Re: [HACKERS] Enticing interns to PostgreSQL

On Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 02:06:54PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
> >Put another way, MySQL is making a well planned, coordinated effort to
> >gain market share as an OSS database. PostgreSQL has no such effort, and
> >without it I believe it's headed down the road to eventual obscurity.
> >Yet if there was some cooperation between the community and the numerous
> >commercial companies, the message of PostgreSQL, and why it's actually
> >*better* than MySQL, would be out there for everyone to see.
>
> See this is where I think you are incorrect. There is an effort a very
> concerted effort brought on by the commercial entities backing PostgreSQL.
>
> I just had this conversation with a potential customer. They are leaving
> Oracle due to costs, and were considering PostgreSQL. One of their
> **ahem** executives felt that MSSQL might be a good choice because there
> wasn't any "enterprise" users of PostgreSQL.
>
> I shot back the list of enterprise customers that Command Prompt has AND
> the list of enterprise customers that the community has.
>
> I don't think there will be a problem :)

Yes, but the difference is that MySQL has that info plastered all over
it's website. Any exec visiting their site would have to be blind to
miss it. But when they visit the PostgreSQL site, they'll find very
little info about companies that are using PostgreSQL, and there's
nothing that obviously points out that unlike MySQL, PostgreSQL isn't a
company, but here's a list of the companies that provide commercial
services for PostgreSQL.

In addition to those interested in commercial support, having things
like a list of customers on the MySQL site makes it look like they have
far more commercial users than PostgreSQL does; something that might
well not be the case. This contributes to newbies thinking that MySQL
must be a better choice to use.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant decibel(at)decibel(dot)org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

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