Re: Democracy and organisation : let's make a revolution

On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 04:25:24PM +0200, Tycho Fruru wrote:

> Everyone should use and support the tools that fit the bill.

I've mentioned before, however, that "the tools that fit the bill" is
partly a function of network effects. The *BSD guys have the same
problem when facing the Linux juggernaut: as one system begins to
dominate the minds of certain types of people who happen to make a
lot of decisions, that system knocks other things out of the running
just by virtue of its PH quotient [1].

> For the marketing stuff, what about asking some big company's IT dept
> for a statement, sort of "FooBarBank chooses/switches to PostgreSQL open
> source database"? Then it's just a matter of making a press release
> (wording is very important, anyone proficient in making press releases
> here ?) and time them adequately.

Best of luck. Here's the dirty secret about PostgreSQL: _lots_ of
big-ish companies are using it, and using it in important, central
functions of their organisations. But they're not willing to admit
it. What you always get is something like, "Yes, we're using an
enterprise-class system with good ANSI SQL 99 compliance, WAL, hot
backup, triggers, rules, an advanced, extensible datatypes system,
and excellent scalability to high concurrency. The system we're
using, **mumble PostmmuumblehandinfrontofmouthgrSQmllL **mumble**, is
very similar to ORACLE in a lot of respects. We have looked
carefully at ORACLE, and are always aware of the constantly-changing
database marketplace. We have a history of strong relationships with
vendors. . . ." You can substitute your favourite big-name RDBMS.
The point of such utterances seems mostly to be to get the name brand
inserted as often as possible, as though some sort of reflected glory
is the answer.

I don't know why this is. I am, to put it mildly, unbelievably
frustrated (not to say embarrassed) by at least one instance of it.
But it's nevertheless true.

[1] Pointy-hair quotient: the tendency of a given product name to
elicit recognition from a technical manager of dubious technical
ability.

A

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