Re: criticism about hosting download packages

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 5:26 PM, PostgreSQL - Hans-Jürgen Schönig
<postgres(at)cybertec(dot)at> wrote:
> with all my personal respect i have for you, bruce ...
> if EDB wants to turn neutral people in passionate enemies, this is the way to go ...
> even the mere existence of this discussion shows that there is obviously something  going seriously wrong - it is actually the first time that i have seen a discussion about a commercial company doing something like that the way it is done now ... (at least i don't remember anything similar).
>
> first of all: i did some cross checking with legal stuff here this evening and what susanne says seems to be true according to some quick investigation.
> i don't want to elaborate on the details here and i don't want to add 500 more argument why this simply sucks ...
> just one final word: stop this kind of stuff ... and do it now ...

I'm a bit confused by this reaction, to be honest. Let's suppose
(contrary to fact) that EnterpriseDB did require people to register
before allowing them to download the EnterpriseDB installers. I do
not think that would be illegal. Many companies require registration
to download software. Some of them also require you to pay money, or
agree to legal terms and conditions. If you want a copy of Microsoft
Windows, or the Cisco VPN Client, or World of Warcraft, or the Apple
Developer Tools, you cannot just go download it (or at least not
legally). You have to tell them who you are first and agree to a
bunch of stuff, and possibly fork over your credit card number.
Considering the number of companies that do this, it is unlikely that
it is illegal. And if it is legal to require registration, it would
be very surprising if it were legal to suggest it, but not require it,
which is what EnterpriseDB is doing. Nor is EnterpriseDB the only
company to take this approach. For example, Adobe does exactly the
same thing when you download Adobe Reader. If someone wants to make
the argument that what EnterpriseDB is doing is illegal, I would like
to hear an explanation of how it is different from the Adobe Reader
case.

Of course, even if it is legal, it may not be what the community
wants. This is another issue. It is certainly the community's
prerogative to decide which downloads will be linked off of the
community web site, and what policy it will have. For example, there
is a policy that blogs which are syndicated on Planet PostgreSQL must
not contain advertising in the syndicated part of the blog posting.
There is an as-far-as-I-know-unwritten part of the policy that forbids
even blatant commercialism, as evidenced by the outcry some months ago
when Theo Schlossnagle posted some reflections on what makes a good
DBA that ended with a note that he was at that time looking to hire
such people. Bruce, Dave, and I have been very careful to adhere to
this policy in our blog postings, which are no more commercial than
anything else on Planet PostgreSQL, and less than several (Circonus
and Banqsys being a couple of recent examples). As far as I am aware,
however, there is no clearly-defined policy about the downloads page,
which seems to have stuff added to it and removed from it on a fairly
regular basis based mostly on (1) who asks to be added and (2) who
actually puts in the work to keep their packages up to date - and in
particular, to have minor releases ready for download *before* the
release announcement hits the mailing lists. And as far as the
downloads pages go, I would also note that the OpenSCG installers are
quite a bit *more* in-your-face about demanding registration than the
EnterpriseDB installers - you have to explicitly say you don't want to
before it lets you download. And then there are these BitNami things,
where I'm not even sure I can find the download link, but there are
certainly a lot of links to other things that BitNami does and some
suggestions to use their forums and services, and of course links to
their sponsor BitRock.

As you might or might not guess, I don't speak for EnterpriseDB on any
of this and have no involvement in building the packages and no
influence on the design of our corporate web site, but I do think that
EnterpriseDB should be held to the same standard as (1) other software
companies, as regards legality, and (2) other people who have links on
the www.postgresql.org site, as regards community policy.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company