Re: news ticker Services Policy -- time for a change?

* Josh Berkus (josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com) wrote:
> Under this policy, the new 2ndQuadrant support option was approved as a
> news announcement.

Correct (as the individual who approved it). I did also note that we
have a bit of policy around "companies which don't contribute will be
limited to posting not more than once every 6 months" or similar.
Perhaps changing that to more generally prohibit posting of new services
to once every 6 months per company would be sufficient..? I feel 2ndQ
probably deserves to meet the "companies who contribute" criteria, but I
did go back and check the archives for anything in the past 6 months
anyway.

> Thing is, I don't think that kind of announcement
> belongs on the postgresql.org home page.

I'm not entirely sure that I agree. For one thing, it helps argue
against the "there's no commercial support for OSS!" mentality which
still exists in some industries (particularly US government).

> When I wrote that text, what I
> personally meant by "services" was stuff like PAAS, not a support
> service. I'm also concerned that the 2Q announcement will kick off an
> arms race of similar announcements. I know I'll submit one for PGX if
> we don't change the policy.

I'd rather not have a whole bunch all at once, but one from PGX in
another month or so would seem reasonable to me- assuming there's an
actual new service being offered. Admittedly, that could be abused, but
companies who employ committers should, in my view anyway, be above
playing games like that. :) And posts from companies who don't will be
looked upon with much more speculation regarding their post request.

> I'd like to change the policy to:
>
> * Brand new products, projects, companies hosting services, or cloud
> services which support or center around PostgreSQL.
>
> The idea is that I think we want announcements like Gandi's PAAS on the
> home page, or StormDB launching, but not announcements like PGX
> introducing new emergency services.
>
> Comments/objections/alternatives?

In general, please consider this an objection to prohibiting posts about
new PostgreSQL-specific service offerings. I don't think we want to be
swamped by them either, of course, and limiting such posts to once or
twice a year is probably reasonable, but I don't like prohibiting them
entirely.

Thanks,

Stephen