Thread: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] What can we learn from MySQL?

Andrew Payne wrote:
>
> Bruce wrote:
>
> > > Does anyone know of an open source project that *has* successfully
> displaced
> > > a market of mature, established products WITHOUT a commercial entity
> > > providing marketing, support & direction?
> >
> > Linux.  It doesn't have a single company behind it, but several.
>
> Uh, no.  Linux HAD a commercial entity providing marketing, support, and
> direction.  Red Hat went a long, long way to making Linux real for
> businesses.  They were (are) a well-funded entity, focused on Linux
> adoption.  Their early success, in turn, validated the business (a) so
> competitors got funded and (b) so established companies (e.g. IBM) started
> to pay attention.
>
> (This is not meant to give all credit to Red Hat:  if it wasn't them, it
> would have been some other similar group).
>
> So, does anyone know of an open source project that *has* successfully
> displaced a market of mature, established products WITHOUT a commercial
> entity providing marketing, support & direction?
>
> If not, where's the Red Hat for Postgres?

My point was that once a single company showed it as profitable, other
companies came alone and no one company controls Linux development.  We
have that now with SRA, Red Hat, Fujitsu, and many smaller companies
funding development of PostgreSQL.  (In fact, there were several Linux
companies before Red Hat.)

Now, if you are asking about marketing, yea, we don't have much in that
area right now, and we need it.  I think your point was that we need a
single controlling company to provide marketing because if there are
many, there is little incentive to market PostgreSQL because all the
other companies are taking advantage of it.  That is mostly true.

However, I would argue that Red Hat providing support was more important
than Red Hat marketing, and we do have that with a number of companies
now, and SRA is going to be announcing world-wide support soon (not just
Japan), and we have other venture capital guys looking a forming companies.

My concern about a single company, as all of us are, is that we kill the
community that created the software, which then burdens the single
company to steer development, leading to disaster.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Bruce wrote:

> Now, if you are asking about marketing, yea, we don't have much in that
> area right now, and we need it.  I think your point was that we need a
> single controlling company to provide marketing because if there are
> many, there is little incentive to market PostgreSQL because all the
> other companies are taking advantage of it.  That is mostly true.

Yep, this is one of the key issues.

Right now, there isn't a group of people (with a decent budget) who get up
in the morning and say, "what can I do today to make Postgres more widely
adopted?"  And that's a big problem.  And it's not just marketing:  who's
working on partnerships?  Who making sure all of the ISVs add Postgres to
their list of supported databases?

> However, I would argue that Red Hat providing support was more important
> than Red Hat marketing, and we do have that with a number of companies
> now, and

I think we may have to "agree to disagree" on this.

> SRA is going to be announcing world-wide support soon (not just
> Japan), and we have other venture capital guys looking a forming
> companies.

This is a good step, but it's not the same as a Postgres-focused effort.
SRA's business (and HP's, and IBM's, and Cap Gemini's, and other companies
which are providing support for open source projects) is not about making
Postgres ubiquitous -- it's about selling services.

If a customer came to {SRA,IBM,etc.} with a large suitcase of cash and said,
"will you support Firebird for me?", you'd say yes!

> My concern about a single company, as all of us are, is that we kill the
> community that created the software, which then burdens the single
> company to steer development, leading to disaster.

Understood, and that's the potential catch-22.  This is the problem with
capital:  no smart investor is going to fund a company to promote and
support an project like Postgres if there's nothing to prevent 5 other
investors and teams from doing the exact same thing.  There MAY be a way to
form something that's supportive and respectful of the community, and I
think it's worth trying to figure that out.

Bottom line:  the Postgres project is at a stage where the non-technical
factors (marketing, partnerships) are at least as important as the technical
ones.  Postgres may "lose" because of lacking technology (such as win32
support, though coming soon), but will not necessarily "win" with the best
technology.

-andy