Toward A Positive Marketing Approach.

Greetings Guys

As a newbie person moving away from my technical background to
marketing, I think a refreshed course for pg is needed! So far I have
read all 5000 or so of this month's emails and want to make a few
remarks IMHO:

1. We should treat all marketing efforts by hackers/programmers as
social bugs. Get some marketing pros (debuggers) in on this, or the
popularity of postgresql will continue to pale in the real world.

2. Reward ISP's who newly support postgresql. Give them free links,
somehow give them free expertise, give them focused help so that
offering postgresql to their customers will not end up in disaster as in
the past. Less than 4% of ISP's worldwide support postgrsql. WHY?, if
pg is SO GOOD, and SO MUCH BETTER???

3. Reward existing FOSS projects that make sensible provision to
accomodate postgresql in preference to other more "commercial" db's.
Free links, mention in newsletter, listing on websites, whatever it
takes to start pulling other open source communities behind postgresql.
A good example is bitweaver.org, a great integration project, very
professional, helpful to small businesses, but needs some promotional help.

4. Stop being too cheap. Money Talks! Offer to PAY premiums to major
OSS aps who don't do pg, or don't do it well enough. Like Compierre,
like Drupal. Ask me if i would contribute $1000 to pg.org if the money
(guaranteed) went to get MY chosen favorite programs totally in
postgresql, even if forks were necessary? How many others DON'T
contribute because they fail to see a coherent, systematic program of
promotion, just more of the same, free linuxworld booths and bof's year
after year, no affinity to the commercial realities out there.

5. Make it easy, NOT hard, to come to postgresql. Provide a
decision-tree selection software for ALL databases which is vendor neutral.

6. Offer to assist nerwly popular university based applications around
the world, such that they authomatically choose postgresql to base their
software on. A good example, the educators who wrote LAMS, adopted a
sensible database approach, but then went solely with mysql.

7. Provide marketing based brochure models licensed in the creative
commons which is something more than a mere enumeration of pg features.
Something decision makers in companies can sink their teeth into, not
the programmers who work for them that do what they are told. These
must speak to TCO and ROI over time.

8. Stop mentioning mysql in every breath. It serves them, not pg.
After all, mysql must be better, or why would these folks at pg be so
specifically, vociferously and universally concerned! talk only about
pg, make comparisons to the whole field of db's, don't single anyone out!

I would be willing to bet that a bounty of just $50 would be enough to
influence major and minor FOSS projects to give pg major support.

Anyway, this is from the heart, I know many persons will be outraged at
this upstart coming out and saying these things, but then again, I like
to live dangerously and I am not required to attend Java100.

Michael