Re: [HACKERS] Increased company involvement

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Momjian [mailto:pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us]
> Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 12:04 PM
> To: PostgreSQL advocacy
> Cc: Kris Jurka; Andrew Dunstan; PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] [HACKERS] Increased company involvement
>
> [...]
> The thing that limits centralization is that it is critical that
> any individual or company feel free to join the community efforts.
> When centralization happens, there is often an _in_ and and _out_
> group that is very bad for encouraging new members.
> [...]
> We don't want core to steer development anymore than we want a
> centralized group to do that, because if we did, the next company
> that comes along and wants to enhance PostgreSQL or offer technical
> support services will feel they have to get approval/buy-in from
> the _in_ group, and that isn't a productive setup. The fact that
> new companies getting involved can't find a central authority is a
> _good_ thing, if you think about it. It means that we have succeeded
> in building a community that allows people to join and feel a part
> right away, and they don't have to buy-in or play politics to do it.

Well, you make Postgres sound like a very democratic community, but
I'm afraid this is a fairy tale. Aren't the people who approve
patches exactly the in group that you claim doesn't exist? Aren't
they the people that you need buy-in from to really contribute to
Postgres? The reason I make this point is because I know what a
democratic development community really looks like, and the Boost
community is one such example. That truly *is* democratic, because
decisions are made as a group, and no fixed subset of members has
an overriding veto. The group has moderators, but they exist only
to moderate discussion on the mailing lists. I'm not saying that
it is bad that Postgres is not democratic. Postgres is a totally
different kind of beast than Boost, and probably benefits from
having a few people ultimately decide its fate. But let's call a
spade a spade and not pretend that contributors don't have to get
buy-in from core.

__
David B. Held
Software Engineer/Array Services Group
200 14th Ave. East, Sartell, MN 56377
320.534.3637 320.253.7800 800.752.8129