Re: We are getting old

On 2021-03-08 10:32, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Jonathan S. Katz" <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
>> On 3/7/21 9:17 AM, Vik Fearing wrote:
>>> I wouldn't be against just saying "the 80's", perhaps with some
>>> superfluous neon
>
>> Technically, the above falls in the purview of -docs as it's in the
>> docs
>> themselves, though we do link to it from pgweb.
>> To compare, -www[1] says "over 30 years of active development" so we
>> could certainly increment the decade count.
>> I'd also be completely for lifting the first two sentences from [1]
>> and
>> placing them in the documentation.
>
> +1 for removing the year count in both places, as we'll just forget to
> maintain it.
>
> I think referring to "the 1980s" would be fine, but if we can pin it
> down more that'd be even better. I see the www page specifies "1986";
> do we have evidence favoring that particular year as the start?

The Wikipedia article for PostgreSQL seems to say 1985:

PostgreSQL evolved from the Ingres project at the University of
California,
Berkeley. In 1982, the leader of the Ingres team, Michael Stonebraker,
left Berkeley to make a proprietary version of Ingres.[13]

He returned to Berkeley in 1985, and began a post-Ingres project to
address
the problems with contemporary database systems that had become
increasingly clear during the early 1980s.

Wikipedia being not-100%-reliable, this is the article it pulls that
year
from:

https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/stonebraker_1172121.cfm

Unfortunately, the only mention of "1985" in that document seems to be:

Stonebraker led development of INGRES at Berkeley until 1985,
supported
by grant money and the labor of graduate and undergraduate students.

With further reference to PG later on in the document, but without
really
seeming to put a clear date to things. :/

Hmmm, don't suppose we can do this the easy way the just look at the
earliest
commit date we have? :)

+ Justin