Re: [HACKERS] Increased company involvement

I read the hackers list all the time, and have for
years, and my company sponsors PG events every few
months, and I would consider myself fairly "plugged
in" to PG, and this is the first I have seen/heard of
the PostgreSQL Foundation
http://thepostgresqlfoundation.org/

Perhaps a little more promotion of it's existance, and
a link from the PG home page would help out. Firebird
has done a great job with their foundation, and there
are two prominent links to it from their home page.

Also, while PG foundation website states "The
PostgreSQL Foundation does not in any way control the
development of the PostgreSQL project" maybe it should
to some extent. The PG Core dev group should be
honorary top level members, and continue working as
they always have. But the PG foundation is their
official contact point. I don't see Tom's or Bruce's
names in the PG foundation member list, which is odd
and disturbing.

One of the problems I feel the PG project has suffered
from over the years is a lack of centralization. This
made coming to PG difficult for new users, because
they would have to go all over the place for info on
different aspects of PG, and nothing looked
consistent. You guys have made huge steps forward in
the last year or two in pulling things together, but
there is still room for improvement.

Take a look at firebird. They provide a pretty
consistent centralized resource for everything from
the main DB engine, to the JDBC driver, to their
foundation. Now granted, they had a lot easier job to
create a centralized resource because they offer so
much less, and much of it was created after the
foundation was created. It's always easier to not let
the genie out of the bottle than try to put it back
in.

Basically, the PG foundation is a good thing, and the
core hackers should be more involved and represented
in it. The foundation should also be made more
prominent and the primary contact point for companies
looking to contribute in any way to PG. I think if
you did this, there would be more company involvment,
more end user small $$ contributions that could be
pooled to go towards development, and less risk of
companies developing features without contacting PG
first.

Later
Rob
--- Kris Jurka <books(at)ejurka(dot)com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 30 Apr 2005, Nicolai Petri (lists) wrote:
>
> > We also use PostgreSQL as our primary db so it
> would be more than likely
> > that we would donate money for something similar
> with postgresql if
> > either :
> > a) we can direct the money at one or more
> specific tasks
> > or
> > b) the tasks founded will be related to core
> postgresql features e.g.
> > generel performance or other benefits that
> fits all.
> >
>
> The problem is organization. Who decides who gets
> what money? What about
> features that are paid for and worked on and not
> accepted into the
> community codebase? This was something I hoped the
> PostgreSQL Foundation
> http://thepostgresqlfoundation.org/ would step in
> and do, but we seem much
> more focused on advocacy efforts rather than
> developemnt ones.
>
> Kris Jurka
>
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