Re: Thoughs after discussions at OSCON

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> I've been doing some reflecting on some things I saw and heard at the
> OSCON this year, and I thought I'd note them here, more to prime
> discussion than to propose any strong conclusions.

Random responses from a non-OSCONer:

> The first item I think bears mention is the number of occasions I
> had people ask me whether the project is losing steam, or "losing
> out" to MySQL, or being no threat to Oracle.

We certainly are not gaining "geek mindshare" as fast as we should.
It doesn't help that O'Reilly seems to be in bed with MySQL AB
(exhibit one: the joint MySQL conference).

We need to look at all the things that MySQL is doing right, because
our technical superiority alone is not going to save us. I've also
started to think lately that our BSD license may be an even greater
asset than our feature set. More about that later in a PP rant. :)

> I was surprised, for instance, to see Oracle in a prominent place
> near by us on the floor.

Oracle was there? Anyone talk to them? What part of their product is
"open source" anyway?

> find it's impossible to find administrators, PostgreSQL will be
> written off as impossible to use. It would be a really bad time for
> the DBA mixture to get "lean".

It would be nice if we could emphasize that "if you can admin Oracle,
you can admin Postgres." While the systems are vastly different, PG
is so much easier to admin than Oracle I haven't met an Oracle DBA
once who was not amazed at how easy it was to use after dealing with
the thousands of knobs and levers that Oracle gives you. The important
things such as memory usage, disk partitioning, tablespaces, and
explain plans are all still there, they are just easier to use. :)

> This set of commercially interested people are much more sceptical
> than the last round, which probably means that they'll have better
> legs; but also, that they're likely to tell us some things we don't
> really want to hear.

I think the community overall does a pretty good job of this, although
we could perhaps do responses on mailing lists more of a "interesting,
can you tell us how you see this feature working" and less of the
"feel free to fund someone to write it for you."

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg(at)turnstep(dot)com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200508082158
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

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