Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> When GIS was introduced to this list ten years ago it was criticized as
> a marginal feature and huge and intrusive. But today it's probably 40%
> of our user base, and growing far more rapidly than anything else with
> Postgres. Maybe SE will be more like Rules than like GIS in the long
> run, but there's no way for us to know that today.
What we do know is that GIS could be, and was, successfully developed
outside core Postgres. It didn't need to suck away a major portion of
the effort of the core developers. So it's not a very good analogy.
In the end this is a debate about what the community should do with its
finite development resources. Maybe, if we build this thing, they will
come and we'll get so much additional contribution that it'll be a win
all around. But somehow, alleged users who won't even decloak enough
to tell us they want it don't seem like likely candidates for becoming
major contributors.
In words of one syllable: I do not care at all whether the NSA would use
Postgres, if they're not willing to come and help us build it. If we
tried to build it without their input, we'd probably not produce what
they want anyway.
regards, tom lane