Re: 8.5 vs. 9.0, Postgres vs. PostgreSQL

Tom Lane wrote:
> "David E. Wheeler" <david(at)kineticode(dot)com> writes:
>> On Jan 22, 2010, at 4:54 PM, Mark Mielke wrote:
>>> MS SQL, MySQL, SQLite - do they have advocacy problems due to the SQL in their name? I think it is the opposite. SQL in the name almost grants legitimacy to them as products. Dropping the SQL has the potential to increase confusion. What is a Postgres? :-)
>
>> Something that comes after black, but before white.
>
> Yeah. As best I can tell, most newbies think that PostgreSQL means
> Postgre-SQL --- they're not too sure what "Postgre" is, but they guess
> it must be the specific name of the product. And that annoys those of
> us who would rather they pronounced it "Postgres". But in terms of
> recognizability of the product it's not a liability. The business about
> pronunciation is a red herring. It's just as unclear whether MySQL is

My personal experience has shown that people not familiar with the project can't
remember it's name (even 10 minutes after I said it). It doesn't really roll
off your tongue, unless you count tree nodes in your sleep. This "may" have an
affect on the project's reach.

I am not really advocating a name change, but if a different name makes
postgresql more popular, however silly that may seem, then I am all for it.
This is a difficult marketing decision.

--
Andrew Chernow
eSilo, LLC
every bit counts
http://www.esilo.com/