Re: How to Sponsor a Feature

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

> Incidentally, we have minutes from the meeting. Is it OK to publish
> them openly?

There's a set of minutes already up at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PgCon_2008_Developer_Meeting

> There was no solution proposed to the escrow problem, nor to allow
> sponsoring of one feature by multiple independent individuals.

Pity, as those are the main things I get asked about. I've been thinking
about this a fair amount recently, and it is difficult to figure out how
SPI can handle this in reasonable way. It almost has to keep a hands-off
approach, but the centeral organizers here are where people would think
they should come for advice in this area.

The best approach I've thought of is to have something like
http://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_support this is instead a
catalog of companies and/or associated worker bees who have successfully
had submissions commited. Then the only interaction SPI/Core would have
is to confirm that the claims people were making about what patches they
were involved in were factual, which should be easy enough to verify just
with the release notes, while disclaiming any interaction in contracting
with said companies/individuals. This implements a meritocracy suggesting
who people might work with by noting what areas they've worked in
successfully before.

For example, the last time I fielded one of these, the person I was
advising wanted some PITR work done. I of course pointed them toward
2ndquadrant because everything they asked about was in code Simon wrote in
the first place, and some pointers over to the release notes were
sufficient to prove that was true.

As for a format, I was thinking the directory would be organized like
this:

Company
Person A
8.3 <features involved in>
8.2 <features>
Person B
8.2 <features>
...
Current/future projects
8.4 add <feature>
Eventually add <feature>

Nothing new, really, I'm just suggesting an alternate "view" on the data
that's available if you know how to look for it, structured in a way that
would make it easier for potential sponsors to navigate.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD