So, to sum up ... the article did a good job of representing Great Bridge,
did a great injustice (a slap in the face, so to say) to the PostgreSQL
community as a whole, so Great Bridge has no intention of correcting the
situation?
Just to clarify your position, of course ...
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Ned Lilly wrote:
> Folks,
>
> By now, I imagine a number of people have seen the piece on the
> Computer Reseller News website about Great Bridge and PostgreSQL.
> While I think we're all happy to see the increased visibility for
> PostgreSQL (especially as compared to the Oracles of the world),
> it's fair to say the article wasn't perfect. As Nathan Myers
> observed in another post, they rarely are. ;-)
>
> I thought the reporter did a good job of talking about Great
> Bridge's business model and how we work with resellers and
> third-party software developers (which after all is the focus of the
> magazine). Sure, there were some minor errors of fact, like the
> confusion over PostgreSQL's Berkeley origins, and the use of the
> word "licensing."
>
> But of greater concern to us, and the reason I'm writing this note,
> is the lack of clarity about the open source community that has
> built, and continues to build this software. Great Bridge is one
> company, one member of a large community, and a relative newcomer to
> the party. We employ several leading PostgreSQL developers, and
> give back to the project in many ways, but at the end of the day,
> we're still only a very small part of the larger project - which
> precedes us by many years, and could very easily survive us as
> well. We are *a* marketing channel for PostgreSQL (not *the*
> channel), provide services around the software, and release a
> QA-certified distribution (bundled with other tools and
> applications), but we know that it's not *our* software. It's
> everyone's, and I'm sorry the article didn't adequately represent
> that reality.
>
> Having said that, I'd ask everyone to take a deep breath, as Nathan
> suggested, and realize that it's still early in the adoption cycle
> for open source in the larger business world and the mass media.
> There will continue to be nuances that seem blindingly obvious to
> us, but slip right through the reporting and editing process in the
> trade press. That's ok, as long as we correct those errors, as
> delicately as possible ;-)
>
> We all have a shared stake in PostgreSQL being more widely used and
> appreciated, and how we respond to things like this will go a long
> way toward furthering that goal. You can all be justifiably proud
> of the work that's gone into PostgreSQL, leading up to the terrific
> 7.1 release; a big part of Great Bridge's job as a marketing
> organization is to make sure the world finds out about it - an
> ongoing job that we take very seriously.
>
> If anyone has any questions about Great Bridge's position on this
> kind of stuff, please feel free to email me off-list.
>
> Thanks,
> Ned
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Ned Lilly e: ned@greatbridge.com
> Vice President w: www.greatbridge.com
> Evangelism / Hacker Relations v: 757.233.5523
> Great Bridge, LLC f: 757.233.5555
>
>
>
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Marc G. Fournier ICQ#7615664 IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy@hub.org secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org
