> >> ... I wonder whether this is an inbuilt,
> >> unavoidable problem with free software projects once they reach a certain
> >> level of popularity.
>
> > Funny you should mention PHP. I talked to Rasmus about the email volume
> > when I first met him in the fall. He said the volume of email is so
> > great that just reading the subject lines takes a long time.
>
> > We aren't there yet, but we are heading in that direction.
>
> Yes, the shape of the curve is pretty clear --- it's already not
> possible for the key developers to respond to everything, and that'll
> get worse. We have to start thinking about ways to spread out the load
> better.
One idea is encouraging people to make local mailing lists all over
the world. That will be easier to read/write mails for non-English
speakers and will decrease the traffic in the main mailing
list. Actually I have been running a mailing list in Japan for years
and now it has +4000 subscribers. I believe this kind of thing has
been already done in the world (maybe Japan, Russia ...?), but I think
we should encourage them more, like having pointers to such lists on
the pgsql web site.
--
Tatsuo Ishii