to pronounce" question has been there for years,
> along with an MP3 example.

The FAQ change isn't meant as a final solution, but it's a first step
towards "Postgres".

IMO a slow migration away from PostgreSQL is the only option, as this is
an open source project, not a centralized, well managed company.

Regards

Markus

2007-09-15_04:21:01-0400 Markus Schiltknecht <markus@bluegap.ch>:

> We already *have* at least two (PostgreSQL and Postgres) commonly used
> names. Let's get rid of one of them!

That already happened.  There has only been one official name for some
time now, but people still continue using an unofficial name that they
like better.  How would switching the official name change this?

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

1. Regarding the FAQ change, that’s great. I’m glad something’s been done.
2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the largest community has already voted no. I don’t understand that comment. As best as I can tell, it’s about 2-to-1 in favor of the change.
3. For what it’s worth, I agree with Chris Travers that Core should make the call. But I also accept that that’s not how it works at this time. So be it.
4. I also agree with Markus below, when he says “a slow migration away from PostgreSQL is the only option, as this is an open source project, not a centralized, well managed company.” I actually do believe that a slow migration is appropriate for all concerned parties, since — as Josh Drake points out — there’s a ton of other stuff to do.
5. Now that Postgres is an officially acceptable substitute, EnterpriseDB will begin migrating its terminology to “Postgres” when referring to the world’s most advanced open source database project.
   

Hi,

Robert Treat wrote:
> Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in college,

Why should that be unfortunate? :-)  Anyway...

> so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is weakening the
> brand, and adding confusion to the market place. . We already suffer from
> this now, and promoting two names only makes this worse.

We *still* suffer from this, despite having promoted PostgreSQL for long
enough. From that very same marketing perspective, I'd say it's about
time to clarify and shorten the name, so as to strengthen the brand.

> Honestly I can't believe that people would think the solution to having a poor
> project name is to have two project names.

We already *have* at least two (PostgreSQL and Postgres) commonly used
names. Let's get rid of one of them!

> Especially when the two project
> names really means we continue on with four project names, as people continue
> to use postgres-sequal and postgre.

..which isn't any worse than now.

> Furthermore, it is obvious that an FAQ
> entry cannot solve this problem, if it could, we wouldn't have the problem to
> begin with, since the "how to pronounce" question has been there for years,
> along with an MP3 example.

The FAQ change isn't meant as a final solution, but it's a first step
towards "Postgres".

IMO a slow migration away from PostgreSQL is the only option, as this is
an open source project, not a centralized, well managed company.

Regards

Markus


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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Hi,

Ron Peterson wrote:
> That already happened.  There has only been one official name for some
> time now, but people still continue using an unofficial name that they
> like better.  How would switching the official name change this?

Huh? That seems obvious: switching to the easier name means adopting
what people generally seem to like better. So that nobody must
abbreviate the name anymore, because it's short and simple enough.

Regards

Markus

2007-09-15_07:44:38-0400 Markus Schiltknecht <markus@bluegap.ch>:

> >That already happened.  There has only been one official name for some
> >time now, but people still continue using an unofficial name that they
> >like better.  How would switching the official name change this?
>
> Huh? That seems obvious: switching to the easier name means adopting
> what people generally seem to like better. So that nobody must
> abbreviate the name anymore, because it's short and simple enough.

That's based on the assumption that everyone believes 'Postgres' is
clearly a better name, and that 'PostgreSQL' was simply an unfortunate
historical accident.  That's not true.

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

2007-09-14_23:36:37-0400 Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net>:

> Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in
> college, so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it
> is weakening the brand, and adding confusion to the market place. . We
> already suffer from this now, and promoting two names only makes this
> worse.

I think you hit the nail on the head.  While changing the name to
'Postgres' might appeal to some people's aesthetic sensibilities, it
offends others, and therefore doesn't address the larger problem, which
is confusion in the marketplace.  No matter what name is the "official"
name, as long as both names are in common use, that problem will
persist.  On either side of the Postgres/PostgreSQL name divide, there
are people who strongly feel that their name is better - so no matter
what name is "official", two names will continue to be used.

I know people will hate me for saying this, but from where I sit, it
seems that if anyone cares to really fix the larger problem, a different
name altogether might be in order.  Of course that would be much more
disruptive in the short term; but in the long term, unless and until
there is a single unambiguous (preferably trademarked) name for this
project, outsiders will continue to be confused.  That condition will
persist no matter which of the two existing names wins this shortsighted
debate.

That said, absent any incontrovertable evidence that changing things is
clearly better - and all I've seen are some personal opinions and
anecdotes - then I would say that for now, the status quo should
prevail.  Of course that supports my own personal view on the matter;
but it's also the commonly accepted way to conclude otherwise
indeterminate arguments.  With no such presumptive rules in place, there
is nothing to stop these kinds of arguments from going on forever -
which is exactly what is happening here.  To no one's benefit, I might
add - it's just making everyone prickly and annoyed with each other.

I also think that right now, we should return to the post that started
this interminable thread, which asked how we can best present the
forthcoming 8.3 release to the public.  The 8.3 release is here and now.
We can debate the name of the project for the rest of our lives - which
reminds me of an expression: "In the long run, we're all dead."

--
Ron Peterson
https://www.yellowbank.com/

Hi,

Ron Peterson wrote:
> That's based on the assumption that everyone believes 'Postgres' is
> clearly a better name, and that 'PostgreSQL' was simply an unfortunate
> historical accident.  That's not true.

Yes, to me this is true. Because lots of people abbreviate 'PostgreSQL'
with 'Postgres' mostly for easier pronunciation and simplicity. I doubt
very much that, once 'Postgres' becomes the official name, anybody
seriously wants to call it 'PostgreSQL' anymore.

Of course, during a slow transition, both names will be used. But
'PostgreSQL' can fade away slowly. OTOH 'Postgres' will never fade away,
as we have learned. Mainly from that I'm concluding that 'Postgres' is
the better name (better as in marketing, not technical correctness).

Regards

Markus

"Ron Peterson" <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com> writes:

> 2007-09-14_23:36:37-0400 Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net>:
>
>> Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in
>> college

That is indeed unfortunate, my condolences.


--
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com

Markus Schiltknecht wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Ron Peterson wrote:
> > That's based on the assumption that everyone believes 'Postgres' is
> > clearly a better name, and that 'PostgreSQL' was simply an unfortunate
> > historical accident.  That's not true.
>
> Yes, to me this is true. Because lots of people abbreviate 'PostgreSQL'
> with 'Postgres' mostly for easier pronunciation and simplicity. I doubt
> very much that, once 'Postgres' becomes the official name, anybody
> seriously wants to call it 'PostgreSQL' anymore.

The fact is that I use "Postgres" in all my speaches and press
interviews and no one has said they were confused.  (They might have
been confused by other things I said, but not the name I used.)

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Saturday 15 September 2007 13:38, Chris Travers wrote:
> Robert Treat wrote:
> > Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in
> > college, so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is
> > weakening the brand, and adding confusion to the market place. . We
> > already suffer from this now, and promoting two names only makes this
> > worse.
>
> The only major problem I see with this argument is that the RDBMS is
> called any of: PostgreSQL, Postgres, Pg, etc.  Postgres is arguably
> *already* a stronger trademark of this project than is PostgreSQL
> because most people who are lazy type "PostgreSQL" as 'Pg' and pronounce
> it "Postgres."
>

If postgres is a stronger brand (tradmarks are a legal term, and none of these
words qualify) than PostgreSQL, that is an argument to switch names for the
project, not an argument that promoting two names makes things less
confusing.

> I guess my concern is that we already have this problem.   If we want to
> be consistent, we need to name things more consistently.  PgDay needs to
> become PostgreSQL Day and needs to be written as such consistently.  The
> arguable reason why is that "PostgreSQL" (while a great excersize for
> children learning to separate sounds to make words) is fairly
> labor-intensive to write and speak, so people don't do that.
>

Again not quite. Think of a company like McDonalds. The have a clear
corportate vision of the brand of McDonalds, and all interaction you have
with the main company clearly references McDonalds. However, in the common
vernacular, many people just refer to them as MickeyD's.  It's ok to have
unofficial nicknames, as long as the central the "official" usage is
consistent and clear.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

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Robert Treat wrote:
> On Saturday 15 September 2007 13:38, Chris Travers wrote:
>> Robert Treat wrote:

> Again not quite. Think of a company like McDonalds. The have a clear
> corportate vision of the brand of McDonalds, and all interaction you have
> with the main company clearly references McDonalds. However, in the common
> vernacular, many people just refer to them as MickeyD's.  It's ok to have
> unofficial nicknames, as long as the central the "official" usage is
> consistent and clear.
>

Right.

Joshua D. Drake

- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997  http://www.commandprompt.com/
            UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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Andy,

> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the largest
> community has already voted no.

No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't remember
who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since JPUG is our
single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no" vote.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Apologies for the confusion, Josh and JD. I now understand the context for
JD's statement. I was surprised that the overall US group was not viewed as
the largest national community, but not important. I think we all understand
each others' perspectives.

andy


On 9/17/07 1:16 AM, "Josh Berkus" <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:

> Andy,
>
>> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the largest
>> community has already voted no.
>
> No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't remember
> who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since JPUG is our
> single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no" vote.

Robert Treat wrote:
> Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in college,
> so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is weakening the
> brand, and adding confusion to the market place. . We already suffer from
> this now, and promoting two names only makes this worse.
>
The only major problem I see with this argument is that the RDBMS is
called any of: PostgreSQL, Postgres, Pg, etc.  Postgres is arguably
*already* a stronger trademark of this project than is PostgreSQL
because most people who are lazy type "PostgreSQL" as 'Pg' and pronounce
it "Postgres."

I guess my concern is that we already have this problem.   If we want to
be consistent, we need to name things more consistently.  PgDay needs to
become PostgreSQL Day and needs to be written as such consistently.  The
arguable reason why is that "PostgreSQL" (while a great excersize for
children learning to separate sounds to make words) is fairly
labor-intensive to write and speak, so people don't do that.

It would be better to have *one* trademark would clearly be better.  But
given the fact that we now have a number of unofficial trademarks which
are arguably stronger than "PostgreSQL" I am not sure that this case
makes as much sense.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

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- --On Friday, September 14, 2007 23:36:37 -0400 Robert Treat
<xzilla@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in college,
> so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is weakening the
> brand, and adding confusion to the market place.

Actually, having "two names" is a fairly common practice in the commercial
world ... there is the 'formal name' that a company is registered as, but then
there is also registered a 'trade name', which is what Postgres is ...


- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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"Chris Travers" <chris@metatrontech.com> writes:

> Robert Treat wrote:
>> Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in college,
>> so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is weakening the
>> brand, and adding confusion to the market place. . We already suffer from
>> this now, and promoting two names only makes this worse.
>
> The only major problem I see with this argument is that the RDBMS is called any
> of: PostgreSQL, Postgres, Pg, etc.  Postgres is arguably *already* a stronger
> trademark of this project than is PostgreSQL because most people who are lazy
> type "PostgreSQL" as 'Pg' and pronounce it "Postgres."
>
> I guess my concern is that we already have this problem.

Wait, what problem?

> If we want to be consistent, we need to name things more consistently.

That's just a truism, do we care about being consistent though?

> It would be better to have *one* trademark would clearly be better.

Better how?

--
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com

On Sep 16, 2007, at 11:47 AM, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> - --On Friday, September 14, 2007 23:36:37 -0400 Robert Treat
> <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
>> Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes
>> in college,
>> so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is
>> weakening the
>> brand, and adding confusion to the market place.
>
> Actually, having "two names" is a fairly common practice in the
> commercial
> world ... there is the 'formal name' that a company is registered
> as, but then
> there is also registered a 'trade name', which is what Postgres is ...

But that's not what we're talking about. I don't think anyone really
cares if we go from "The PostgreSQL Development Group" to "The
Postgres Development Group", because no one ever sees that name.
--
Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect  decibel@decibel.org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

On Sep 14, 2007, at 12:58 PM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Chris Travers wrote:
>> Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
>> promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
>> course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
>> with PostgreSQL.
>
> Add to FAQ:
>
> Q. What is the official name of the project?
> A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as a official shortened version.

Simply changing a FAQ isn't exactly "promoting it to equal footing
with PostgreSQL"... though at least it'd be a start.
--
Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect  decibel@decibel.org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

On Sep 17, 2007, at 12:16 AM, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the
>> largest
>> community has already voted no.
>
> No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I
> don't remember
> who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since
> JPUG is our
> single largest national community, this is a pretty significant
> "no" vote.

To further clarify, IIRC the complaint was based on the expense of
reworking all their swag. Hopefully a gradual transition removes that
objection.
--
Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect  decibel@decibel.org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

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- --On Sunday, September 16, 2007 22:16:35 -0700 Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
wrote:

> Andy,
>
>> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the largest
>> community has already voted no.
>
> No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't remember
> who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since JPUG is our
> single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no" vote.

Tatsu Ishii ..

- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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- --On Monday, September 17, 2007 22:26:28 -0500 Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org>
wrote:


> To further clarify, IIRC the complaint was based on the expense of reworking
> all their swag. Hopefully a gradual transition removes that objection.

Y"IIRC" it wrong ... in Japan, according to Tatsuo Ishii's post (I just re-read
it), he points to the fact that Postgres *isn't* a recognized product,
PostgreSQL is, as that is what they have been promoting since '96 ... my read
is that they haven't really allowed stuff like Pg or Postgres become 'common
place' similar to the English community, but he can comment to that if he so
chooses ...

Again, as I'm interpreting what he said (which, in fact, I find to be quite
clear), it is like JoshB has already pointed out ... it would cost them alot to
push the name Postgres as being the same product as PostgreSQL ... and not just
as concerns 'swag', but as concerns 'brand recognition' ...



- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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> Andy,
>
> > 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the largest
> > community has already voted no.
>
> No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't remember
> who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since JPUG is our
> single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no" vote.

If someone were me, I would like to point out that I'm not in the
position of speaking for JPUG bord. However when I startred a
discussion in the JPUG's mailing list on name changing, I found the
major opinions were against the name change. If you really want to
know how the JPUG board think, I could send an inquery to them.
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan

> Y"IIRC" it wrong ... in Japan, according to Tatsuo Ishii's post (I just re-read
> it), he points to the fact that Postgres *isn't* a recognized product,
> PostgreSQL is, as that is what they have been promoting since '96 ... my read
> is that they haven't really allowed stuff like Pg or Postgres become 'common
> place' similar to the English community, but he can comment to that if he so
> chooses ...
>
> Again, as I'm interpreting what he said (which, in fact, I find to be quite
> clear), it is like JoshB has already pointed out ... it would cost them alot to
> push the name Postgres as being the same product as PostgreSQL ... and not just
> as concerns 'swag', but as concerns 'brand recognition' ...

Exactly. It took for 10 years in Japan to make "PostgreSQL" as the
most famous OSS DB brand. Please do not throw away "PostgreSQL"
immediately.
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan

Christopher Petrilli wrote:
>> a majority of the databases in the open source world are burdened with
>> SQL in their name, this isn't true in the commercial world:
...
>>   * SQL Server

Isn't this one "burdened" with "SQL" in its name?

>>   * DB/2

Dan Scott wrote:
> If it's any consolation, DB2 (proper form - no slash) seems to be
> burdened with a name that continues to suffer from branding confusion
> with the defunct OS/2. Even IBMers get it wrong.
>
> I don't expect they'll be changing the name, though.

--
Lew

> > Andy,
> >
> > > 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the largest
> > > community has already voted no.
> >
> > No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't remember
> > who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since JPUG is our
> > single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no" vote.
>
> If someone were me, I would like to point out that I'm not in the
> position of speaking for JPUG bord. However when I startred a
> discussion in the JPUG's mailing list on name changing, I found the
> major opinions were against the name change. If you really want to
> know how the JPUG board think, I could send an inquery to them.

I asked the JPUG borard and they decided not to express yes or no
opinion for name changing.

Here are some opinions from JPUG board members.

- We don't want to change the name

- It is ok to change the name if all communities other than Japan wish
  to do so

- "Postgres" lacks "DB" or "SQL", which is not good for new
  users since they might not notice it's a database software

- "PostgreSQL" is definitley hard to pronounce

- "SQLite" is hard to pronounce too, and people tend to pronounce
  "Linux" differently, but the become popular

- It's just a matter to unify the pronounciation of "PostgreSQL", isn't it?

- Finding or creating PostgreSQL applications is much more important to
  make PostgreSQL popular than discussing the name change
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan

Hello,

I strongly believe that is wrong to ask somebody
whether the name should be changed. The answer
will always be biased because people tend to
stick with what they are used to.

We all agreed that there will be a considerable
amount of work to be done for a name change, but
that is a different question. If you really want
to know which name is better, then you have to
make people to take a neutral perspective.

You might ask something like this: The idea
of changing PostgreSQLs name is popping up
every now and then. Do you believe that there
would be a similar discussion if the name
of the project were Postgres?

To come back to the results of your question,
the idea of using DB instead of SQL as a sign
is interesting though I doubt that anybody
would start the renaming project if the new
name were decided to be PostgresDB.

Bye, Christian

Feel free to send email to them to know what they think.
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan

> Hello,
>
> I strongly believe that is wrong to ask somebody
> whether the name should be changed. The answer
> will always be biased because people tend to
> stick with what they are used to.
>
> We all agreed that there will be a considerable
> amount of work to be done for a name change, but
> that is a different question. If you really want
> to know which name is better, then you have to
> make people to take a neutral perspective.
>
> You might ask something like this: The idea
> of changing PostgreSQLs name is popping up
> every now and then. Do you believe that there
> would be a similar discussion if the name
> of the project were Postgres?
>
> To come back to the results of your question,
> the idea of using DB instead of SQL as a sign
> is interesting though I doubt that anybody
> would start the renaming project if the new
> name were decided to be PostgresDB.
>
> Bye, Christian
>

Hi all,

I apologize that I don't read all messages in this thread,
but I can give some comments from the Japanese users' view.

I don't see the benefit of changing the name, so I don't
have any reason to change the name right now.

In Japan, many people pronounce 'Post-gres' or 'Pos-gre',
but such ambiguous pronunciation is not a serious problem
for us (PostgreSQL community). In fact, PostgreSQL has
many users and large market-share in Japan.

I'm working in Japanese PostgreSQL community, writing
PostgreSQL articles for DBAs in magazine, planning/holding
the PostgreSQL user conference (Josh was comming),
and discussing with many users and developers.

According to my experience, to boost our market-share,
we (PostgreSQL community) have to write more techdocs
(for DBAs), share our case studies (best practices),
and write/port more applications which support PostgreSQL.

There is no silver bullet.
Changing the name is not a silver bullet.

Just my opinion.

Do you really think that changing the name could benefit/help
the PostgreSQL users/developers?
--
NAGAYASU Satoshi <snaga@snaga.org>

On 26/09/2007, John Wang <johncwang@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/25/07, Satoshi Nagayasu <snaga@snaga.org> wrote:
> > In Japan, many people pronounce 'Post-gres' or 'Pos-gre',
> > but such ambiguous pronunciation is not a serious problem
> > for us (PostgreSQL community). In fact, PostgreSQL has
> > many users and large market-share in Japan.
>
>  One of the proposals is to have 'Post-gre' become an accepted name along
> with PostgreSQL and Postgres. This may solve the situation.


I am not sure on what this observation is based? Japan as a market
would be very pleased if the name was Postgres, as this is how it gets
pronounced most often in my experience -- in the entire CJK market.

I've heard (third-hand, I admit) that Postgre (without the S) would
please people in Latin America, so if you're working with
Brazil-returned Japanese, then I could see where you're coming from.
But we have on our team a Venezuelan and he actually prefers Postgres
because, in his words, "it doesn't leave the word hanging and sounds
more like a word".

Anyway, it seems this thread has outlasted almost every other thread,
ever :) Isn't it time there was a website dedicated to this purpose?
With a poll perhaps.

Shashank Tripathi escribió:

> I've heard (third-hand, I admit) that Postgre (without the S) would
> please people in Latin America, so if you're working with
> Brazil-returned Japanese, then I could see where you're coming from.
> But we have on our team a Venezuelan and he actually prefers Postgres
> because, in his words, "it doesn't leave the word hanging and sounds
> more like a word".

Just to confirm: in spanish, people use "Postgre" only because it's what
looks like the name when you strip the SQL part.  But "Postgres" sounds
a lot more like a real word.

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

> On 26/09/2007, John Wang <johncwang@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/25/07, Satoshi Nagayasu <snaga@snaga.org> wrote:
> > > In Japan, many people pronounce 'Post-gres' or 'Pos-gre',
> > > but such ambiguous pronunciation is not a serious problem
> > > for us (PostgreSQL community). In fact, PostgreSQL has
> > > many users and large market-share in Japan.
> >
> >  One of the proposals is to have 'Post-gre' become an accepted name along
> > with PostgreSQL and Postgres. This may solve the situation.
>
>
> I am not sure on what this observation is based? Japan as a market
> would be very pleased if the name was Postgres, as this is how it gets
> pronounced most often in my experience -- in the entire CJK market.

Nobody says like that in Japan, as far as I know.
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan

> I've heard (third-hand, I admit) that Postgre (without the S) would
> please people in Latin America, so if you're working with
> Brazil-returned Japanese, then I could see where you're coming from.
> But we have on our team a Venezuelan and he actually prefers Postgres
> because, in his words, "it doesn't leave the word hanging and sounds
> more like a word".
>
> Anyway, it seems this thread has outlasted almost every other thread,
> ever :) Isn't it time there was a website dedicated to this purpose?
> With a poll perhaps.
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?
>
>                http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq

> Most odd, what I've been hearing out of JPUG is a pretty much 'undecided', with
> some requesting no change, and some not caring either way ...

Yes.

As I wrote, the pronunciation is not a problem in Japan,
so we can't find any (strong) reason to change the name right now.
We (JPUG board members) have no consensus.

Following is just my opinion.

If we (the PostgreSQL community) decide to change the name
to re-brand 'Postgres' in the world for the marketing reason,
I don't have objection to that.

But I think the word 'PostgreSQL (these 10 charactors)', has already have
good brand-image and large market-share in Japan.

2007/9/27, Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
>
> - --On Wednesday, September 26, 2007 16:09:59 +0800 Shashank Tripathi
> <shashank.tripathi@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > I am not sure on what this observation is based? Japan as a market
> > would be very pleased if the name was Postgres, as this is how it gets
> > pronounced most often in my experience -- in the entire CJK market.
>
> Most odd, what I've been hearing out of JPUG is a pretty much 'undecided', with
> some requesting no change, and some not caring either way ...
>
> - ----
> Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
> Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
> Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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> =mAXY
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>


--
NAGAYASU Satoshi <snaga@snaga.org>

Just for a fun, I played with some market size estimation.

It is said that in Japan on Linux platform, PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle
has almost even shares (I would say 25% each). PostgreSQL's share in
US is probably less than 5%(correct me if I'm wrong). Now population
of Japan is 127M, while US's is 300M. So I could estimate number of
users ratio in Japana and US as follows:

Japan/US ratio = 127M*25% / 300M*5%
               = 2.12

So may be I could say that number of PostgreSQL users in Japan is
twice as many as that in US?
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan

> Apologies for the confusion, Josh and JD. I now understand the context for
> JD's statement. I was surprised that the overall US group was not viewed as
> the largest national community, but not important. I think we all understand
> each others' perspectives.
>
> andy
>
>
> On 9/17/07 1:16 AM, "Josh Berkus" <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
>
> > Andy,
> >
> >> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the largest
> >> community has already voted no.
> >
> > No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't remember
> > who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since JPUG is our
> > single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no" vote.
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at
>
>                 http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

Just for a fun, I played with some market size estimation.

It is said that in Japan on Linux platform, PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle
has almost even shares (I would say 25% each). PostgreSQL's share in
US is probably less than 5%(correct me if I'm wrong). Now population
of Japan is 127M, while US's is 300M. So I could estimate number of
users ratio in Japana and US as follows:

Japan/US ratio = 127M*25% / 300M*5%
                           = 2.12

So may be I could say that number of PostgreSQL users in Japan is
twice as many as that in US?
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan

> Apologies for the confusion, Josh and JD. I now understand the context for
> JD's statement. I was surprised that the overall US group was not viewed as
> the largest national community, but not important. I think we all understand
> each others' perspectives.
>
> andy
>
>
> On 9/17/07 1:16 AM, "Josh Berkus" <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
>
> > Andy,
> >
> >> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the largest
> >> community has already voted no.
> >
> > No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't remember
> > who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since JPUG is our
> > single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no" vote.
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at
>
>                 http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

> Everyone,
>
> I am actually working on an exercise to generate some numbers on the
> Postgres market share and/or market size, both in the US and globally.
>
> If anyone has any information on this topic, whether anecdotal,
> analyst-based, or from any other source, I would appreciate you sending it
> to me. I will summarize my findings with the mailing list once they are
> complete, in the next couple of weeks. Thanks in advance,
>
> Andy
>
> P.S. Tatsuo...interesting assessment. It¹s amazing that Postgres¹s
> popularity in Japan is an estimated 5 times the number in the US!

I believe the estimation is not far from the reality. I also am
interested in another country. My wild guess is, PostgreSQL popularity in
EU might be somewehre between Japan and US. In Russia it might be
between EU and Japan. Those says, the popularity rank might be:

Japan > Russia > EU > US

Of course these are just my guess...
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan

> On 10/5/07 12:14 AM, "Tatsuo Ishii" <ishii@postgresql.org> wrote:
>
> > Just for a fun, I played with some market size estimation.
> >
> > It is said that in Japan on Linux platform, PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle
> > has almost even shares (I would say 25% each). PostgreSQL's share in
> > US is probably less than 5%(correct me if I'm wrong). Now population
> > of Japan is 127M, while US's is 300M. So I could estimate number of
> > users ratio in Japana and US as follows:
> >
> > Japan/US ratio = 127M*25% / 300M*5%
> >                            = 2.12
> >
> > So may be I could say that number of PostgreSQL users in Japan is
> > twice as many as that in US?
> > --
> > Tatsuo Ishii
> > SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
> >
> >> > Apologies for the confusion, Josh and JD. I now understand the context for
> >> > JD's statement. I was surprised that the overall US group was not viewed as
> >> > the largest national community, but not important. I think we all
> >> understand
> >> > each others' perspectives.
> >> >
> >> > andy
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On 9/17/07 1:16 AM, "Josh Berkus" <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >>> > > Andy,
> >>> > >
> >>>> > >> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the
> >>>> largest
> >>>> > >> community has already voted no.
> >>> > >
> >>> > > No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't
> >>> remember
> >>> > > who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since JPUG is
> our
> >>> > > single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no" >>>
> vote.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> >> > TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at
> >> >
> >> >                 http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
> >
>
>

Andy,

I don't have any numbers but significant elements of the provincial government
of Quebec is extremely pro-opensource (including postgres). I would attribute
this to the historical economic and social ties that exists with the
government's in Europe's own francophone countries i.e. Belgium, France,
Switzerland etc. which is of course more opensource friendly than the
continental US.

On Friday 5 October 2007 05:39, Andy Astor wrote:
> Everyone,
>
> I am actually working on an exercise to generate some numbers on the
> Postgres market share and/or market size, both in the US and globally.
>
> If anyone has any information on this topic, whether anecdotal,
> analyst-based, or from any other source, I would appreciate you sending it
> to me. I will summarize my findings with the mailing list once they are
> complete, in the next couple of weeks. Thanks in advance,
>
> Andy
>
> P.S. Tatsuo...interesting assessment. It¹s amazing that Postgres¹s
> popularity in Japan is an estimated 5 times the number in the US!
>
>
> On 10/5/07 12:14 AM, "Tatsuo Ishii" <ishii@postgresql.org> wrote:
>
> > Just for a fun, I played with some market size estimation.
> >
> > It is said that in Japan on Linux platform, PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle
> > has almost even shares (I would say 25% each). PostgreSQL's share in
> > US is probably less than 5%(correct me if I'm wrong). Now population
> > of Japan is 127M, while US's is 300M. So I could estimate number of
> > users ratio in Japana and US as follows:
> >
> > Japan/US ratio = 127M*25% / 300M*5%
> >                            = 2.12
> >
> > So may be I could say that number of PostgreSQL users in Japan is
> > twice as many as that in US?
> > --
> > Tatsuo Ishii
> > SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
> >
> >> > Apologies for the confusion, Josh and JD. I now understand the context
for
> >> > JD's statement. I was surprised that the overall US group was not
viewed as
> >> > the largest national community, but not important. I think we all
> >> understand
> >> > each others' perspectives.
> >> >
> >> > andy
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On 9/17/07 1:16 AM, "Josh Berkus" <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >>> > > Andy,
> >>> > >
> >>>> > >> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said the
> >>>> largest
> >>>> > >> community has already voted no.
> >>> > >
> >>> > > No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I don't
> >>> remember
> >>> > > who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since
JPUG is
> our
> >>> > > single largest national community, this is a pretty significant "no"
>>>
> vote.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > ---------------------------(end of
broadcast)---------------------------
> >> > TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at
> >> >
> >> >                 http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
> >
>
>
>

On Friday 05 October 2007 04:50:54 Robert Bernier wrote:
> Andy,
>
> I don't have any numbers but significant elements of the provincial
> government of Quebec is extremely pro-opensource (including postgres). I
> would attribute this to the historical economic and social ties that exists
> with the government's in Europe's own francophone countries i.e. Belgium,
> France, Switzerland etc. which is of course more opensource friendly than
> the continental US.

Along this, I'll also note that the Province of British Columbia, also most
probabbly has elements of it's GIS offerings on PostgreSQL (anecdotal based
on the fact that Refractions does significant work for the government).



>
> On Friday 5 October 2007 05:39, Andy Astor wrote:
> > Everyone,
> >
> > I am actually working on an exercise to generate some numbers on the
> > Postgres market share and/or market size, both in the US and globally.
> >
> > If anyone has any information on this topic, whether anecdotal,
> > analyst-based, or from any other source, I would appreciate you sending
> > it to me. I will summarize my findings with the mailing list once they
> > are complete, in the next couple of weeks. Thanks in advance,
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > P.S. Tatsuo...interesting assessment. It¹s amazing that Postgres¹s
> > popularity in Japan is an estimated 5 times the number in the US!
> >
> > On 10/5/07 12:14 AM, "Tatsuo Ishii" <ishii@postgresql.org> wrote:
> > > Just for a fun, I played with some market size estimation.
> > >
> > > It is said that in Japan on Linux platform, PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle
> > > has almost even shares (I would say 25% each). PostgreSQL's share in
> > > US is probably less than 5%(correct me if I'm wrong). Now population
> > > of Japan is 127M, while US's is 300M. So I could estimate number of
> > > users ratio in Japana and US as follows:
> > >
> > > Japan/US ratio = 127M*25% / 300M*5%
> > >                            = 2.12
> > >
> > > So may be I could say that number of PostgreSQL users in Japan is
> > > twice as many as that in US?
> > > --
> > > Tatsuo Ishii
> > > SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
> > >
> > >> > Apologies for the confusion, Josh and JD. I now understand the
> > >> > context
>
> for
>
> > >> > JD's statement. I was surprised that the overall US group was not
>
> viewed as
>
> > >> > the largest national community, but not important. I think we all
> > >>
> > >> understand
> > >>
> > >> > each others' perspectives.
> > >> >
> > >> > andy
> > >> >
> > >> > On 9/17/07 1:16 AM, "Josh Berkus" <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> > >>> > > Andy,
> > >>> > >
> > >>>> > >> 2. At some point way early on in this thread, Josh Berkus said
> > >>>> > >> the
> > >>>>
> > >>>> largest
> > >>>>
> > >>>> > >> community has already voted no.
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > > No, it was Drake, not me.  JD was pointing out that someone (I
> > >>> > > don't
> > >>>
> > >>> remember
> > >>>
> > >>> > > who) had spoken for the JPUG board against a name change.  Since
>
> JPUG is
>
> > our
> >
> > >>> > > single largest national community, this is a pretty significant
> > >>> > > "no"
> >
> > vote.
> >
> > >> > ---------------------------(end of
>
> broadcast)---------------------------
>
> > >> > TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at
> > >> >
> > >> >                 http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings



--


Darcy Buskermolen
The PostgreSQL company, Command Prompt Inc.
http://www.commandprompt.com/

Andy Astor wrote:
> I am actually working on an exercise to generate some numbers on the
> Postgres market share and/or market size, both in the US and globally.

If Postgres had an optional "inform me of updates" feature that
would ping postgresql.org every night looking for updates, it
could help make such estimates.

If such a feature worked by writing a warning like
"you're running 8.1.0, consider upgrading to 8.1.10"
in the log file, I'd probably have it turned on on all
our development instances.

Yes, I know it won't count them all.  And even if the feature
existed the most sane default is disabled by default so it
wouldn't even count many of them.   But to see relative
use by country; or to see a very conservative lower bound
on how many postgresql's are running every day, it might
make for some interesting statistics.

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 07:14:24PM +0900, Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
> > Everyone,
> >
> > I am actually working on an exercise to generate some numbers on
> > the Postgres market share and/or market size, both in the US and
> > globally.
> >
> > If anyone has any information on this topic, whether anecdotal,
> > analyst-based, or from any other source, I would appreciate you
> > sending it to me. I will summarize my findings with the mailing
> > list once they are complete, in the next couple of weeks. Thanks
> > in advance,
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > P.S. Tatsuo...interesting assessment. It¹s amazing that Postgres¹s
> > popularity in Japan is an estimated 5 times the number in the US!
>
> I believe the estimation is not far from the reality. I also am
> interested in another country. My wild guess is, PostgreSQL
> popularity in EU might be somewehre between Japan and US. In Russia
> it might be between EU and Japan. Those says, the popularity rank
> might be:
>
> Japan > Russia > EU > US
>
> Of course these are just my guess...

I'm curious as to where South America, South Asia and Greater China
fit in the above today, and even more interested in where they will
fit in time to come.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778        AIM: dfetter666
                              Skype: davidfetter

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

Andy,

> I am actually working on an exercise to generate some numbers on the
> Postgres market share and/or market size, both in the US and globally.

I can get you download numbers after I return from my trip, next week.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Andy,

> I am actually working on an exercise to generate some numbers on the
> Postgres market share and/or market size, both in the US and globally.

I can get you download numbers after I return from my trip, next week.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco