All,
I think that Peter has a point here ... both standards bodies and OSS
conferences attract new users. The question is what kind of new users
we want to attract. That is, while PostgreSQL can always use more Perl
hackers and OSS-CRMs supporting/using our database, it's probably more
important to attract the interest of bank CTOs and major manufacturer
procurement managers. We want to be evaluated as an enterprise RDBMS
before an open source RDBMS. So I can see that.
However, I'll stand my evaluation that we need to work on "bang for the
buck" basis. Some of these standards bodies and trade groups can absorb
enormous amounts of money while delivering questionable benefits (having
been to TPC meetings, the TPC falls into this class in my mind) wheras
others are more modest and provide immediate opportunities. So I might
put the latter ahead of flying David to Brazil, but not the former.
There's a thing we do at Sun and other large corporations called an
"ROI" where we go: this is how much money I need, and this is what I
expect us to get out of it. I really think this is the approach we
should take on evaluating expenditures, rather than trying to say
"category x comes ahead of category y".
--Josh Berkus