Companies involved in development

I think it would be a huge benefit for the community to have some more
company-funding. This would lead to the implementation of some features
people need urgently (replication in the core and so forth). On the
other hand a better product makes even more developers work for
PostgreSQL. We were thinking of funding the project as well and seems to
be a good way of improving the product we make our living of. We have
also tried to get some government funding we could invest into
PostgreSQL but unfornately all we could get was EUR 10k which is some
kind of ridiculous. We should have invested much more but it is just not
possible at this point so we dropped the idea.
For a company PostgreSQL definitely is an interesting area to invest
because it has proven to be a good product and there are just minor
things (sync. replication - eg. Postgres-R) missing to make it a real
enterprise database. The support of the community of more than just
optimal and it is an interesting subject.
Talking about practical experience: Our customers love PostgreSQL. The
only thing they miss is 24x7 availability due to a lack of hot-failover
and replication. A way to tweak the optimizer better (some have SQL
statements being 2 pages long).
We have done quite a lot of Oracle up to now but in many respects
PostgreSQL seems to be the better product but in the case of
availability we fail. The database never crashes but it is just to hard
to make a cluster out of it - we have to do it on an application level
and too many people worry about conistency if one node fails.

Also: It would be interesting to have a special section on the website
where people can post that they need money to implement something really
useful. I guess there'd be a lot of people who'd pay for replication or
things like that if they knew more.
By the way; many people seem to think that PostgreSQL is GPL license. I
know it is easy to find out what it means and that it is now that way
but we should explain what BSD license REALLY means in just a few words.
This may sound ridiculous but people just don't look for information.

All in all I think that there are ways to find people contributing
financially to the project.

Regards,
Hans-J�rgen Sch�nig

Bruce Momjian wrote:

I think we are going to see more company-funded developers working on
PostgreSQL. There are a handful now, but I can see lots more coming.
I am going to work on getting those funding companies more visibility.
We originally were concerned that such involvement may harm the
development process, but history has shown that it has only been a huge
benefit for the community.

--
*Cybertec Geschwinde u Schoenig*
Ludo-Hartmannplatz 1/14, A-1160 Vienna, Austria
Tel: +43/1/913 68 09; +43/664/233 90 75
www.postgresql.at <http://www.postgresql.at&gt;, cluster.postgresql.at
<http://cluster.postgresql.at&gt;, www.cybertec.at
<http://www.cybertec.at&gt;, kernel.cybertec.at <http://kernel.cybertec.at&gt;

I will add something about the BSD license to the advocacy web page I am
trying to put together. My list is:

P O S T G R E S Q L
A D V O C A C Y

Current at ftp://candle.pha.pa.us/pub/postgresql/advocacy.

Quotations
Company users
Beef up developers list, add companies
success stories
update developers map
BSD license

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hans-J���rgen Sch���nig wrote:

I think it would be a huge benefit for the community to have some more
company-funding. This would lead to the implementation of some features
people need urgently (replication in the core and so forth). On the
other hand a better product makes even more developers work for
PostgreSQL. We were thinking of funding the project as well and seems to
be a good way of improving the product we make our living of. We have
also tried to get some government funding we could invest into
PostgreSQL but unfornately all we could get was EUR 10k which is some
kind of ridiculous. We should have invested much more but it is just not
possible at this point so we dropped the idea.
For a company PostgreSQL definitely is an interesting area to invest
because it has proven to be a good product and there are just minor
things (sync. replication - eg. Postgres-R) missing to make it a real
enterprise database. The support of the community of more than just
optimal and it is an interesting subject.
Talking about practical experience: Our customers love PostgreSQL. The
only thing they miss is 24x7 availability due to a lack of hot-failover
and replication. A way to tweak the optimizer better (some have SQL
statements being 2 pages long).
We have done quite a lot of Oracle up to now but in many respects
PostgreSQL seems to be the better product but in the case of
availability we fail. The database never crashes but it is just to hard
to make a cluster out of it - we have to do it on an application level
and too many people worry about conistency if one node fails.

Also: It would be interesting to have a special section on the website
where people can post that they need money to implement something really
useful. I guess there'd be a lot of people who'd pay for replication or
things like that if they knew more.
By the way; many people seem to think that PostgreSQL is GPL license. I
know it is easy to find out what it means and that it is now that way
but we should explain what BSD license REALLY means in just a few words.
This may sound ridiculous but people just don't look for information.

All in all I think that there are ways to find people contributing
financially to the project.

Regards,
Hans-J?rgen Sch?nig

Bruce Momjian wrote:

I think we are going to see more company-funded developers working on
PostgreSQL. There are a handful now, but I can see lots more coming.
I am going to work on getting those funding companies more visibility.
We originally were concerned that such involvement may harm the
development process, but history has shown that it has only been a huge
benefit for the community.

--
*Cybertec Geschwinde u Schoenig*
Ludo-Hartmannplatz 1/14, A-1160 Vienna, Austria
Tel: +43/1/913 68 09; +43/664/233 90 75
www.postgresql.at <http://www.postgresql.at&gt;, cluster.postgresql.at
<http://cluster.postgresql.at&gt;, www.cybertec.at
<http://www.cybertec.at&gt;, kernel.cybertec.at <http://kernel.cybertec.at&gt;

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-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

I think I spelled -advocacy correctly this time.

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 05:34:13PM +0200, Hans-J?rgen Sch?nig wrote:

I think it would be a huge benefit for the community to have some more
company-funding. This would lead to the implementation of some features
people need urgently (replication in the core and so forth). On the

For a company PostgreSQL definitely is an interesting area to invest
because it has proven to be a good product and there are just minor
things (sync. replication - eg. Postgres-R) missing to make it a real
enterprise database. The support of the community of more than just
optimal and it is an interesting subject.

Also: It would be interesting to have a special section on the website
where people can post that they need money to implement something really
useful. I guess there'd be a lot of people who'd pay for replication or
things like that if they knew more.

Some time ago, I posted that I was looking for people interested in
making the replication stuff complete. I'm still working on that
(and I _may_ be getting somewhere, BTW), but there is a lot of work
to be done there, and I think quite a bit of high-quality code needs
to be written. And that high-quiality code requires high-quality
developers.

Now, it strikes me that sometimes, several companies might be able to
afford to subsidise this sort of development, if only they had a way
of getting together to do this. I find that the corporate folks here
really like the idea of "co-development". The idea is to spread the
risk, where everyone gets the return. Can anyone think of an idea of
how to set up some sort of organisation to do this? Or maybe, are
commercial organisations like PostgreSQL the best answer? The
problem is frequently that the names of the funders frequently need
to remain secret-ish, because a lot of companies are reluctant to
discuss using Postgres.

Any suggestions? I know I'd have an easier sell to support this sort
of development if we didn't have to foot the whole bill.

A

-- 
----
Andrew Sullivan                               87 Mowat Avenue 
Liberty RMS                           Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@libertyrms.info>                              M6K 3E3
                                         +1 416 646 3304 x110

I am willing to talk to anyone about this. There is a reason my phone
number is in my signature (note new phone number; I just moved.)

Also, I am willing to make trips to companies to talk about PostgreSQL.
I can't make 100's of trips a year, but I try to do at least on a month.
I just did one last week. If your company is interested in funding or a
visit to talk about PostgreSQL, I am ready. Also, for the advocacy
site, I will be putting together a list of people around the world who
are ready to talk via phone or visit about PostgreSQL.

I am a little bogged down on the pre-beta issue, but plan to hit this
full force once beta begins.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew Sullivan wrote:

I think I spelled -advocacy correctly this time.

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 05:34:13PM +0200, Hans-J?rgen Sch?nig wrote:

I think it would be a huge benefit for the community to have some more
company-funding. This would lead to the implementation of some features
people need urgently (replication in the core and so forth). On the

For a company PostgreSQL definitely is an interesting area to invest
because it has proven to be a good product and there are just minor
things (sync. replication - eg. Postgres-R) missing to make it a real
enterprise database. The support of the community of more than just
optimal and it is an interesting subject.

Also: It would be interesting to have a special section on the website
where people can post that they need money to implement something really
useful. I guess there'd be a lot of people who'd pay for replication or
things like that if they knew more.

Some time ago, I posted that I was looking for people interested in
making the replication stuff complete. I'm still working on that
(and I _may_ be getting somewhere, BTW), but there is a lot of work
to be done there, and I think quite a bit of high-quality code needs
to be written. And that high-quiality code requires high-quality
developers.

Now, it strikes me that sometimes, several companies might be able to
afford to subsidise this sort of development, if only they had a way
of getting together to do this. I find that the corporate folks here
really like the idea of "co-development". The idea is to spread the
risk, where everyone gets the return. Can anyone think of an idea of
how to set up some sort of organisation to do this? Or maybe, are
commercial organisations like PostgreSQL the best answer? The
problem is frequently that the names of the funders frequently need
to remain secret-ish, because a lot of companies are reluctant to
discuss using Postgres.

Any suggestions? I know I'd have an easier sell to support this sort
of development if we didn't have to foot the whole bill.

A

-- 
----
Andrew Sullivan                               87 Mowat Avenue 
Liberty RMS                           Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@libertyrms.info>                              M6K 3E3
+1 416 646 3304 x110

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?

http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Of course, any funding information would be shared by the core group so
they are involved, but not shared to the general list until the company
wishes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew Sullivan wrote:

I think I spelled -advocacy correctly this time.

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 05:34:13PM +0200, Hans-J?rgen Sch?nig wrote:

I think it would be a huge benefit for the community to have some more
company-funding. This would lead to the implementation of some features
people need urgently (replication in the core and so forth). On the

For a company PostgreSQL definitely is an interesting area to invest
because it has proven to be a good product and there are just minor
things (sync. replication - eg. Postgres-R) missing to make it a real
enterprise database. The support of the community of more than just
optimal and it is an interesting subject.

Also: It would be interesting to have a special section on the website
where people can post that they need money to implement something really
useful. I guess there'd be a lot of people who'd pay for replication or
things like that if they knew more.

Some time ago, I posted that I was looking for people interested in
making the replication stuff complete. I'm still working on that
(and I _may_ be getting somewhere, BTW), but there is a lot of work
to be done there, and I think quite a bit of high-quality code needs
to be written. And that high-quiality code requires high-quality
developers.

Now, it strikes me that sometimes, several companies might be able to
afford to subsidise this sort of development, if only they had a way
of getting together to do this. I find that the corporate folks here
really like the idea of "co-development". The idea is to spread the
risk, where everyone gets the return. Can anyone think of an idea of
how to set up some sort of organisation to do this? Or maybe, are
commercial organisations like PostgreSQL the best answer? The
problem is frequently that the names of the funders frequently need
to remain secret-ish, because a lot of companies are reluctant to
discuss using Postgres.

Any suggestions? I know I'd have an easier sell to support this sort
of development if we didn't have to foot the whole bill.

A

-- 
----
Andrew Sullivan                               87 Mowat Avenue 
Liberty RMS                           Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@libertyrms.info>                              M6K 3E3
+1 416 646 3304 x110

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?

http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 11:05:07AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I think we are going to see more company-funded developers working on
PostgreSQL. There are a handful now, but I can see lots more coming.
I am going to work on getting those funding companies more visibility.
We originally were concerned that such involvement may harm the
development process, but history has shown that it has only been a huge
benefit for the community.

I agree, and it's also true that while the visibility of all you
paid-to-hack types is high, the fact that you _are_ paid, and by wha
companies, is not.

Just recently, one of the GnuE developers has been running on about SapDB,
and mentioned how they've got '100 paid developers at SAP' and seemed to
think that since GreatBridge died, pgsql is back to all volunteer. The
fact that GB wasn't the first nor the only nor the last corp. funding
pgsql development was clearly missed, even among a relatively PG savvy
user community (GnuE is the GNU/Enterprise middleware system, and is is
pgsql as its primary developement backend http://www.gnuenterprise.org/ )

Ross

On Thu, 2002-08-15 at 17:13, Ross J. Reedstrom wrote:

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 11:05:07AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I think we are going to see more company-funded developers working on
PostgreSQL. There are a handful now, but I can see lots more coming.
I am going to work on getting those funding companies more visibility.
We originally were concerned that such involvement may harm the
development process, but history has shown that it has only been a huge
benefit for the community.

I agree, and it's also true that while the visibility of all you
paid-to-hack types is high, the fact that you _are_ paid, and by wha
companies, is not.

At a minimum we could have people attach a company name to their
developer bios (http://developer.postgresql.org/bios.php) if their
company pays them to hack on postgresql. (at the developers discretion
of course) At the least I would think companies like postgresql inc
would benefit from publicity that "we employee X number of pg
developers."

We could also generate a list of companies sponsoring postgresql
development, but we'd have to come up with some criterion as to what it
means to be a sponsors. For example, a coworker and I were discussing a
patch he is getting ready to submit this morning while we were "on the
clock". While our company doesn't have an issue with this, I don't know
that I would say they sponsor postgresql development, they just happen
to employ two guys who are more involved than most and will hack code if
it scratches our particular itch.

Robert Treat

Robert Treat wrote:

On Thu, 2002-08-15 at 17:13, Ross J. Reedstrom wrote:

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 11:05:07AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I think we are going to see more company-funded developers working on
PostgreSQL. There are a handful now, but I can see lots more coming.
I am going to work on getting those funding companies more visibility.
We originally were concerned that such involvement may harm the
development process, but history has shown that it has only been a huge
benefit for the community.

I agree, and it's also true that while the visibility of all you
paid-to-hack types is high, the fact that you _are_ paid, and by wha
companies, is not.

At a minimum we could have people attach a company name to their
developer bios (http://developer.postgresql.org/bios.php) if their
company pays them to hack on postgresql. (at the developers discretion
of course) At the least I would think companies like postgresql inc
would benefit from publicity that "we employee X number of pg
developers."

We could also generate a list of companies sponsoring postgresql
development, but we'd have to come up with some criterion as to what it
means to be a sponsors. For example, a coworker and I were discussing a
patch he is getting ready to submit this morning while we were "on the
clock". While our company doesn't have an issue with this, I don't know
that I would say they sponsor postgresql development, they just happen
to employ two guys who are more involved than most and will hack code if
it scratches our particular itch.

Yea, that is a tough one, but anyone who is submitting patches regularly
and does _some_ work on company time is eligible, I think.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Ross J. Reedstrom wrote:

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 11:05:07AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I think we are going to see more company-funded developers working on
PostgreSQL. There are a handful now, but I can see lots more coming.
I am going to work on getting those funding companies more visibility.
We originally were concerned that such involvement may harm the
development process, but history has shown that it has only been a huge
benefit for the community.

I agree, and it's also true that while the visibility of all you
paid-to-hack types is high, the fact that you _are_ paid, and by wha
companies, is not.

Just recently, one of the GnuE developers has been running on about SapDB,
and mentioned how they've got '100 paid developers at SAP' and seemed to
think that since GreatBridge died, pgsql is back to all volunteer. The
fact that GB wasn't the first nor the only nor the last corp. funding
pgsql development was clearly missed, even among a relatively PG savvy
user community (GnuE is the GNU/Enterprise middleware system, and is is
pgsql as its primary developement backend http://www.gnuenterprise.org/ )

Yes, it is very invisible now.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Bruce Momjian wrote:

I am willing to talk to anyone about this. There is a reason my phone
number is in my signature (note new phone number; I just moved.)

Also, I am willing to make trips to companies to talk about
PostgreSQL.
I can't make 100's of trips a year, but I try to do at least
on a month.
I just did one last week. If your company is interested in
funding or a
visit to talk about PostgreSQL, I am ready. Also, for the advocacy
site, I will be putting together a list of people around the world who
are ready to talk via phone or visit about PostgreSQL.

I am a little bogged down on the pre-beta issue, but plan to hit this
full force once beta begins.

I have the feeling that PostgreSQL needs a bit more of a PR effort. I
started thinking about this some time ago and then I asked Bruce why
Great Bridge failed. Then he started this thread. But I think the issue
is bigger.

When we started using PostgreSQL we tried to find success stories and
study cases. There were almost none. If you go to the MySQL web site -
the study cases are there. I find it crucial for new users - especially
corporations - to read study cases before taking a decision.

Decisions in big corporations are taken my managers and managers need
more than just technical assurance that this works. Managers study MBA
and MBA is one year reading day and night about what other companies did
right or wrong.

Developers tend not to like managers, but that's the wrong way. Both can
not do without the other. Instead of trying to work without 'them' it is
better to see how to work with them.

If PostgreSQL has a management oriented section - the developers who
want to implement PostgreSQL will have better food to feed their
managers. This will improve the climate a lot.

I see this effort by starting collecting and writing high quality study
cases - who uses it, why do they use it, how did they started using it,
what were the pros and cons, how did it go, etc. There are not much
technical details in that. But a lot a manager needs in order to take a
decision.

Iavor

--
Iavor Raytchev
very small technologies (a company of CEE Solutions)

in case of emergency -

call: + 43 676 639 46 49
or write to: support@verysmall.org

www.verysmall.org

I think the areas are at least two -

- funding - who funds it and areas that need funding
- PR - what I described in my previous mail

These are pretty separated.

Iavor