Re: Uber moving towards MySQL

> On Jul 28, 2016, at 6:12 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 06:24:09AM -0700, Robert Bernier wrote:
>> Although no way near as knowledgeable as many of you regarding the
>> inner workings of MySQL, let alone postgres, I do however recognize
>> navel gazing when I see it. The first article starting this thread was
>> a convoluted justification of one's own religion. This second article
>> is pure commercial leveraging of a thread that's garnered a lot of
>> attention.
>>
>> It's time a response from the postgres community was forthcoming.
>
> I think this new blog post does a good job of summarizing the issues
> Uber had with Postgres. The blog comments correct some things, get some
> things wrong, but eventually right. (The thread about disk performance
> can be ignored.)
>
> In some ways any PR is good PR, and I see the general issue being that
> Uber didn't like some of the technical decisions we made, and tradeoffs
> we decided, but few are saying those decisions were wrong, just focused
> on different workloads.
>
> I do think we are winning when we don't act defensively but are open to
> criticism --- I think it shows confidence, and I think we have a right
> to be confident.

+1 but I think it is good if we do have a response as a community through a well-read channel that shows both that we can accept constructive criticism and how we learn from it - this is good PR.

For example, when Per Se was downgraded from 4-stars to 2-stars in the NYT restaurant review, Thomas Keller, the owner, issued a statement in a very similar fashion: taking pride in his team’s work but acknowledging there is room for improvement and have a willingness to do so:

http://www.thomaskeller.com/messagetoourguests <http://www.thomaskeller.com/messagetoourguests>
Because the response was not defensive and included a commitment to improving, it was well-received.

I suggest we craft a response in a similar nature: acknowledging there is always room to improve and understanding the different use-cases for Postgres will help the team developing it to create a system that can be freely and easily adopted and maintained. I suggest that the piece come from -core. I recommend we post it in the news section on .org as it comes straight from the source and so people can easily find and link to it .

I know what I recommend is unprecedented, but the growth and visibility the PostgreSQL community has now is also unprecedented in its history and it would demonstrate a maturity and willingness to learn and improve.

Jonathan