Re: Thoughs after discussions at OSCON

chris(at)metatrontech(dot)com (Chris Travers) writes:
> Chris Browne wrote:
>>ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca (Andrew Sullivan) writes:
>>>On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 09:49:28AM -0400, Rick Morris wrote:
>>>> - Thus, taking the above under advisement, it would seem best not
>>>> to fight MySQL on their ground, nor to spend much time on feature
>>>> distinction, but to forge more serious relationships with
>>>> organizations who have serious needs.
>>>>
>>>I think this is a capital idea. It seems this is a place to focus.
>>
>>Absolutely.
>>
>>The same would be true of "fighting Oracle on their ground."
>>
>>One thought suggested by someone outside of "the community" is that
>>one of the things that the various "more popular" systems have gotten
>>'right' is the notion of having a "Foo Press" that is responsible for
>>deploying books about their systems.
>>
>>This is true for various values of "Foo" including the members of the
>>set {"Microsoft", "Oracle", "MySQL"}.
>>
>>Contrast with some systems that people hardly ever hear of...
>> - There is exactly ONE book available on MaxDB, by No Starch Press
>> - There is exactly ONE book available on SQLite, by New Riders
>> - APress has ONE book on Firebird...
>> - It is not comforting that O'Reilly only has one PostgreSQL book :-(
>>
>>One "capital idea" might well be to establish a "PostgreSQL Press,"
>>whether in cooperation with an existing publisher or otherwise. The
>>timing of this would be pretty critical; we're likely at a fairly
>>critical point in time for it now, for it to happen or not.

> Is there any reason why this could not be a function of the advocacy
> group? The revenue generated would thereby be able to go back
> directly into the advocacy project :-) I am thinking of publishing
> libre documentation for a price, advertising it, and using the
> revenue to further promote PostgreSQL.....

Yes, people are thinking about this, although possibly not yet at the
"Our Own Press" level.

The thing that I would see being particularly valuable about "OOP" is
that it would provide a vehicle to enable deploying "dead tree"
editions of the 'official PostgreSQL documentation set,' which would
provide a way to turn THAT into one of the 'comprehensive guides' that
would suddenly come to "exist" from a publishing perspective.

> I thought about getting into this sort of market but it seems a bit
> of trouble for me at the moment and well outside my core business
> focus.

That's OK; there are a lot of people out there with a number of
distinct foci, so others of us can worry about this particular one
:-).
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