All,
Viewpoints of "we should ignore analysts" or "we should target them" are
too simplistic. As with *every* advocacy activity (and, for that
matter, hacking) there's a cost/benefit ratio to everything.
Advocacy has several purposes:
1. to drive awareness of PostgreSQL so that people try it out and some
become users
2. to show PostgreSQL as a legitimate business option, so that companies
adopt PostgreSQL as well as individual developers
3. to make our users excited about current development and releases so
that they participate in our community, or even become contributors
4. to make developers aware that PostgreSQL has ongoing development and
new features so that we don't start losing users (and contributors) to
newer databases which appear more exciting.
No one method (word-of-mouth, analysts, press releases, blogging,
conferences, case studies, user groups, website, internal
communications) will accomplish all of the above. We have to use
several methods; in fact, I'd prefer to use all of them (you'll note
that I omitted direct marketing, though, which I don't think is
appropriate for us).
And to those who think (2) isn't important: how many features would be
in 8.4 now if there weren't full-time paid developers contributing to
PostgreSQL? Why do you think someone is paying those developers'
salaries? It's not out of altruism.
So in the case of analysts, it's a case of "can we influence this
analyst to produce a favorable report? How much will it cost, and how
many people will it reach?" Not an argument of "are analysts good or bad."
--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
www.pgexperts.com