Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> I'm redirecting this to -advocacy, because I guess it belongs there
> mostly.
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 11:36:39AM -0700, Roderick A. Anderson wrote:
> > On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> >
> > > There is, however, the "open secret" problem still: not everyone in
> > > the company, including some very senior people, like talking very much
> > > about our use of PostgreSQL (although I believe that is changing).
> >
> > I am running into a similar situation. Commercial verses OpenSource.
> > When I suggested an OpenSource solution (in this case it wasn't a
> > database) I heard that no one knows it whereas they know about xxx. I had
> > never heard of xxx, oh well.
>
> One has heard this argument from time to time, but it always strikes
> me as bizarre. It relies essentially on an appeal to popularity.
> This is a well-known fallacy: you should do _x_ because some large
> percentage of the population does _x_. Aside from the fallaciousness
> (it's really a fallacy of relevance), in technology even more than in
> most areas with network effects, it is a really lousy argument: it
> entails both that you should adopt _exactly_ whatever everyone else
> is using (and then hope that the features you want get added), and
> that you should never innovate (because. for instance, a massive
> percentage of currently running programs are written in FORTRAN and
> COBOL).
Actually, one of the best things people can do is to know when going
with the popular choice _isn't_ the best answer. Most people never ask
that question.
--
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