My new job

* Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> [001009 22:11] wrote:

As many of you know, several businesses are involved in providing
PostgreSQL support.

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge. There will be a press announcement tomorrow (Tuesday) with more
details. I will post a URL here when I have it.

Interestingly, I am the last core member to become officially attached
to a PostgreSQL company. I have been assisting Great Bridge for some
time, but always in an unofficial capacity.

I realize my signing on with any company will make some of you
uncomfortable. I hope my value to the group does not suffer, and that I
continue to be a positive influence for all involved. I expect my new
job will give me even more time to continue doing the things I have done
in the past with PostgreSQL.

Bruce, this is a great thing to hear, congratulations, and I hope
you enjoy your new position at what is looking to be a great company.

Anyone with any reservations about Great Bridge need only speak to
the people there and the Postgresql developers already employed by
them to realize that this is a good thing.

I've sat on the sidelines while commercial funding and support has
poured into FreeBSD (companies hiring up our developers to work
full time on FreeBSD) and so far things are going great for us.

best wishes,
-Alfred

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> el d�a Tue, 10 Oct 2000 01:06:42
-0400 (EDT), escribi�:

[...]

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge. There will be a press announcement tomorrow (Tuesday) with more
details. I will post a URL here when I have it.

first off: congratulations.

second: what about vadim ? is he working for a postgresql company ?

[ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ]

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> el d?a Tue, 10 Oct 2000 01:06:42
-0400 (EDT), escribi?:

[...]

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge. There will be a press announcement tomorrow (Tuesday) with more
details. I will post a URL here when I have it.

first off: congratulations.

second: what about vadim ? is he working for a postgresql company ?

Vadim is a contributor to PostgreSQL, Inc, according to the PostgreSQL,
Inc web page:

http://www.pgsql.com/bio/

[Marc, the contributors/advisors column in my browser is not lined up
with the names.]

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Sergio A. Kessler wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> el d���a Tue, 10 Oct 2000 01:06:42
-0400 (EDT), escribi���:

[...]

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge. There will be a press announcement tomorrow (Tuesday) with more
details. I will post a URL here when I have it.

first off: congratulations.

second: what about vadim ? is he working for a postgresql company ?

vadim works for EnTrust Solutions, a partner of PostgreSQL, Inc ...

Bruce Momjian writes:

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge.

Whatever happened to this:

Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 15:19:48 -0400
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Ross J. Reedstrom <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>
Cc: PostgreSQL-general <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Steering committee responce to Great Bridge LLC

: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly fraction
: of core members working for the same company. With six people on core,
: probably about two working at the same company would be a reasonable
: limit.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net http://yi.org/peter-e/

Bruce Momjian writes:

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge.

Whatever happened to this:

Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 15:19:48 -0400
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Ross J. Reedstrom <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>
Cc: PostgreSQL-general <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Steering committee responce to Great Bridge LLC

: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly fraction
: of core members working for the same company. With six people on core,
: probably about two working at the same company would be a reasonable
: limit.

Excellent question. I suggested leaving core, but that would still mean
more than 1/3 of core people would be in one company. Our short-term
solution is to keep going until we see some problems. Our long-term
strategy is to increase the size of the core group.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:

Bruce Momjian writes:

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge.

Whatever happened to this:

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly fraction
: of core members working for the same company. With six people on core,
: probably about two working at the same company would be a reasonable
: limit.

I knew someone was going to bring that up ;-).

There's already been discussion of this point among core. What we
now have is three core members employed by Great Bridge and the
other three either fully or partly employed by PostgreSQL Inc.
In one sense that's a stable situation, but on the other hand it does
not agree with our original informal goal of keeping any one company
to a minority position of the core membership.

None of the core members are interested in giving up their new
positions. En masse resignation from the core committee would preserve
our high moral standards, perhaps, but it wouldn't do the project any
good that I can see. So it seems like the choices are to accept the
status quo, or to appoint some more core committee members to bring
the numbers back where we said they should be.

While I can think of a number of well-qualified candidates for core
membership, I don't much like the notion of appointing core members
just to meet some kind of numerical quota. Also, suppose we do appoint
more members, and then some of them accept positions with GB or PgSQL
Inc; do we repeat the exercise indefinitely? (This is not an unlikely
scenario, since the sort of people who'd be asked to join core are
exactly the sort of people whom both companies would love to hire.)

Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. Opinions from the
floor, anyone?

regards, tom lane

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:

Bruce Momjian writes:

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge.

Whatever happened to this:

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly fraction
: of core members working for the same company. With six people on core,
: probably about two working at the same company would be a reasonable
: limit.

I knew someone was going to bring that up ;-).

There's already been discussion of this point among core. What we
now have is three core members employed by Great Bridge and the
other three either fully or partly employed by PostgreSQL Inc.

I should mention that the Great Bridge hires are full-time employment,
while not all the PostgreSQL Inc.'s are, so the Great Bridge group is
more in voliation of the original plan.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

* Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> [001010 09:47] wrote:

Bruce Momjian writes:

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge.

Whatever happened to this:

Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 15:19:48 -0400
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Ross J. Reedstrom <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>
Cc: PostgreSQL-general <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Steering committee responce to Great Bridge LLC

: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly fraction
: of core members working for the same company. With six people on core,
: probably about two working at the same company would be a reasonable
: limit.

I think Great Bridge makes a shining example of an exception to
that rule, the impression I got from the developers already there
as well as the managment was very good.

And although I loath to speak for others, you wouldn't think that
Bruce would take this position if it somehow compromised the
integrity of the project somehow, would you?

This is Bruce's choice, but if this was somehow put up to a vote,
how many of you would like to have him working full time on Postgresql
alongside several other highly skilled developers and compensated
for his work rather than trying to squeeze it into his everyday
life like so many other opensource authors with "real jobs" on the
side?

--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."

I think Great Bridge makes a shining example of an exception to
that rule, the impression I got from the developers already there
as well as the managment was very good.

And although I loath to speak for others, you wouldn't think that
Bruce would take this position if it somehow compromised the
integrity of the project somehow, would you?

This is Bruce's choice, but if this was somehow put up to a vote,
how many of you would like to have him working full time on Postgresql
alongside several other highly skilled developers and compensated
for his work rather than trying to squeeze it into his everyday
life like so many other opensource authors with "real jobs" on the
side?

Actually, I have written a draft article that outlines some of the
dynamics of companies supporting open-source software. It is attached.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

What is the main concern? That Great Bridge or PostgreSQL Inc will try to
influence development? This is just my lowly opinion but it seems to me
that this could be a storm brewing in a tea cup, it just doesn't seem to be
that threatening a situation at a glance.

Congrats to everyone on their new positions. *hats off*

-Mitch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: "Peter Eisentraut" <peter_e@gmx.net>
Cc: "PostgreSQL-general" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>;
"PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] My new job

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:

Bruce Momjian writes:

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge.

Whatever happened to this:

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly

fraction

: of core members working for the same company. With six people on

core,

* Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> [001010 10:03] wrote:

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly fraction
: of core members working for the same company. With six people on core,
: probably about two working at the same company would be a reasonable
: limit.

I knew someone was going to bring that up ;-).

There's already been discussion of this point among core. What we
now have is three core members employed by Great Bridge and the
other three either fully or partly employed by PostgreSQL Inc.
In one sense that's a stable situation, but on the other hand it does
not agree with our original informal goal of keeping any one company
to a minority position of the core membership.

None of the core members are interested in giving up their new
positions. En masse resignation from the core committee would preserve
our high moral standards, perhaps, but it wouldn't do the project any
good that I can see. So it seems like the choices are to accept the
status quo, or to appoint some more core committee members to bring
the numbers back where we said they should be.

While I can think of a number of well-qualified candidates for core
membership, I don't much like the notion of appointing core members
just to meet some kind of numerical quota. Also, suppose we do appoint
more members, and then some of them accept positions with GB or PgSQL
Inc; do we repeat the exercise indefinitely? (This is not an unlikely
scenario, since the sort of people who'd be asked to join core are
exactly the sort of people whom both companies would love to hire.)

Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. Opinions from the
floor, anyone?

I think anyone with doubts should take a good look at the initial
companies backing Linux, (Redhat, VA, Debian) to see what a boon
this can be to project.

It is open source, so if you guys do happen to piss us off too much
we can always fork off our own version no? :)

So instead of panicing, it makes much more sense to ride it out and
get a feel for where things are going, there's never going to be
anything terribly binding that will come out of this because it is
an opensource project.

It's much more important to continue on with the rapid pace of
developement than to fear black helicopters that haven't even
shown up as blips on the radar.

--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."

I think it comes down to more of an issue of "conflict of interest". Worry
that core members will have more loyalty to the project in view of their
employers as opposed to the view of the project itself. That risk is
increased ten-fold when multiple members are in the same company.

It is tough what to say because there are basically two camps: make a rule
now to prevent possible issues later on, or not worry too much about it and
deal with it if an issue develops.

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alfred Perlstein" <bright@wintelcom.net>
To: "Peter Eisentraut" <peter_e@gmx.net>
Cc: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>; "PostgreSQL-general"
<pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 1:09 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: [HACKERS] My new job

* Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> [001010 09:47] wrote:

Bruce Momjian writes:

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge.

Whatever happened to this:

Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 15:19:48 -0400
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Ross J. Reedstrom <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>
Cc: PostgreSQL-general <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Steering committee responce to Great Bridge LLC

: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly

fraction

: of core members working for the same company. With six people on

core,

At 01:02 PM 10/10/00 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. Opinions from the
floor, anyone?

Yeah, quit worrying and work your collective butts off on 7.1 and 7.2 :)

Seriously...the core group is obviously committed to PG, and appear to
be folks of integrity. We all will benefit by your working on PG full
time while being paid enough so you can eat, drink, and be merry, too.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza@pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.

At 01:02 PM 10/10/00 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. Opinions from the
floor, anyone?

Yeah, quit worrying and work your collective butts off on 7.1 and 7.2 :)

C'mon, Don. Stop beating around the bush. Tell us what you really
think. :-)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 01:37:33PM -0400, Adam Lang wrote:

that core members will have more loyalty to the project in view of their
employers as opposed to the view of the project itself. That risk is
increased ten-fold when multiple members are in the same company.

Hey, I don't think this discussion makes a lot of sense. Yes, I do see the
risks for the project, but Bruce has to do whatever is best for his life. If
you are offered your dream job, would you really back off just because there
are too many of your friends working their too?

After all IF GreatBridge were to take over PostgreSQL the core members are
free to keep on working on a free version in their spare time. So that's
about the same situation as it is now.

Okay they may stop liking to do that, but that can happen regardless of what
job they are in. After all working on free software takes away
quite a lot of your spare time. So many become tired of this once their real
life takes its toll.

Michael
--
Michael Meskes
Michael@Fam-Meskes.De
Go SF 49ers! Go Rhein Fire!
Use Debian GNU/Linux! Use PostgreSQL!

Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> writes:

I think anyone with doubts should take a good look at the initial
companies backing Linux, (Redhat, VA, Debian) to see what a boon
this can be to project.

I'll just clarify that Debian is not a company, it is an non-profit
all-volunteer effort.

I agree with everything else that Alfred says.

Mike.

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 10:15:03AM -0700, Alfred Perlstein wrote:

I think anyone with doubts should take a good look at the initial
companies backing Linux, (Redhat, VA, Debian) to see what a boon

I certainly get your point but I have to correct this as Debian is not,
never has been and never will be a company. Sorry, couldn't resist. :-)

Michael
--
Michael Meskes
Michael@Fam-Meskes.De
Go SF 49ers! Go Rhein Fire!
Use Debian GNU/Linux! Use PostgreSQL!

As a long time (and mostly silent) PostgreSQL user, I
would like to say that I agree with Alfred. The more
time core members can spend working on PostgreSQL the
better, and if you can finagle it so that you get paid
actual money for doing it, then more power to you.
You certainly deserve it.

Working on an open source project is drastically
different then working on a closed source one. The
source is out there, and it can be forked if all of
you decide to sell your souls to the devil. Remember,
you yourselves didn't start the work on PostgreSQL,
and you have put a lot of work into documenting what
you have done. A fork would probably easier for the
next batch of hackers than it was for you. Not only
that, but if your employer pushes you to do something
to PostgreSQL that you don't agree with you can always
walk away and start your own PostgreSQL based company.
If PostgreSQL was a closed-source project your
employer would own your work, but it isn't, and they
don't, so why worry?

Great Bridge and PostgreSQL Inc. can't buy your souls,
and they can't steal your work. All they can do is
feed your families and help you sell PostgreSQL to the
world. Great Bridge and PostgreSQL Inc. aren't even
paying for your code (they could get that for free),
they are paying for your expertise. Like the rest of
your users they realize that your talents are worth
investing in.

However, you might want to commit your changes to the
public CVS server a little more often :).

Thanks for the hard work,
Jason Earl

--- Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> wrote:

* Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> [001010 10:03] wrote:

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
: One thing we have agreed to is that there must

not be an unseemly fraction

: of core members working for the same company.

With six people on core,

: probably about two working at the same company

would be a reasonable

: limit.

I knew someone was going to bring that up ;-).

There's already been discussion of this point

among core. What we

now have is three core members employed by Great

Bridge and the

other three either fully or partly employed by

PostgreSQL Inc.

In one sense that's a stable situation, but on the

other hand it does

not agree with our original informal goal of

keeping any one company

to a minority position of the core membership.

None of the core members are interested in giving

up their new

positions. En masse resignation from the core

committee would preserve

our high moral standards, perhaps, but it wouldn't

do the project any

good that I can see. So it seems like the choices

are to accept the

status quo, or to appoint some more core committee

members to bring

the numbers back where we said they should be.

While I can think of a number of well-qualified

candidates for core

membership, I don't much like the notion of

appointing core members

just to meet some kind of numerical quota. Also,

suppose we do appoint

more members, and then some of them accept

positions with GB or PgSQL

Inc; do we repeat the exercise indefinitely?

(This is not an unlikely

scenario, since the sort of people who'd be asked

to join core are

exactly the sort of people whom both companies

would love to hire.)

Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now.

Opinions from the

floor, anyone?

I think anyone with doubts should take a good look
at the initial
companies backing Linux, (Redhat, VA, Debian) to see
what a boon
this can be to project.

It is open source, so if you guys do happen to piss
us off too much
we can always fork off our own version no? :)

So instead of panicing, it makes much more sense to
ride it out and
get a feel for where things are going, there's never
going to be
anything terribly binding that will come out of this
because it is
an opensource project.

It's much more important to continue on with the
rapid pace of
developement than to fear black helicopters that
haven't even
shown up as blips on the radar.

--
-Alfred Perlstein -
[bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on
my desk."

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere!
http://mail.yahoo.com/

Is the following expected behavior for a UNION query with ORDER BY:

executing this query:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SELECT a.attnum as number,
a.attname as attribute,
CASE WHEN t.typname = 'varchar' THEN
t.typname || '(' || a.atttypmod - 4 || ')'
ELSE
t.typname
END as type,
CASE WHEN a.attnotnull = 't' THEN
'not null '::text ELSE ''::text
END || 'default ' ||
CASE WHEN a.atthasdef = 't' THEN
substring(d.adsrc for 128)::text
ELSE ''::text END as modifier
FROM pg_class c,
pg_attribute a,
pg_type t,
pg_attrdef d
WHERE c.relname = 'tblplayer' AND
a.attnum > 0 AND
a.attrelid = c.oid AND
a.atttypid = t.oid AND
c.oid = d.adrelid AND
d.adnum = a.attnum
UNION ALL
SELECT a.attnum as number,
a.attname as attribute,
CASE WHEN t.typname = 'varchar' THEN
t.typname || '(' || a.atttypmod - 4 || ')'
ELSE
t.typname
END as type,
CASE WHEN a.attnotnull = 't' THEN
'not null '::text
ELSE
''::text
END as modifier
FROM pg_class c,
pg_attribute a,
pg_type t
WHERE c.relname = 'tblplayer' AND
a.attnum > 0 AND
a.attrelid = c.oid AND
a.atttypid = t.oid AND
a.attname NOT IN (SELECT a.attname
FROM pg_class c,
pg_attribute a,
pg_attrdef d
WHERE c.relname = 'tblplayer' AND
a.attnum > 0 AND
a.attrelid = c.oid AND
a.atttypid = t.oid AND
c.oid = d.adrelid AND
d.adnum = a.attnum)
ORDER BY a.attnum;

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

yields

number | attribute | type | modifier
--------+---------------+-------------+--------------------------------
1 | play_id | int4 | not null default nextval('...
2 | play_name | varchar(30) | not null
3 | play_username | varchar(16) | not null
4 | play_password | varchar(16) | not null
5 | play_online | bool | default 'f'

However, if I execute the same query and drop "a.attnum as number" from
the select part, it returns the following:

attribute | type | modifier
---------------+-------------+--------------------------------
play_id | int4 | not null default nextval('...
play_online | bool | default 'f'
play_name | varchar(30) | not null
play_username | varchar(16) | not null
play_password | varchar(16) | not null

which is incorrect accoring to the initial query. It appears to be
ordering the individual selects and then appending the second query to
the first -- is this correct?

Thanks

Michael Fork - CCNA - MCP - A+
Network Support - Toledo Internet Access - Toledo Ohio

Bruce Momjian writes:

Excellent question. I suggested leaving core, but that would still mean
more than 1/3 of core people would be in one company. Our short-term
solution is to keep going until we see some problems. Our long-term
strategy is to increase the size of the core group.

In the end, PostgreSQL is still controlled by those who contribute the
work, so it doesn't matter who's in core and who's not. Your leaving core
would certainly have been the worse "fix". But I'm pleased that this
agreement was at least remembered.

Those who hang around GNU toolchain/build tools development lists may
recall occasional annoyances that design or implementation decisions are
apparently made on Cygnus-internal mailing lists. Even if those cases
might have been unintended in hindsight, this is the sort of stuff that
one needs to be aware of.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net http://yi.org/peter-e/

I wasn't judging. I was mentioning to others what the concerns probably
were. Also, it isn't a concern of "Company B" taking over. It is of the
possibility of development put in the direction that best benefits of
Company B as opposed to the project itself. And again, yes, the other core
members can tell them to "blow it out their arse" but then you have a
situation of them either going on their own and doing a "splinter" or just
quitting in general and the direction is then even more put in the direction
of Company B.

It is merely a conflict of interest issue. Same issue in law as having
attorney's from the same firm on the side of defendant and plaintiff. If
the plaintiff is a multi-million dollar client and the defendant is
pro-bono... there is concern about bias.

Congratulations is in order for Mr. Momjian. I'm not saying he should or
shouldn't work for them. I'm just playing devil's advocate.

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Meskes" <meskes@postgresql.org>
To: "PostgreSQL-general" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 2:51 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: [HACKERS] My new job

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 01:37:33PM -0400, Adam Lang wrote:

that core members will have more loyalty to the project in view of their
employers as opposed to the view of the project itself. That risk is
increased ten-fold when multiple members are in the same company.

Hey, I don't think this discussion makes a lot of sense. Yes, I do see the
risks for the project, but Bruce has to do whatever is best for his life.

If

you are offered your dream job, would you really back off just because

there

are too many of your friends working their too?

After all IF GreatBridge were to take over PostgreSQL the core members are
free to keep on working on a free version in their spare time. So that's
about the same situation as it is now.

Okay they may stop liking to do that, but that can happen regardless of

what

job they are in. After all working on free software takes away
quite a lot of your spare time. So many become tired of this once their

real

Michael Fork <mfork@toledolink.com> writes:

However, if I execute the same query and drop "a.attnum as number" from
the select part, it returns the following:
...
which is incorrect accoring to the initial query. It appears to be
ordering the individual selects and then appending the second query to
the first -- is this correct?

I believe that this query should not be considered valid --- and, in
fact, current sources will return an error if you try to ORDER a UNION
result by something that's not one of the output columns of the UNION.

The issue is that if you are union'ing arbitrary queries together,
how do you decide what the ORDER BY expression means in the context
of each component query? Consider

select a, b from tab1
UNION
select c, d from tab2
ORDER BY z;

Even assuming that there are columns named z in both tables, the ORDER
BY would be exceeding its authority to assume that those columns are
what is meant. Furthermore, since we're doing a UNION here, the result
will be reduced to just the unique output rows, meaning that there might
be more than one possible z value for each output row; so the sort order
wouldn't be well-defined.

It seems to me that for UNION-type queries we need to stick to the
letter of the SQL standard and only allow ORDER BY an output column
name. In my example you'd be allowed to do "ORDER BY a" or equivalently
"ORDER BY 1", but not "ORDER BY z".

Existing releases fail to defend against this situation, and produce a
plan that does who-knows-what. In current sources you'll get an error:

regression=# select q2 from int8_tbl union all select q2 from int8_tbl
regression-# order by int8_tbl.q1;
ERROR: ORDER BY on a UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT result must be on one of the result columns

regards, tom lane

It is merely a conflict of interest issue. Same issue in law as having
attorney's from the same firm on the side of defendant and plaintiff. If
the plaintiff is a multi-million dollar client and the defendant is
pro-bono... there is concern about bias.

Congratulations is in order for Mr. Momjian. I'm not saying he should or
shouldn't work for them. I'm just playing devil's advocate.

The interesting issue here is that law firms by nature are adviserial.
My paper showed that most issues are actually ones of companies managing
a shared resource, so the analogy is not quite accurate.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

It is merely a conflict of interest issue. Same issue in law as having
attorney's from the same firm on the side of defendant and plaintiff. If
the plaintiff is a multi-million dollar client and the defendant is
pro-bono... there is concern about bias.

Congratulations is in order for Mr. Momjian. I'm not saying he should or
shouldn't work for them. I'm just playing devil's advocate.

The interesting issue here is that law firms by nature are adviserial.
My paper showed that most issues are actually ones of companies managing
a shared resource, so the analogy is not quite accurate.

OTOH, Red Hat, Inc. employs most of the gcc developers and by far the
most GDB developers(80-90% of commits). There are still mechanisms in
place to hinder that we have any sort of control over these...

--
Trond Eivind Glomsr�d
Red Hat, Inc.

[ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ]

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

It is merely a conflict of interest issue. Same issue in law as having
attorney's from the same firm on the side of defendant and plaintiff. If
the plaintiff is a multi-million dollar client and the defendant is
pro-bono... there is concern about bias.

Congratulations is in order for Mr. Momjian. I'm not saying he should or
shouldn't work for them. I'm just playing devil's advocate.

The interesting issue here is that law firms by nature are adviserial.
My paper showed that most issues are actually ones of companies managing
a shared resource, so the analogy is not quite accurate.

OTOH, Red Hat, Inc. employs most of the gcc developers and by far the
most GDB developers(80-90% of commits). There are still mechanisms in
place to hinder that we have any sort of control over these...

Yes, as I said in my paper, controlling it is actually against the best
interests of the company.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

I agree. My analogy was more in describing the conflict of interest, not
necessarily the shared resource issue.

Again, I'm not trying to come off on the wrong end. Just many people seemed
to take the situation a little too easy and wondered why the issue even
would have come up. In some instances it really is an issue that groups
have to concern themselves with.

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: "Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com>
Cc: "PostgreSQL-general" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 4:49 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: [HACKERS] My new job

It is merely a conflict of interest issue. Same issue in law as having
attorney's from the same firm on the side of defendant and plaintiff.

If

the plaintiff is a multi-million dollar client and the defendant is
pro-bono... there is concern about bias.

Congratulations is in order for Mr. Momjian. I'm not saying he should

or

Adam Lang wrote:

I wasn't judging. I was mentioning to others what the concerns probably
were. Also, it isn't a concern of "Company B" taking over. It is of the
possibility of development put in the direction that best benefits of
Company B as opposed to the project itself. And again, yes, the other core
members can tell them to "blow it out their arse" but then you have a
situation of them either going on their own and doing a "splinter" or just
quitting in general and the direction is then even more put in the direction
of Company B.

It is merely a conflict of interest issue. Same issue in law as having
attorney's from the same firm on the side of defendant and plaintiff. If
the plaintiff is a multi-million dollar client and the defendant is
pro-bono... there is concern about bias.

Congratulations is in order for Mr. Momjian. I'm not saying he should or
shouldn't work for them. I'm just playing devil's advocate.

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company

Well to calm any fears of Great Bridge taking over what exactly are the
terms of employment? Are the developers merely continuing on with what
they were working on and now getting paid for it, or is Great Bridge
saying here are the projects we want done so do it.
--
Dave Smith
Candata Systems Ltd.
(416) 493-9020
dave@candata.com

teg@redhat.com (Trond Eivind =?iso-8859-1?q?Glomsr=F8d?=) writes:

OTOH, Red Hat, Inc. employs most of the gcc developers and by far the
most GDB developers(80-90% of commits). There are still mechanisms in
place to hinder that we have any sort of control over these...

What sort of mechanisms? Perhaps we need to borrow some ideas from
your situation.

regards, tom lane

"Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com> writes:

I wasn't judging. I was mentioning to others what the concerns probably
were. Also, it isn't a concern of "Company B" taking over. It is of the
possibility of development put in the direction that best benefits of
Company B as opposed to the project itself.
...
It is merely a conflict of interest issue.

Right, exactly. That was why we originally suggested putting a limit on
the number of core members employed by any one company: to reduce both
the actual and perceived potential for core decisions being taken in a
way that is more for the benefit of some company than for the project as
a whole.

I am not sure that the *real* potential for bad choices is all that
high. I think all the core members understand very well that we are
stewards of a shared resource, and in the long run decisions counter
to the community-wide best interest will also not be in the best
interest of our companies. But it's also important that the rest of
the PG community *perceive* that core decisions are well-founded.

However, given recent events the original two-of-six idea isn't feasible
any more --- and certainly none of us were going to tell Bruce that he
couldn't take that job because that'd make three GB employees on core.
So the question is, what do we do now?

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:

teg@redhat.com (Trond Eivind =?iso-8859-1?q?Glomsr=F8d?=) writes:

OTOH, Red Hat, Inc. employs most of the gcc developers and by far the
most GDB developers(80-90% of commits). There are still mechanisms in
place to hinder that we have any sort of control over these...

What sort of mechanisms? Perhaps we need to borrow some ideas from
your situation.

Steering committees, where one entitity (university, company etc) are
restricted to a maximum quota of members.

http://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html

--
Trond Eivind Glomsr�d
Red Hat, Inc.

I am not sure that the *real* potential for bad choices is all that
high. I think all the core members understand very well that we are
stewards of a shared resource, and in the long run decisions counter
to the community-wide best interest will also not be in the best
interest of our companies. But it's also important that the rest of
the PG community *perceive* that core decisions are well-founded.

I have already had to reject a Great Bridge request, saying, "This is
the first of many disappointments I will deliver." When I explained
that I was better as someone objective than as a "yes" man, they got the
point.

Fortunately, since I wrote the article, I think things are clearer now.
They understand the trade-off of open-source control.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Tom Lane wrote:

"Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com> writes:

I wasn't judging. I was mentioning to others what the concerns probably
were. Also, it isn't a concern of "Company B" taking over. It is of the
possibility of development put in the direction that best benefits of
Company B as opposed to the project itself.
...
It is merely a conflict of interest issue.

Right, exactly. That was why we originally suggested putting a limit on
the number of core members employed by any one company: to reduce both
the actual and perceived potential for core decisions being taken in a
way that is more for the benefit of some company than for the project as
a whole.

I am not sure that the *real* potential for bad choices is all that
high. I think all the core members understand very well that we are
stewards of a shared resource, and in the long run decisions counter
to the community-wide best interest will also not be in the best
interest of our companies. But it's also important that the rest of
the PG community *perceive* that core decisions are well-founded.

However, given recent events the original two-of-six idea isn't feasible
any more --- and certainly none of us were going to tell Bruce that he
couldn't take that job because that'd make three GB employees on core.
So the question is, what do we do now?

For now, nothing. If it never becomes a problem then it's moot - besides,
now you're out of core members to go anywhere :) Yeah I know, someone can
always move from pgsql to gb, but the same can go in the other direction.
Make all decisions cautiously and in the best interest of PostgreSQL and
there should be no problems.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
128K ISDN from $22.00/mo - 56K Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
Online Giftshop Superstore http://www.cloudninegifts.com
==========================================================================

Dave Smith <dave@candata.com> writes:

Well to calm any fears of Great Bridge taking over what exactly are the
terms of employment? Are the developers merely continuing on with what
they were working on and now getting paid for it, or is Great Bridge
saying here are the projects we want done so do it.

FWIW, I've been employed by Great Bridge since 1 August, and so far
they haven't said word one about what I should be working on; "do what
you think is needed" are the sum total of my orders.

This happy state of affairs may not last forever --- in particular,
once GB has actual customers I will become one of their last-resort tech
support people, and so some amount of time will go into responding to
customer bug reports. Of course, I do a lot of bug-fix work anyway.
What I foresee is that I'll put higher priority on fixing bugs reported
by paying customers than on fixing those reported via the mailing lists.
But, hey, those people are paying for something; and it's not like I
plan to stop reading the lists.

regards, tom lane

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Michael Meskes wrote:

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 10:15:03AM -0700, Alfred Perlstein wrote:

I think anyone with doubts should take a good look at the initial
companies backing Linux, (Redhat, VA, Debian) to see what a boon

I certainly get your point but I have to correct this as Debian is not,
never has been and never will be a company. Sorry, couldn't resist. :-)

and last I heard, RedHat doesn't necessarily have the best name ...

The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Michael Meskes wrote:

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 10:15:03AM -0700, Alfred Perlstein wrote:

I think anyone with doubts should take a good look at the initial
companies backing Linux, (Redhat, VA, Debian) to see what a boon

I certainly get your point but I have to correct this as Debian is not,
never has been and never will be a company. Sorry, couldn't resist. :-)

and last I heard, RedHat doesn't necessarily have the best name ...

Red Hat-bashing doesn't change the fact that Red Hat employees is by
far the largest corporate (or other single entity) contributor open
source projects. Project on which we contribute a lot include gcc, gdb
(through former Cygnus and other employees, we are by far the biggest
there), rpm, XFree86, glibc, gtk+, gnome, the Linux kernel and apache.

We also try hard to feed patches back to the original authors when we fix
something generic.

Anyway, flamewars never serve any particular purpose - followups
should go to /dev/null
--
Trond Eivind Glomsr�d
Red Hat, Inc.

Dave Smith <dave@candata.com> writes:

Well to calm any fears of Great Bridge taking over what exactly are the
terms of employment? Are the developers merely continuing on with what
they were working on and now getting paid for it, or is Great Bridge
saying here are the projects we want done so do it.

FWIW, I've been employed by Great Bridge since 1 August, and so far
they haven't said word one about what I should be working on; "do what
you think is needed" are the sum total of my orders.

This happy state of affairs may not last forever --- in particular,
once GB has actual customers I will become one of their last-resort tech
support people, and so some amount of time will go into responding to

He is my first-resort bug fixer, but of course, he was before anyway. :-)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

"Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com> writes:

I wasn't judging. I was mentioning to others what the concerns probably
were. Also, it isn't a concern of "Company B" taking over. It is of the
possibility of development put in the direction that best benefits of
Company B as opposed to the project itself. And again, yes, the other core

Who decides what is in the best interest of the project itself ? A
community is so diverse that there is alot of conflicting interests.

mvh,

Gunnar

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

more in voliation of the original plan.

violation ? Or is this just another gap in my knowledge of the English
language ?

Gunnar

As promised, the press release is at:

http://www.greatbridge.com/news/p_101020001.html

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Adam Haberlach <adam@newsnipple.com> writes:

All this whinging about "corperate direction" is really meaningless
unless you are prepared to jump ship or split off in a clone of the
original one. The code is what you do with it. We are all lucky that
it is as good and useful as it is right now.

Hallejuja. OK, I'm not Christian, but I agree very much in this sentiment.

Regards,

Gunnar

Bruce Momjian wrote:

As promised, the press release is at:

http://www.greatbridge.com/news/p_101020001.html

Wow. Nice. The combined qualifications of the six steering committee
members are staggering.

Me, I'm just a lowly broadcast engineer with ten years experience and a
measly Bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering Technology. Oh
well. Even I have a job to do!

--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Intermet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 05:06:37PM -0400, Dave Smith wrote:

Adam Lang wrote:

Well to calm any fears of Great Bridge taking over what exactly are the
terms of employment? Are the developers merely continuing on with what
they were working on and now getting paid for it, or is Great Bridge
saying here are the projects we want done so do it.

"merely?"

I've told many people that postgres is one of the best-managed
(open-source or otherwise) projects I've seen. The core group knows the
code, the deadlines, the bugs, and the solutions.

My feeling:
The source is open and you are free to do whatever you want with it.
If Great Bridge decides that they want to make postgresql into the best
damn pinball simulator they can, that is their perogative. If the
core developers decide they want to get paid to write a pinball
simulator, theat that is their gig and there isn't a damn thing we
can do about it, except branch off and decide not to integrate their
patches. I would feel very sorry if this happened--and Bruce, Tom,
and the other guys who I can't remember names of all understand this.

All this whinging about "corperate direction" is really meaningless
unless you are prepared to jump ship or split off in a clone of the
original one. The code is what you do with it. We are all lucky that
it is as good and useful as it is right now.

--
Adam Haberlach | A billion hours ago, human life appeared on
adam@newsnipple.com | earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity
http://www.newsnipple.com | emerged. A billion Coca-Colas ago was
'88 EX500 | yesterday morning. -1996 Coca-Cola Ann. Rpt.

At 17:25 10/10/00 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

So the question is, what do we do now?

There seem to be several concerns (in no particular order):

1. Conscious design/development choices based partly/solely on the needs of
one or more companies as opposed to the interest of the open source project.

eg. if changes to the core of pgsql to support erServer are actually
detrimental to the maintainability and reliability of the open source project.

This can not be completely avoided, but the existing core team review
system will presumably help. Expanding the core to include non-company
people is a good idea.

2. Subconscious design/development choices based on the interests of one or
more companies.

Can't really avoid this, but one hopes such subconscious decisions will be
far less significant than the conscious ones. Again, expanding the core to
include non-company people is a good idea.

3. Loss of core members to wholly private development.

Can't avoid this. Always was and will be a risk.

In answer to "What do we do now", it seems a first step would be to ensure
transparency in decision making (something that I think Peter E mentioned).
The fact we have two companies, who in theory will compete, is a good thing
(let's hope there are no strategic alliances announced in the near future).

What about setting up some kind of committee consisting of an expanded core
as well as some rotated members (possibly) selected randomly from the
non-core developers or users?

In reality, any suggestions of 'what to do' has to come from the core. It
has to be something you are happy to follow and which is not painful, but
which also satisfies the concerns already raised.

The first attempt at self-regulation failed, probably because the sights
were set unreasonably high. What is needed now is an agreed and reasonable
set of guidelines or principles.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner | __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd. |----/ - \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498) | /(@) ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81 | _________ \
Fax: (+61) 0500 83 82 82 | ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au | / \|
| --________--
PGP key available upon request, | /
and from pgp5.ai.mit.edu:11371 |/

Gunnar R|nning <gunnar@candleweb.no> writes:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

more in voliation of the original plan.

violation ? Or is this just another gap in my knowledge of the English
language ?

You're right, he's wrong. We native English speakers are notoriously
poor spellers of our own language ;-)

regards, tom lane

Gunnar R|nning <gunnar@candleweb.no> writes:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

more in voliation of the original plan.

violation ? Or is this just another gap in my knowledge of the English
language ?

You're right, he's wrong. We native English speakers are notoriously
poor spellers of our own language ;-)

Oh, sorry. I didn't even see the spelling error. Yes, violation.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. Opinions from the
floor, anyone?

From the lowly end of the floor... for what I am concerned, I'm not
worried about the involvment of the core team. Instead, I'm happy
that companies like GB and Postgres Inc have been founded.

I'm not an active member of open source community (if not for
advocating it), but just for the lack of skill. I know RS's and ESR's
works, I think I got the ideas, but I think that "commercial support"
is useful for the quality of the projects, and not detrimental.

I really think that there is no possibility that a commercial company
based on a open source project could steer away from the good of
the project. The equation is simple: the more the "product" is good,
the more the company would penetrate the market.

We all know that marketing and FUD approaches are incompatable
with open source projects, just the quality of the product can give
people the reason to adopt it.

What should we fear? That GB will purpusedly put some limitations
or bugs in tha code, so they could gain more on supporting it
(ya 'now, somebody says that some guy have earned billions
following this strategy ;-))?
But this is simply not feasible. They don't sell the product, so they
could not gain on "new realeses" and "service packs". And who
could hide bugs in an open source project and call them "features"?

At the most, as Tom said, they will be more focused to hunt bugs
and add features basing on requests made by paying customers.
Well, those are nonetheless bugs that will be corrected and new
features that will be added, and we all will benefit for them. There's
good chance that they are the same bugs and same features that
some of OUR customers (I'm meaning "we" as in "independent
consultants and developers that use open source projects as
tools") will ask for.
And this way the people that are working on that will be also well
payed (er, I don't know the payrolls, I'm just hoping that they are
good...), and I can't see anything bad in that!

No, as I said, commercial companies investing in open source
development can only do good.

just my 0.02 Euro ;-)

and good luck to all core members for their new jobs!

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Fabrizio Ermini Alternate E-mail:
C.so Umberto, 7 faermini@tin.it
loc. Meleto Valdarno Mail on GSM: (keep it short!)
52020 Cavriglia (AR) faermini@sms.tin.it

Since it seems that core is rather mature and "loves" postgresql, not too
much concern is probably neccessary. Maybe "modify" the rules and say no
more than 50% can be in one company. Also, maybe inform GB and others of
the policy so they don't actively pursue core to make it an issue.

Other than that, just wait and see I guess.

Also... if you are concerned about the community seeing core as "founded" or
not, maybe on one of the postgresl sites, disclose where core works if it is
a "conflict" issue... but that is a bit of an privacy infringement I'd
think.

Either way... it seems like core has the backing of this list at least... if
the backing is universal... I say it would be upto core to decide what they
feel is safe.

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: "Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com>
Cc: "PostgreSQL-general" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 5:25 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: [HACKERS] My new job

"Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com> writes:

I wasn't judging. I was mentioning to others what the concerns probably
were. Also, it isn't a concern of "Company B" taking over. It is of

the

Probably the best solution is to make the solution the least complicated and
imposing. :)

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
----- Original Message -----

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 01:02:52PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. Opinions from the
floor, anyone?

First, I include my voice with those congratulating Bruce, and wishing
him the best of luck in his new position.

I concur that no one who has paid any attention at all to how the core
developers interact with the user base on the mailing lists can have any
thing but the highest regard for all of your integrity and devotion to
the project. Given that, there is little fear of overt actions by Great
Bridge that could harm the project, short of firing you all and leaving
you destitute on the street (which wouldn't last long, I'm sure ;-)

As I mentioned in thread that followed Ned Lilly's first post here, the
real threat to code quality will be management pressures, such as schedule
pressure: when Management wants a new release so that Marketing can better
sell against a competitor with a higher release number, what do you do?

There are a dozen scenarios I could spin, each more fantastic than the
last, but all grounded in someones real world experience. All the core
members have more experience than I in the world of corporate coding,
so can probably spin worse ones. How each of you handles those kind
of pressures is up to your own internal compass: just let me remind
you that, unlike most situtations where the individual is alone, the
user community here can be a _personal_ resource, standing up for you,
and providing an outside voice, if needed.

Enough with worst case scenarios. As you said, Tom, the real problem is
about the preception of the community. How to avoid misunderstandings?
I think Peter's point about transparency of development _process_ is
crucial. As it is, there have been in the past occasional back channel
communications where design decisions get made, via IRC or phone calls.
This in and of itself is not a problem: some problems are just easier to
thrash out that way. The problem comes when the decision is presented as
a fait accompli, without a clear public statement of the reasoning behind
the decision. Sometimes it's easy to forget if a particular point got
made on te phone, in a public email list, or a private, core list. This
could easily spin out of control, if decisions get made over the water
cooler, as it were.

To date, the core developers have served as steering committee, as
well. This is only natural on an all volunteer project: in that case,
no one can order anyone to do anything they don't want to, so only the
developers can direct the project. The Debian project runs into this
all the time: Herding kittens, it's called. ;-)

Now, the problem is that it is perceived that some one _can_ order
the developers: analogous to the criticisms of electing John Kennedy
as U.S. President, since he was Catholic, and therefore preceived to be
under the Pope's control. That's, of course, extreme, but Tom himself has
said that'd he'd work on bug fixes for paying customers over mailing list
submissions. That's his right, and no different than a volunteer developer
deciding that work or school assignments take precedence. It's happened
to me, enough. But it's the perception that matter here, not the fact.

What to do? Make as much communication as possible public. When in doubt,
err on the public side. Develop in the fish bowl. If you feel there still
a need for private channels, perhaps include some outside representitive,
trusted by the community, who can serve as a witness of record, if you
will, vouching for the intent of the communications, without having to
reveal the content.

Well, there's my nickel. Do with it what you will.

Ross

Ross J. Reedstrom, <reedstrm@rice.edu> NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer
Computer and Information Technology Institute Rice University, 6100
S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005

--
Open source code is like a natural resource, it's the result of providing
food and sunshine to programmers, and then staying out of their way.
[...] [It] is not going away because it has utility for both the developers
and users independent of economic motivations. Jim Flynn, Sunnyvale, Calif.

What to do? Make as much communication as possible public. When in doubt,
err on the public side. Develop in the fish bowl. If you feel there still
a need for private channels, perhaps include some outside representative,
trusted by the community, who can serve as a witness of record, if you
will, vouching for the intent of the communications, without having to
reveal the content.

We were talking about this today down here at Great Bridge, and I
mentioned that there is very little that happens in the core group. Up
until Great Bridge arrived, and we had to secretly communicate with
them, there really wasn't much going on in core. Occasionally they will
get upset with me about accepting too many patches, but other than that,
months go by with nothing happening in core at all.

So, I am really saying that core doesn't do much. You non-core folks
aren't missing anything.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Fri, Oct 13, 2000 at 04:10:48PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

We were talking about this today down here at Great Bridge, and I
mentioned that there is very little that happens in the core group. Up
until Great Bridge arrived, and we had to secretly communicate with
them, there really wasn't much going on in core. Occasionally they will
get upset with me about accepting too many patches, but other than that,
months go by with nothing happening in core at all.

So, I am really saying that core doesn't do much. You non-core folks
aren't missing anything.

Yeah, that's what you say in public ... There is no cabal!

Seriously though, we're talking about perceptions. The once or twice over
the last two years I've noticed sign of out-of-band decision making, it's
usually been a mention of IRC or a phone call. No great shakes, just if
someone's already (irrationally) upset about their 'great' design idea not
getting in, and it's not clear why, but something happened in person (or
via IRC or phone or core) ... I'd rather _not_ see the slashdot thread.

Ross
--
Open source code is like a natural resource, it's the result of providing
food and sunshine to programmers, and then staying out of their way.
[...] [It] is not going away because it has utility for both the developers
and users independent of economic motivations. Jim Flynn, Sunnyvale, Calif.

So, I am really saying that core doesn't do much. You non-core folks
aren't missing anything.

Yeah, that's what you say in public ... There is no cabal!

Seriously though, we're talking about perceptions. The once or twice over
the last two years I've noticed sign of out-of-band decision making, it's
usually been a mention of IRC or a phone call. No great shakes, just if
someone's already (irrationally) upset about their 'great' design idea not
getting in, and it's not clear why, but something happened in person (or
via IRC or phone or core) ... I'd rather _not_ see the slashdot thread.

You should know that phone calls are my secret weapon.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

At 16:10 13/10/00 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

So, I am really saying that core doesn't do much. You non-core folks
aren't missing anything.

The issue here is transparency: doing the right thing as well as being seen
to do the right thing.

When someone devotes hours of time to PGSQL for no recompense, their
motives are generally not questioned. So when someone makes a design
decision, the motive is assumed to be because it is best in the long term
for the project. As soon as someone is paid to do work, their motive is (at
least partly) to get paid. As Tom has already said, this has the potential
to distort scheduling priorities.

The majority of core discussions are closed because either we need to
decide on a central direction for the project (release date) or we need
to discuss something that would embarrass someone if it were publically
known.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

At 22:12 13/10/00 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

The majority of core discussions are closed because either we need to
decide on a central direction for the project (release date)

These are the things that you should consider making more transparent.

or we need
to discuss something that would embarrass someone if it were publically
known.

Personal opinions are of course private. Can you think of an example of a
secret embarrassing item that has affected the direction of the project?
I'd be fascinated!

You know, we have to take people aside once and a while and get them
back on course. Of course, we do that for core members too.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Sat, 14 Oct 2000, Philip Warner wrote:

The fear is that this may distort other priorities - hence why
increased transparency in decision making is important. If Bruce, Tom
& Jan make a design decision, then chances are it's going to be pretty
good. The problem is it will/may be seen as a GB decision.

I don't know ... the recent discussion in -hackers on the whole ALTER
TABLE DROP COLUMN tends to show that even those "in the pay of" don't
necessarily agree :)

"Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@rice.edu> writes:

So, I am really saying that core doesn't do much. You non-core folks
aren't missing anything.

Yeah, that's what you say in public ... There is no cabal!

It's true that very little goes on on the private core mailing list,
and we try to keep it that way. I think that most of the power that
core has (such as it is) is that people on pghackers are willing to
defer to us on decisions like what the release schedule should be.
There are a dozen or more non-core people with CVS write access,
so it's not like core is tightly controlling what happens to the code.

I think ideally our role is one of cat herders, as you put it ---
making the kinds of decisions that a group of dozens or hundreds
can't make effectively. But the long-term direction of the project
is largely determined by what the individual CVS committers choose to
work on. In that sense, a core member has no more power than any
non-core committer. (Case in point: Peter E. has had more influence
on what 7.1 will look like than most of core ;-).)

When you look at it from that point of view, power comes from having
time to work on the code. In that sense, now that Great Bridge is
paying me to work full-time on Postgres, I personally may be the
most dangerous loose cannon on the deck. (Jan is less dangerous
right at the moment only because he's distracted by moving concerns.
Once he's settled again in Norfolk, look out...) Outer joins will be
in 7.1 because *I* decided that would be a good thing to work on ---
this wasn't a core decision, nor one imposed on me by Great Bridge.
I doubt anyone will complain too hard about that particular choice,
but further down the road I might make more debatable choices about
how to spend my time.

I agree 100% with your comments that openness of decision-making
is a critical element in keeping the trust of the community. But
looking at it as just an issue of core vs non-core is missing some part
of the problem. Everyone who contributes code has a responsibility,
proportionate to how much work they're doing, to ensure that the rest
of the community understands and approves of what they're doing.

regards, tom lane

At 22:12 13/10/00 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

The majority of core discussions are closed because either we need to
decide on a central direction for the project (release date)

These are the things that you should consider making more transparent.

or we need
to discuss something that would embarrass someone if it were publically
known.

Personal opinions are of course private. Can you think of an example of a
secret embarrassing item that has affected the direction of the project?
I'd be fascinated!

You know, we have to take people aside once and a while and get them
back on course. Of course, we do that for core members too.

In fact, we built a shed outside especially for Jan, who is in Poland
giving a speech and can't possibly respond in a timely manner. :-)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Sat, 14 Oct 2000, Philip Warner wrote:

The fear is that this may distort other priorities - hence why
increased transparency in decision making is important. If Bruce, Tom
& Jan make a design decision, then chances are it's going to be pretty
good. The problem is it will/may be seen as a GB decision.

I don't know ... the recent discussion in -hackers on the whole ALTER
TABLE DROP COLUMN tends to show that even those "in the pay of" don't
necessarily agree :)

Man, Tom, our cover is working perfectly. Let's disagree on something
again. That will really convince them. :-)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

At 16:10 13/10/00 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

So, I am really saying that core doesn't do much. You non-core folks
aren't missing anything.

The issue here is transparency: doing the right thing as well as being seen
to do the right thing.

When someone devotes hours of time to PGSQL for no recompense, their
motives are generally not questioned. So when someone makes a design
decision, the motive is assumed to be because it is best in the long term
for the project. As soon as someone is paid to do work, their motive is (at
least partly) to get paid. As Tom has already said, this has the potential
to distort scheduling priorities.

The fear is that this may distort other priorities - hence why increased
transparency in decision making is important. If Bruce, Tom & Jan make a
design decision, then chances are it's going to be pretty good. The problem
is it will/may be seen as a GB decision.

As I said in an earlier post, any and all drive for increased transparency
has to come from GB; they must now be aware of the issues and potential
risks. Certainly planning to contribute *all* source is a very good sign
since it will drastically reduce the chances of making compromising design
decisions.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner | __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd. |----/ - \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498) | /(@) ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81 | _________ \
Fax: (+61) 0500 83 82 82 | ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au | / \|
| --________--
PGP key available upon request, | /
and from pgp5.ai.mit.edu:11371 |/

I think ideally our role is one of cat herders, as you put it ---
making the kinds of decisions that a group of dozens or hundreds
can't make effectively. But the long-term direction of the project
is largely determined by what the individual CVS committers choose to
work on. In that sense, a core member has no more power than any
non-core committer. (Case in point: Peter E. has had more influence
on what 7.1 will look like than most of core ;-).)

Jan says that if I start coding more, GB will have to hire more
developers to clean up after me. Now, is that supposed to make me feel
valued? :-)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

At 22:12 13/10/00 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

The majority of core discussions are closed because either we need to
decide on a central direction for the project (release date)

These are the things that you should consider making more transparent.

or we need
to discuss something that would embarrass someone if it were publically
known.

Personal opinions are of course private. Can you think of an example of a
secret embarrassing item that has affected the direction of the project?
I'd be fascinated!

----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner | __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd. |----/ - \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498) | /(@) ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81 | _________ \
Fax: (+61) 0500 83 82 82 | ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au | / \|
| --________--
PGP key available upon request, | /
and from pgp5.ai.mit.edu:11371 |/

Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:

or we need to discuss something that would embarrass someone if it
were publically known.

Personal opinions are of course private. Can you think of an example of a
secret embarrassing item that has affected the direction of the project?
I'd be fascinated!

There have been a couple of cases where core has decided that a committer
needed to be admonished ("yo, mon, why you committing new features
during beta freeze?" or something like that). Marc has generally done
the admonishing with a cc to core, but we don't embarrass people in
public. I don't propose to name names here for obvious reasons.

Another class of properly-private discussions have been reports of
security-related bugs; that sort of thing seems best not mentioned
too widely on the public lists until a fix is available. (BTW, if
you ever have a security bug report that you don't think ought to be
mentioned in the public archives, send it to pgsql-core.)

Dunno about "affecting the course of the project". I don't think that
core as core has all that much influence on the course of the project.
Timing (release schedule) yes, because people allow us to decree that,
but direction no.

regards, tom lane

I think ideally our role is one of cat herders, as you put it ---
making the kinds of decisions that a group of dozens or hundreds
can't make effectively. But the long-term direction of the project
is largely determined by what the individual CVS committers choose to
work on. In that sense, a core member has no more power than any
non-core committer. (Case in point: Peter E. has had more influence
on what 7.1 will look like than most of core ;-).)

Jan says that if I start coding more, GB will have to hire more
developers to clean up after me. Now, is that supposed to make me feel
valued? :-)

OK, why is no one laughing at my crafty jokes? Did core tell you guys
not to laugh? Is that what they are doing? :-)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:

When someone devotes hours of time to PGSQL for no recompense, their
motives are generally not questioned. So when someone makes a design
decision, the motive is assumed to be because it is best in the long term
for the project. As soon as someone is paid to do work, their motive is (at
least partly) to get paid. As Tom has already said, this has the potential
to distort scheduling priorities.

A side comment here: generally committers' motives are not questioned,
but what makes you think they're doing it for no recompense? I know
that when I first started getting involved with PGSQL, the first fixes/
changes I sent in were directly related to problems my then company
was having. Since most uses for databases seem to be business-related,
I suspect that most people who are involved with PGSQL have at least
some connection to a business need.

The real issue is how much control does any one entity exert, and if
it's a lot, is that entity driving things in a direction that other
people don't like?

regards, tom lane

On Fri, Oct 13, 2000 at 10:54:31PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Man, Tom, our cover is working perfectly. Let's disagree on something
again. That will really convince them. :-)

This was supposed to go to -core, right? (I see Bruce got my joke. I
wasn't so sure Tom did ...)

Ross
--
Open source code is like a natural resource, it's the result of providing
food and sunshine to programmers, and then staying out of their way.
[...] [It] is not going away because it has utility for both the developers
and users independent of economic motivations. Jim Flynn, Sunnyvale, Calif.

On Fri, Oct 13, 2000 at 10:54:31PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Man, Tom, our cover is working perfectly. Let's disagree on something
again. That will really convince them. :-)

This was supposed to go to -core, right? (I see Bruce got my joke. I
wasn't so sure Tom did ...)

Tom chuckles, even if he doesn't get the joke.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. Opinions from the
floor, anyone?

One thing that comes to my mind is, that you (core members) working full
time on PG will produce so much work, that we "hobby PgSQL'ers" will
have a hard job in keeping up to date.

Thus you will have to be nice to us, becoming more and more ignorant.
You will have to understand seemingly dumb, uninformed, outdated ... questions
and suggestions :-)

But I trust, your real [business] heart belongs to PostgreSQL, and if there comes
the time of strong disagreement with Great Bridge, it will be easy for you to find
a new job.

Congratulations
Andreas

Zeugswetter Andreas SB <ZeugswetterA@wien.spardat.at> writes:

One thing that comes to my mind is, that you (core members) working full
time on PG will produce so much work, that we "hobby PgSQL'ers" will
have a hard job in keeping up to date.

When core was first talking to the Great Bridge folks, one of our big
concerns was that a group of commercial developers contributing to the
project would be able to control the direction of the project by sheer
manpower, ie, core wouldn't have time to review their submissions in
any detail.

That risk is still with us, though it looks a little different now that
we ourselves are the commercial developers in question ;-).

I agree with what a couple of people have already remarked: transparency
of decision making is going to be a critical issue in the future. Each
of us full-timers will have to be very careful to keep pghackers
informed about what we're doing or thinking of doing. It won't benefit
the project if a few core developers get to work full-time, but everyone
else drops out because they feel they can't keep up or are not able to
make a meaningful contribution.

regards, tom lane

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Bruce Momjian writes:

After careful consideration, I have decided to accept a job with Great
Bridge.

Whatever happened to this:

Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 15:19:48 -0400
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Ross J. Reedstrom <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>
Cc: PostgreSQL-general <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Steering committee responce to Great Bridge LLC

: One thing we have agreed to is that there must not be an unseemly fraction
: of core members working for the same company. With six people on core,
: probably about two working at the same company would be a reasonable
: limit.

Been in Poland for a week, so pardon for the delay.

Initially it was (if I recall correct) Vadim's and my idea.
The main reason behind it wasn't to avoid influence from
commercial entities into core. We've all been working
together for years as a group with great honour and trusting,
so the aims of all core members where never questioned. We
just decided this "fraction" to avoid any hireing to look
like a takeover.

This world is spinning a little fast at the moment. Let me
repeat what I said to a person I met last week in Poland,
during a PosrgreSQL conference in Wierzba. We have a BSD
license and now I know a good reason why we kept it all the
time. With that license in place, there's absolutely no
reason to panic right now. Nothing can be taken away, and if
things go wrong in the future, those left in the "OpenSource"
corner can start from our last official release again - be
sure I'll be somewhere in that corner, even if it might take
some time before I can surface again. And I'm sure I'll meet
all those I loved to work with together in that corner again.

Never underestimate the power of Open Source.

Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me. #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #