Re: Non-Compete Challenges for Community Work

On Mon, Dec 8, 2025 at 8:24 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:
> Agreed - and companies like pgEdge and EDB have policies and often employment contracts that specifically encourage
contributions.

I'm kind of surprised by the direction of this conversation, because
I'm aware of some problematic cases. Even if none of us were, that
wouldn't mean that there are no problems. People are going to be
understandably reluctant to discuss their terms of employment
publicly.

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I feel like Cornelia's proposals
are perfectly reasonable ideas. There are, of course, lots of
practical problems. For instance, if we wished to recognize companies
that do the right thing around non-competes, we'd have to define what
that is, and there is no guarantee that every company treats every
employee the same way, and companies might be reluctant to make
blanket promises. And, if we wished to have a foundation to employ
PostgreSQL contributors, someone would need to provide the money, and
there would inevitably be some challenges around how that money got
allocated and who got to make decisions about it.

But if I had a billion dollars, would I use some of it to set up a
PostgreSQL foundation and hand out grants for community work? Heck
yeah I would. I think that'd be awesome. I just don't have a billion
dollars.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com