Re: Oracle and PostgreSQL...

On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 02:25:58PM -0700, Chris Travers wrote:

> Oracle's customers what they think, and call it a day. I think that
> this happens because the industry is far to vast for anyone to really
> know all of it well, especially as an industry analyst. So these firms
> get their data from the big, entrenched companies. However, I think
> that these firms will suffer huge reputation issues as the industry changes.

We're going to have to agree to disagree about this; but I don't
think for a second that markets are actually efficient at driving out
nonsense and cant. If they were, the current stock markets wouldn't
work, and InfoWorld would have gone out of publication ages ago. The
computer industry has been like this practically forever: in the
past, there was a safe choice (IBM), a moderately safe choice (the 7
Dwarves), and something that would get you fired if it didn't work.

And consulting companies exist exactly to parrot whatever the current
conventional wisdom is. Gartner only came across as ill-informed in
that report (or any other I've ever read by them) when I actually
knew something about the technolgies in question. Do I trust
anything that Gartner says? No. But I'm not their market, and never
will be. Their market is conventional-grade MBAs who have never
studied anything except commerce. Those people want affirmation of
their prejudices; not truth. Their prejudices will change over time,
but only if we are successful in moving PostgreSQL from the "get you
fired if it doesn't work" into the "Seven Dwarves" category.

A

--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca
I remember when computers were frustrating because they *did* exactly what
you told them to. That actually seems sort of quaint now.
--J.D. Baldwin