Re: Last gasp

On 12 April 2012 13:45, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> I want to caution against adjusting things to improve funding
> possibilities.  There is nothing wrong with increasing funding
> possibilities, per say, but such changes often distort behavior in
> unforeseen ways that adversely affect our community process.

Funding is a necessary component of what we do. So, for example, while
I'm very glad that EnterpriseDB afford various people the opportunity
to work on community stuff for a significant proportion of their time
- I do, after all, indirectly benefit from it - it is rather obviously
the case that the particular things that those people work on is
influenced to some degree by management. That is an assessment that
isn't based on any particular observation about the things that EDB
people work on. It's just common sense. This generally isn't a bad
thing, since I think that the goals of the Postgres companies are
broadly aligned with those of the community. When you get right down
to it though, as Tom said, we are a herd of cats, and it isn't
particularly obvious that we've zeroed in on some specific vision that
we all agree on that must be pursued without diversion. Given the
extensibility of Postgres, it isn't usually necessary for anyone to
pursue development of a feature that is clearly of niche interest,
that we don't really want to have to support. I cannot think of any
example of a proposed patch that mostly just scratched some particular
organisation's itch. No one is able to hoodwink the community like
that.

People have always wanted to get their patches accepted, and we've
always had high standards. The fact that there might be an additional
financial incentive to do so doesn't seem to fundamentally alter that
dynamic.

It is not a coincidence that I did not send any code to -hackers prior
to joining 2ndQuadrant. I certainly had the enthusiasm for it, but I
could not afford to dedicate sufficient time. With the kind of
dedication required to make a noticeable contribution, this is hardly
surprising. There are some good counter-examples of this of course -
one in particular that comes to mind is Greg Smith's work on the
background writer that made it into 8.3 . However, the general trend
is that somebody has to pay for this work for it to be maintainable
over months and years, even with the level of dedication that we all
have.

Something that I would suggest is that those that are receiving
funding be transparent about it. It isn't essential of course, but to
do any less might lead to the perception of there being a conflict of
interests in some people's minds, which is best avoided.

I am conscious of the fact that I've expressed lots of opinions on
this thread on our processes and so on, some of which, if followed
through on, would be quite large departures. I hope that they were
received as modest suggestions.

--
Peter Geoghegan       http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services