Re: Confusion over Python drivers {license}

Tom Lane wrote:
> If you feel that a BSD/MIT license is a must-have for your purposes,
> you're certainly free to push development of one of the other driver
> projects instead, and to try to organize some other people to help.
> I don't believe anyone is trying to funnel all development effort into
> psycopg2.
>

Certainly not, and I hope no one has gotten the impression that there's
anything "official" being recognized about psycopg happening here
because it hasn't. Anointing a "one true driver" (a phrase that seems
to keep popping up in external discussions of this topic) isn't the sort
of thing the PostgreSQL core does. And all that happens to people who
ignore what I tell them to do is that they receive a steady stream of
long, sarcastic e-mails for a while afterwards.

I just updated
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Python_PostgreSQL_Driver_TODO to reflect
a few corrections I noted while researching (everybody else is welcome
to edit that page too you know), and to include some of the recent
feedback showing up on this list.

I know I was just looking for a Python driver that is compatible with
the apps I most often run into, documented well enough that I can write
my own if I feel like it, fast enough, and free enough that I can deploy
the result wherever I want. That seemed similar to the priorities other
people who had an opinion here suggested too. Pragmatically, psycopg2
just seemed to have the shortest path toward being something useful to
the largest userbase in that sort of context, and we've unofficially
rolled down that path a bit.

This rabble-rousing seems to have nudged both development communities
toward being more closely aligned in the future in a couple of ways,
which is great, but I wouldn't read much more into things than that.
Other projects will continue to grow and shrink, and the pure Python
ones in particular continue to be quite valuable because they fill a
niche that psycopg2 doesn't target at all. I'd sure like to see all
three of those projects merge into one big one though. My bet has to be
on pg8000, since it has the perfect license, supports all the necessary
Python versions, and it's been around long enough (almost two years)
that support for it is already in the latest SQLAlchemy beta.

We seem to have revitalized discussion around modernizing PyGreSQL too,
so I wouldn't discount that one completely yet either. For those who
feel a true BSD license is vital, I direct you toward
http://mailman.vex.net/pipermail/pygresql/2010-February/002315.html to
learn more about what direction they could use some help in going. But
whatever you do, don't start another project instead.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com www.2ndQuadrant.com