Thread: Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

Vince, Peter:

I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL.  However, your being opposed to
promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me.  How
can you be against promoting PostgreSQL?   Don't you want poeple to use
your code?

For me, it's not just a matter of preference, but of necessity; if
Postgres becomes obscure, I stop being able to participate in the
project.  While there are people on this list who are fortunate enough
to be able to code whatever they want and still get paid, for a lot of
people, our participation hinges on the cycle:

Postgres Users --> Postgres Contracts --> Postgres Jobs --> Postgres
Contributors --> Improvement *and Promotion* of Postgres --> Postgres
Users ...

The Promotion part of that step is *not* dispensable; all of the best
features in the world are not going to expand the Postgres commmunity
if people haven't heard of it, can't find it, and know a lot more about
MySQL anyway.   While this may not be true for everybody, some of us
have clients or bosses who do read trade periodicals and demand that we
follow their technology reccomendations.  I already have one client
using MySQL because of MySQL's "much more professional" web site and
"better support" and "better performance".

Frankly, if we blow off marketing PostgreSQL as "irrelevant", we
*deserve* to get steamrollered by MySQL.  

I think it's terrific that Postgres is a real, programmer-centric,
democratic Open Source project.  I believe that programmers and
contributors should lead the project, and decide features and schedules
based on technical and not marketing reasons.  Nobody on the Advocacy
team is trying to take control of the project and turn it into a
dot-com.

But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention.   I'm not asking
everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
list to recognize the utility of the effort.

-Josh Berkus

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote:

> But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
> loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention.   I'm not asking
> everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
> list to recognize the utility of the effort.

Here are my main problems with it.

1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.
2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to  stay informed on what they're doing.
3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)  how or they'll never be taken seriously.

That's all I'm going to say on this subject.

Vince.
-- Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond!  http://www.pop4.net/  http://www.meanstreamradio.com
http://www.unknown-artists.com       Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.
 

On Mon, 09 Dec 2002 07:29:55 -0500, Vince Vielhaber wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote:
> 
>> But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
>> loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention.   I'm not asking
>> everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
>> list to recognize the utility of the effort.
> 
> Here are my main problems with it.
> 
> 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it. 

I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed. 

> 2) They are,
> or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
>    stay informed on what they're doing.

I think it was only suggested that you join since you obviously have a
lot of feedback you'd like to give to the group. Since a lot of people on
-hackers don't want to be involved in the process, it seemed a bad idea
to post all of the detail work to this list.

> 3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)
>    how or they'll never be taken seriously.
> 

I've seen more posts saying that "until you get a decent website your
not going to be taken seriously" than anything else, by far. While I'm
hoping that's not entirely true, I do agree that until we get a coordinated and
open web development process the advocacy group is going to have a much
harder go of it.

Robert Treat

Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:
> 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.

I think the upshot of the prior discussion was that the outside press
release shouldn't have been used as the release announcement for the
existing mailing lists.  Fine, they made a one-time mistake.

> 2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
>    stay informed on what they're doing.

It seems to me that people have made it perfectly clear that they don't
want to hear about marketing on the -hackers or -general lists.  Taking
it to a marketing-specific list seems like exactly the right response.
Where do you think it should be discussed?
        regards, tom lane

Vince,

> Here are my main problems with it.
> 
> 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.

First off ... not "they", "you".  I'm a member of Advocacy; so are
Robert, Justin, Neil, Marc, Bruce and several other members of this
list.   The advocacy group is not some privately sponsored bunch of
marketeers; *we* are your fellow contributors.

Yes, we should have released a different version of the announcement to
the internal lists.   I believe that I have already explained how that
happened.

> 2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
>    stay informed on what they're doing.

Unless you don't want to stay informed.   In which case, you're welcome
not to, and one or more Advocacy people will join wwwdevel to keep
links synchronized.  Nobody's going to make you do anything.  This is
Open Source.

> 3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)
>    how or they'll never be taken seriously.

One of our volunteers is a professional PR person.   Two are periodical
writers.  I started (with 2 partners) the OpenOffice.org Marketing
Project, which was cited by one columnist (Amy Wohl) as a better
volunteer marketing team than Sun could put together for a
million-dollar budget (paraphrased).  3 of us are small business
owners.  I think we have as much or more combined experience as the
marketing department of any start-up, without the baggage.

Also, half a marketing effort is better than none.   At the very least,
we need to keep Postgres in the press, else we are likely to see
PostgreSQL fade into permanent obscurity.  The technology world is full
of technically good but poorly marketed products -- FoxPro anyone?
Paradox?  Beta video?  Amiga?

Last week I got a 5-page long database developer survey from EvansData.It mentioned 10 other database platforms --
includingIngres! -- but
 
not PostgreSQL.  I personally don't want to see that again.

Sure, we got off to a rocky start.   However, I will point out that our
first release happened to fall on a major American holiday; this made
it extra hard to organize the effort, and things didn't work out well. But the answer to that is not to abandon the
effort,but to plan and
 
prepare better in the future.

I would also be grateful if us folks on the Advocacy team could look to
Hackers to make sure that we *aren't* going off on a tangent, or
pushing Postgres in a way that's inconsistent with the development
goals for the database.   We *want* Advocacy to be an integral part of
the Postgres community, serving the general goal of making Postgres the
best possible ORDBMS in existence.  

-Josh Berkus

Robert Treat writes:

> I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
> converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
> 7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed.

Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.

Release notes:
  Schemas         Schemas allow users to create objects in their own namespace so         two people or applications
canhave tables with the same name.         There is also a public schema for shared tables. Table/index
creationcan be restricted by removing permissions on the         public schema.
 

Press release:
  Schemas       PostgreSQL now joins the handful of ORDBMS's to support       the SQL 92 Schema specification,
improvingboth enterprise       database management and security through the use of namespaces.
 

This not only removes all information about the actual use of schemas,
it contains completely bogus information, because SQL 92 is obsolete,
there is no "SQL Schema specification", and none of this has to do
with being an ORDBMS.  And besides, whose hands were used to do the
counting?


Release notes:
  Drop Column         PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN         functionality.

Press release:
  <void>


Release notes:
  Table Functions         Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are         now much easier to use
thanbefore. You can call such a "table         function" in the SELECT FROM clause, treating its output like a
table.Also, PL/pgSQL functions can now return sets.
 

Press release:
 Table Functions       PostgreSQL version 7.3 has greatly simplified returning result sets       of rows and columns in
databasefunctions.  This significantly       enhances the useability of stored procedures in PostgreSQL, and will
makeit even easier to port Oracle applications to PostgreSQL.
 

Again, this removes all details about how the feature can be used, and
again it inserts completely bogus information.  There are no "sets of
columns", and PostgreSQL does not have stored procedures.  Also, it
makes it look as though PostgreSQL exists merely to reimplement
Oracle.


Release notes:
  Prepared Queries         PostgreSQL now supports prepared queries, for improved         performance.

Press release:
      - Prepared queries for maximized performance on common requests.

I'm curious to know how the marketing department determined that this
is, in fact, the maximal performance.


Release notes:
  Dependency Tracking         PostgreSQL now records object dependencies, which allows         improvements in many
areas."DROP" statements now take either         CASCADE or RESTRICT to control whether dependent objects are
alsodropped.
 

Press release:
      - Enhanced dependency tracking for complex databases.

Again, all relevant information dropped, replaced by marketing fluff.


Release notes:
  Privileges         Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and         functions can be defined to
runwith the privileges of their         creator.
 

Press release:
   Security Advances       In response to community demands, PostgreSQL has added schema,       function, and other
permissionsand settings to increase the database       administrator's granular control over security.
 

Information dropped, replaced by broad and repetitive verbiage.  But
at least they didn't write, "in response to market pressures".


And my personal favorite is this:

Release notes:
  Internationalization         Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled.

Press release:
       - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP,         EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW,
ISO8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...)
 

That is just plain wrong.  Support for various character sets is years
old.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net

On Monday 09 December 2002 12:50, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
> Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
> release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.

If people want to see the details, let them read the release-notes themselves, 
and let it be the detail document.  A press release of the detail that the 
release notes have will not get any 'press' -- and I say that wearing my 
radio broadcaster hat, where I have personally approved or disapproved 'press 
releases' in news stories in the past.  Getting 'press' is what a 'press 
release' is all about.

So, IMHO, the pgsql-announce mailing list should get the press release along 
with the other 'outside' press outlets -- and the developers' lists (since 
hackers is far from the only one) should, IMHO again, get a copy of the 
release notes.

> And my personal favorite is this:

> Release notes:

>    Internationalization
>           Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled.
>
> Press release:
>
>         - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE,
> EUC_JP, EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256,
> etc...)

> That is just plain wrong.  Support for various character sets is years
> old.

It IS true that the current release supports all of these.  The blanket 
'Supports' statement above quoted was not true in the blanket case until the 
'support' became default, since there were cases that this would not be true. 
Support != 'if you pass the right parameters to configure this will work', at 
least not at the press release level.
-- 
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:

> Robert Treat writes:
> 
> > I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
> > converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
> > 7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed.
> 
> Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
> Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
> release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.

<snip for brevity>

So does this mean that you are volunteering to proofread the next
marketing announcement?  I would wager that only a PostgreSQL
developer (such as yourself) could have picked out the inconsistencies
that you were able to find.  The press release might have seemed
"obviously ill-informed" to you, but it seemed just fine to me, and I
can guarantee you that I am at least an order of magnitude more
informed about PostgreSQL than the average manager.

The difference between the press release and the Release Notes is the
intended audience.  The folks that the press release is aimed at
probably don't have any idea that SQL 92 is obsolete, or that
internationalization has been supported for years.  Chances are good
that they will skim over the new features entirely.

What *is* important to these people, however, are the customer
testimonials at the beginning of the press release and the list of
happy customers at the end.

Once management has read the press release they can ask their
developers to read the Release Notes.  Press releases don't supercede
Release Notes, they complement them.  The difference between the 7.3
Release Notes and the press release is that I could give the press
release to my boss.

PostgreSQL desperately needs marketing help.  In fact, at this point I
would say that PostgreSQL needs more marketing help than it needs
development work.  Technically PostgreSQL is clearly a winner, but
despite its myriad features and impressive performance PostgreSQL is
still not being deployed nearly as much as it *should* be.  The team
that has been assembled to market PostgreSQL has some fairly
impressive credentials.  They are certainly *much* better than what
you would expect considering how much they are getting paid :).

In short, if you want to help the folks writing the press releases,
then that's fine and dandy.  But if all you want to do is throw rocks
at the people doing the marketing, then that's another story
altogether.

Jason Earl

Jason Earl <jason.earl@simplot.com> writes:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
>> Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
>> Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
>> release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.

> So does this mean that you are volunteering to proofread the next
> marketing announcement?  I would wager that only a PostgreSQL
> developer (such as yourself) could have picked out the inconsistencies
> that you were able to find.

FWIW, the press release looked fine to me too (and yes, I saw it in
advance).

> The difference between the press release and the Release Notes is the
> intended audience.

Exactly.  The level of detail in the release notes is aimed at hackers
(and usually gets criticized as "insufficient" by them ;-)), but a press
release has entirely different purposes.

> In short, if you want to help the folks writing the press releases,
> then that's fine and dandy.

One error that I think the advocacy team made is that they didn't invite
review of the press release from a wider part of the community.
Although I generally agree with the viewpoint that marketing issues
should be on a separate list and not on -hackers or -general, I think it
wouldn't be out of place to send one message to those lists saying "a
draft of the press release for <event FOO> is up at <this URL>, please
send comments to <advocacy mail list>."  That seems like a reasonable
compromise between filling the lists with unwanted material and having
people feel that they were excluded from the process.
        regards, tom lane

Josh Berkus writes:

> I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
> marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL.  However, your being opposed to
> promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me.  How
> can you be against promoting PostgreSQL?

I'm not against promoting PostgreSQL.  I'm against promoting PostgreSQL in
ways that embarrass me.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net

Peter,

> > I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
> > marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL.  However, your being opposed to
> > promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me.  How
> > can you be against promoting PostgreSQL?
>
> I'm not against promoting PostgreSQL.  I'm against promoting PostgreSQL in
> ways that embarrass me.

What, specifically, were you embarassed by?

--
-Josh BerkusAglio Database SolutionsSan Francisco

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
<snip>
> Press release:
> 
>         - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP,
>           EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...)
> 
> That is just plain wrong.  Support for various character sets is years
> old.

Sure is.  Notice it didn't say "just added" or "added with this release"?

It just says "supports".  It's to highlight the fact that it can be used 
for non-English character sets.  Sure, a whole bunch of people know 
this, but the main target of the press release is people new to 
PostgreSQL that don't.

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

-- 
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi