Congratulations and Some Thoughts
От | Daniel Freedman |
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Тема | Congratulations and Some Thoughts |
Дата | |
Msg-id | Pine.A41.4.10.10005091606270.24876-100000@jaguar.msc.cornell.edu обсуждение исходный текст |
Ответы |
Re: Congratulations and Some Thoughts
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Список | pgsql-general |
Hi, I've been experimenting with PostgreSQL for the last few months (for fun, learning, and a diversion from grad school), listening to the conversations on the hacker and general mailing lists, and overall getting a feel for the database. During this period of significant achievement (the release of 7.0 and commercial support offerings all in one week), I want to share my great enthusiasm for PG with the core team as well as all other developers. This is a great product and you're doing a wonderful service to the community. I'm particularly impressed by many of the attributes of this product/process to which Ross and Tom alluded in the previous emails. Chief among these is the open development process and a team comprised of articulate, helpful, and cooperative participants. I've followed design disagreements and collaboration on final decisions and implementations, and I see none of the Dilbertesque turf wars over who proposed what. But most importantly, I think, is the developers' honesty and forthrightness about the limitations of PostgreSQL and the ways in which it can be improved. While there's little chance, with open-source software, of bugs being classified as features (a la Oracle), this is even less of a possibility within the PostgreSQL community, as the developers' ethics and desires are in the right place (aligned with their own interests and those of the community as a whole) and they're the first to acknowledge problems (rather than hiding them in 250,000 lines of source for the user to find). To comment specifically about the Great Bridge announcement of commercial support for PostgreSQL: I believe that this is a important milestone for further acceptance of PG in mission-critical areas. I also think that Ross captured the anxious, cautious exuberance that many developers and users of Postgres share during this evolutionary period, and I was heartened by the care with which Tom and the other developers appear to be considering the long-term ramifications of this development. This attention is warranted and very positive, I believe. On a final note, I would like to suggest a discussion concerning the legal framework of the PostgreSQL development effort. Tom mentioned that upcoming discussions would focus on the Postgres license, and I agree with him that such discussions can be delayed. However, I think it would be fruitful to consider at the same time the tangential creation of a legal corporation in The PostgreSQL Foundation, to be modelled (to some degree, with developer and community input, of course) after The Apache Software Foundation, or a similar open-source consortium, such as Debian governance or KDE foundation. I think such a foundation could be a more forceful legal body than PostgreSQL, Inc., to advance the cause of PostgreSQL as it could have a more focused mission and by-laws taylored to its distributed developer and user communities. I include (below) a modification of the Apache description of its foundation (as well as links to the original) as the basis for discussion for The PostgreSQL Foundation. Obviously, lawyers should be involved to turn the community sentiment on a PostgreSQL foundation into a legal entity, but hopefully this will be a start. These lawyers should probably be separate from those of Great Bridge, if possible, to prevent any potential conflict of interest or appearance of impropriety. Obviously, that costs money (maybe $1000-2500?); hopefully PostgreSQL users can contribute something to make this foundation a strong legal guardian of PostgreSQL, complementing the demonstrated efforts of the developers and our community. I would pledge $50 to start such an undertaking (not significant monetarily, but grad students such as myself must make gestures or employ sweat equity :) I apologize for the length of these thoughts (especially coming in the form of my first post in this community) and again heartily congratulate the team on such meaningful dual accomplishments of PG7.0 and commercial support. Sincerely, Dan Freedman ------------------ Apache bylaws: www.apache.org/foundation/bylaws.html Apache foundation: www.apache.org/foundation/ Draft modification (of above ASF) to describe The PostgreSQL Foundation: (intended only to provoke discussion) The PostgreSQL Foundation (PGF) is a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation. Individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to collaborative open-source software development, through sustained participation and contributions within the Foundation's projects, are eligible for membership in the PGF. An individual is awarded membership after nomination and approval by a majority of the existing PGF members. Thus, the PGF is governed by the community it most directly serves -- the people collaborating within its projects. The PGF members periodically elect a Board of Directors to manage the organizational affairs of the Foundation, as accorded by the PGF Bylaws. The Board, in turn, appoints a number of officers to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Foundation. The Foundation is a collaborative project of the PGF. Our goal is to build and sustain the literal foundation upon which our open-source software projects are based.
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