Re: Managing the community information stream

On May 8, 2007, at 9:50 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 07:36:55AM -0500, Jim Nasby wrote:
>> Instead, if all feature requests are tracked then users can vote on
>> what's most important to them.
>
> I am sympathetic to the issues you and Andrew are describing (I
> understand Bruce's stream analogy, but I think Andrew is right that
> from the user's point of view, it's not usable). But I am not
> convinced that users voting on desired features will get us the
> users' desired features. The features we get are mostly the features
> that have attracted developers. The method by which that attraction
> happens is interesting, but I don't think it's democratic.

It may... it may not. If a high-demand feature sits around long
enough it could well attract someone capable of working on it, but
who isn't a current contributor. Or it could attract a bounty.

I'm also not sure if PostgreSQL is quite the same as other OSS
projects. My impression is that we have quite a few developers who no
longer do much if any database development (ie: they're not serious
users); they continue to contribute because of other reasons. I
suspect developers like that are not unlikely to scratch an itch that
isn't their own.
--
Jim Nasby jim(at)nasby(dot)net
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)