Well, Pervasive is now out....

Tony Caduto wrote:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6100795.html

Week late bud :) that was announced during OSCON.

Joshua D. Drake

--

=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
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On 8/3/06, Tony Caduto <tony_caduto@amsoftwaredesign.com> wrote:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6100795.html

Let's believe that that was the real reason... :-)

"
...
In a letter to the PostgreSQL community of developers, Pervasive
Software President John Farr said last week that the company
"underestimated the high level of quality support and expertise
already available within the PostgreSQL community."
...
"

--
Best regards,
Nikolay

I found this comment particularly telling:

Pervasive Software President John Farr said last week that the company
"underestimated the high level of quality support and expertise already
available within the PostgreSQL community."

I don't think I can add anything to that.

On 8/3/06, Nikolay Samokhvalov <samokhvalov@gmail.com> wrote:

Let's believe that that was the real reason... :-)

If not, what was? Is this really a commentary on how many
"enterprise"-y types are using Postgres?

On 8/4/06, J B <jbwellsiv@gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/3/06, Nikolay Samokhvalov <samokhvalov@gmail.com> wrote:

Let's believe that that was the real reason... :-)

If not, what was? Is this really a commentary on how many
"enterprise"-y types are using Postgres?

I'm afraid that many people read only the titles of abstract of news
(RSS-readers or diggers, etc) --> do not see that letter and that
words --> so they would think that this is a proof of that open-source
model is unworkable.

--
Best regards,
Nikolay

My guess is what this really means is they weren't making money on it. Its a community friendly spin to suggest that community support is so good that not many companies will pony up for commercial support. My guess is that its fairly accurate though. A company is only going to use postgreSQL if their dba is behind it and for that to be the case the dba is probably pretty comfortable with their own knowledge backed by community support.
If its not the dba who is promoting pgsql in the company then it is likely an exec who sees it as a way to save money and likely doesn't want to pay for support for a free product.

Joe

joe_audette [at] yahoo dotcom
http://www.joeaudette.com
http://www.mojoportal.com

----- Original Message ----
From: Nikolay Samokhvalov <samokhvalov@gmail.com>
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Sent: Thursday, August 3, 2006 2:58:03 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Well, Pervasive is now out....

On 8/3/06, Tony Caduto <tony_caduto@amsoftwaredesign.com> wrote:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6100795.html

Let's believe that that was the real reason... :-)

"
...
In a letter to the PostgreSQL community of developers, Pervasive
Software President John Farr said last week that the company
"underestimated the high level of quality support and expertise
already available within the PostgreSQL community."
...
"

--
Best regards,
Nikolay

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend

joe_audette@yahoo.com (Joe Audette) writes:

My guess is what this really means is they weren't making money on
it. Its a community friendly spin to suggest that community support
is so good that not many companies will pony up for commercial
support. My guess is that its fairly accurate though. A company is
only going to use postgreSQL if their dba is behind it and for that
to be the case the dba is probably pretty comfortable with their own
knowledge backed by community support. If its not the dba who is
promoting pgsql in the company then it is likely an exec who sees it
as a way to save money and likely doesn't want to pay for support
for a free product.

Also, it's worth considering that there are other service
organizations out there. With some of its "staff acquisitions,"
Command Prompt has more staff at a high technical level with
PostgreSQL than Pervasive did.

In effect, this suggests that CP (and others that are generally
smaller players) "beat out" Pervasive.

I also have heard vaguely that there may have been other politicking
taking place inside Pervasive. Becoming a successful PG "shop" wasn't
necessarily something everyone there agreed they wanted to do. I have
no special knowledge about such, but would strongly suspect that
there's more to the story than will ever meet our eyes.

I suppose it would be at least somewhat interesting to watch what they
do next; if it *isn't* to go in some clear new technical direction,
that would support the notion that what happened wasn't "about us."
--
"cbbrowne","@","acm.org"
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/finances.html
"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
- Arthur Dent

On 8/3/06, Joe Audette <joe_audette@yahoo.com> wrote:

My guess is what this really means is they weren't making money on it. Its a community friendly spin to suggest that community support is so good that not many companies will pony up for commercial support. My guess is that its fairly accurate though. A company is only going to use postgreSQL if their dba is behind it and for that to be the case the dba is probably pretty comfortable with their own knowledge backed by community support.
If its not the dba who is promoting pgsql in the company then it is likely an exec who sees it as a way to save money and likely doesn't want to pay for support for a free product.

i know of at least one case where the non technical phb said 'use pg'
to save 70k in ms sql licensing fees for a quad server running
enterprise. developers resisted, being very comfortable with ms but
the project was ultimately a success despite initial problems with the
odbc driver.

merlin