The Name Game: postgresql.net vs. pgfoundry.org

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 03:14:10PM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:

So far, only 4 people, total, have expressed opinons on the matter. I'm
throwing this on Hackers so that members of projects we will be hosting can
indicate whether they:

A) Favor www.postgresql.net
B) Favor www.pgfoundry.org
C) Don't care as long as the porting is relatively painless.

I'm not crazy about the name pgfoundry, but otherwise I think it's the
better choice. The "www." problem could be circumvented by renaming the
project, perhaps, but I think it's best to keep a distinction between
"Postres, the database" and "related projects."

Jeroen

"Jeroen T. Vermeulen" <jtv@xs4all.nl> writes:

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 03:14:10PM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:

A) Favor www.postgresql.net
B) Favor www.pgfoundry.org
C) Don't care as long as the porting is relatively painless.

I'm not crazy about the name pgfoundry, but otherwise I think it's the
better choice. The "www." problem could be circumvented by renaming the
project, perhaps, but I think it's best to keep a distinction between
"Postres, the database" and "related projects."

Actually, proposal (A) does provide such a separation: notice that the
projects would go under *.postgresql.net, with the core database remaining
at *.postgresql.org. I am not sure if that will provoke confusion or
not, but I think I like it better than pgfoundry because it is clear
that the domains are related. pgfoundry seems a bit, um, random.

regards, tom lane

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 07:01:47PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:

Actually, proposal (A) does provide such a separation: notice that the
projects would go under *.postgresql.net, with the core database remaining
at *.postgresql.org. I am not sure if that will provoke confusion or
not, but I think I like it better than pgfoundry because it is clear
that the domains are related. pgfoundry seems a bit, um, random.

Agree with the last bit, but I really feel that the difference between
postgresql.org and postgresql.net is too subtle--at least for people who
don't work with either very often.

Here's another idea: couldn't we have a subdomain for the projects, as in
"<project>.forge.postgresql.org"? Or would that be too long?

Jeroen

I think having a pgfoundry.postgresql.net/org is good, but it should
have its own identity, pgfoundry.org for the main url gets my vote for
what it's worth.

Gavin

Josh Berkus wrote:

"Jeroen T. Vermeulen" <jtv@xs4all.nl> writes:

Here's another idea: couldn't we have a subdomain for the projects, as in
"<project>.forge.postgresql.org"? Or would that be too long?

That would be okay with me ...

regards, tom lane

Jeroen,

Here's another idea: couldn't we have a subdomain for the projects, as in
"<project>.forge.postgresql.org"? Or would that be too long?

Hmmm ... wouldn't that be rather awkward with the projects with longer names?

http://orapgsqlviews.foundry.postgresql.org

That's 39 characters, not including the http ...

To speak up, I'd rather have either options (A) or (B) thank this option.

--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

Tom Lane wrote:

"Jeroen T. Vermeulen" <jtv@xs4all.nl> writes:

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 03:14:10PM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:

A) Favor www.postgresql.net
B) Favor www.pgfoundry.org
C) Don't care as long as the porting is relatively painless.

I'm not crazy about the name pgfoundry, but otherwise I think it's the
better choice. The "www." problem could be circumvented by renaming the
project, perhaps, but I think it's best to keep a distinction between
"Postres, the database" and "related projects."

Actually, proposal (A) does provide such a separation: notice that the
projects would go under *.postgresql.net, with the core database remaining
at *.postgresql.org. I am not sure if that will provoke confusion or
not, but I think I like it better than pgfoundry because it is clear
that the domains are related. pgfoundry seems a bit, um, random.

I'm really going to try hard to stay out of all the hoohaa that seems to
be boiling ... I got involved arse-end foremost because I was stupid
enough to tell Josh that he could call on me if he needed things done in
Perl or Java, and he took sufficient license from that to inveigle me
into a lot of other stuff, none of which looks remotely like Perl or
Java. :-). I do enough webbish stuff by day and would far rather spend
*my* time in a modest way making postgresql even better than it is.

There are 2 name issues - the base site and the project sites. If I am
web surfing and I go to foo.net or www.foo.net I expect (other things
being equal) to go to the main page for organization foo. Going to some
other page for the foo organization is just a bit weird. Now I know
there are exceptions, millions of them, but they always jar slightly.
That's why we settled on pgfoundry.net.

There is no reason, however, that the individual projects could not live
under both domains, i.e. projname.postgresql.net and
projname.pgfoundry.net. This is very doable.

As for "pgfoundry" - the name isn't set in concrete. In fact it is
entirely trivial to change. Suggest another that might be better.

cheers

andrew

On Mar 12, 2004, at 9:07 AM, Jeroen T. Vermeulen wrote:

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 07:01:47PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:

Actually, proposal (A) does provide such a separation: notice that the
projects would go under *.postgresql.net, with the core database
remaining
at *.postgresql.org. I am not sure if that will provoke confusion or
not, but I think I like it better than pgfoundry because it is clear
that the domains are related. pgfoundry seems a bit, um, random.

Agree with the last bit, but I really feel that the difference between
postgresql.org and postgresql.net is too subtle--at least for people
who
don't work with either very often.

Just to speak up (as an avid lurker), I agree with Jeroen that this
distinction is quite subtle and may cause confusion. Some may even
expect the two to resolve to the same site, as a lot of popular sites
own .com/.net/.org, all resolving to the same site.

This can be read as support for *.pgfoundry.org, *.postgresql.org, or
*.pgfoundry.postgresql.org.

*.pgfoundry.org is short and clearly distinguished from postgresql.org

*.postgresql.org is short, and clearly associated with postgresql.org
(of course!), but there's no clear distinction that the former gborg
projects are separate from, say, developer.postgresql.org or
techdocs.postgresql.org. Is this distinction important? Maybe not?

*.pgfoundry.postgresql.org is longer, clearly associated with
postgresql.org, and clear that it's a distinct part of postgresql.org

Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Tom Lane wrote:

"Jeroen T. Vermeulen" <jtv@xs4all.nl> writes:

Here's another idea: couldn't we have a subdomain for the projects, as in
"<project>.forge.postgresql.org"? Or would that be too long?

That would be okay with me ...

I'd go for "too long" myself ...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Gavin M. Roy wrote:

I think having a pgfoundry.postgresql.net/org is good, but it should
have its own identity, pgfoundry.org for the main url gets my vote for
what it's worth.

I like the shortness myself ...

IMHO, the domain name isn't the make/break of whether going to GForge will
succeed ... the success will be a matter of marketing it, and making sure
that its project are well known ... personally, focusing on the domain is
like focusing on the name of a car when you buy it, not on its features
and/or price ...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

IMHO, the domain name isn't the make/break of whether going to GForge will
succeed ... the success will be a matter of marketing it, and making sure
that its project are well known ... personally, focusing on the domain is
like focusing on the name of a car when you buy it, not on its features
and/or price ...

Really? What about BMW, Volvo or Mercedes?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Berkus [mailto:josh@agliodbs.com]
Sent: 11 March 2004 23:14
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Cc: pgsql-www@postgresql.org
Subject: [pgsql-www] The Name Game: postgresql.net vs. pgfoundry.org

B) Favor www.pgfoundry.org

I don't really mind too much either way, but if anything I would prefer
B.

/D

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

Just to speak up (as an avid lurker), I agree with Jeroen that this
distinction is quite subtle and may cause confusion. Some may even
expect the two to resolve to the same site, as a lot of popular sites
own .com/.net/.org, all resolving to the same site.

Speaking of .com vs .net vs .org, anyone remember the mysql.com vs
mysql.org fiasco?

Anyway, if I can vote, I'll vote for postgresql.net (for the lack of
better choices). I agree with Tom that "pgfoundry" is kind of random.
It's not apparent at all that it's a PostgreSQL entity. Besides, Tom &
Marc is already listed as the registrant of several domains including
postgresql.com. Why not use them?

Also, we're targetting the developers right? Please do not consider
ourselves as being too stupid to differentiate between postgresql.org
and postgresql.net... If people don't like to type long names, we can
always do automatic redirection between <projname>.postgresql.net,
postgresql.org/projects/<projname>, <projname>.projects.postgresql.org,
etc. Or even perhaps use tinyurl :-)

--
dave

However, some of the "porting" team felt that it would be
confusing for people
who typed in www.postgresql.net to be presented with the
GForge interface,
and suggested that we use the domain after what we'll be
calling the new
Tool, namely pgFoundry, thus putting stuff at www.pgFoundry.org and
<projectname>.pgfoundry.org.

Can't the frontpage for the GForge interface be changed slightly? If the
frontpage was redesigned to state clearly that it's a "community
development site", and "go here for the site about the main postgresql
proejct", that should take care of the users that typed in
postgresql.net instead of .org.
Then the sites themselves would be whatever.postgresql.net as is usual
with gforge.

FWIW, I agree with those who feel that pgfoundry.org is not really
intuitive to go when looking for postgresql stuff, if you can't tell
that from above :-)

//Magnus

--- David Garamond <lists@zara.6.isreserved.com> wrote:
 --snip --

Also, we're targetting the developers right? Please do not consider
ourselves as being too stupid to differentiate between postgresql.org

-- snip --

IMO this point of view is a short-sighted and narrow one. In
addition to trying to bring a more structured and developed
infrastructure to 3rd party developers this should also ease the
difficulty many non-developers have in finding related software to the
PostgreSQL project. This fact as well as the others should be taken
into consideration when making the decision on which route to go.

Chris Ryan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
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Josh Berkus wrote:

Folks,

As we discussed a couple weeks ago, Marc, Andrew, Tim Perdue, Chris Ryan and I
are testing implementing GForge in place of GBorg for associated projects for
PostgreSQL.

One thing which was suggested initially was that this new project hosting site
be at www.postgresql.net with projects being <projectname>.postgresql.net.

However, some of the "porting" team felt that it would be confusing for people
who typed in www.postgresql.net to be presented with the GForge interface,
and suggested that we use the domain after what we'll be calling the new
Tool, namely pgFoundry, thus putting stuff at www.pgFoundry.org and
<projectname>.pgfoundry.org.

So far, only 4 people, total, have expressed opinons on the matter. I'm
throwing this on Hackers so that members of projects we will be hosting can
indicate whether they:

A) Favor www.postgresql.net
B) Favor www.pgfoundry.org
C) Don't care as long as the porting is relatively painless.

Isn't gforge a pgsql related project itself?
So I'd suggest:

www.postgresql.org -> main PostgreSQL site
gforge.postgresql.org -> gforge interface site
<projectname>.postgresql.org -> gforge hosted projects

Regards,
Andreas

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Pflug [mailto:pgadmin@pse-consulting.de]
Sent: 12 March 2004 13:57
To: josh@agliodbs.com
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] The Name Game: postgresql.net vs. pgfoundry.org

Isn't gforge a pgsql related project itself?
So I'd suggest:

www.postgresql.org -> main PostgreSQL site
gforge.postgresql.org -> gforge interface site
<projectname>.postgresql.org -> gforge hosted projects

The problem with that approach is that our 'official' sites then get
lost amongst the project sites.

We need some distinction between the core project sites and other
project sites - istm that a different domain is the only way to do that.

Regards, Dave.

On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 02:42:47PM -0000, Dave Page wrote:

We need some distinction between the core project sites and other
project sites - istm that a different domain is the only way to do that.

Okay, then how about postgres-extra.net, or forpostgres.net?

Saying Postgres instead of PostgreSQL takes out a bit of that extra length
and it's lots easier to pronounce. We've been through this whole what-
shall-we-call-it thing months ago and IIRC the upshot was that the short
version of the name is perfectly acceptable and much catchier. Here's a
chance to use it!

Even shorter and catchier would be "pgprojects.net" IMHO, but that again
stretches the connection with PostgreSQL.

Jeroen

Dave Page wrote:

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Pflug [mailto:pgadmin@pse-consulting.de]
Sent: 12 March 2004 13:57
To: josh@agliodbs.com
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] The Name Game: postgresql.net vs. pgfoundry.org

Isn't gforge a pgsql related project itself?
So I'd suggest:

www.postgresql.org -> main PostgreSQL site
gforge.postgresql.org -> gforge interface site
<projectname>.postgresql.org -> gforge hosted projects

The problem with that approach is that our 'official' sites then get
lost amongst the project sites.

We need some distinction between the core project sites and other
project sites - istm that a different domain is the only way to do that.

(breaking previous rule) I agree.

Also, the gforge people would prefer us *not* to use a name that
includes gforge, because of the risk of confusion. That's how we came up
with "pgfoundry" in the first place.

cheers

andrew