Re: Forrester: Ingres and MySQL Lead Open Source Databases

On Sunday 23 August 2009 12:21:07 pm Josh Berkus wrote:
> All,
>
> Viewpoints of "we should ignore analysts" or "we should target them" are
> too simplistic. As with *every* advocacy activity (and, for that
> matter, hacking) there's a cost/benefit ratio to everything.
>
> Advocacy has several purposes:
>
> 1. to drive awareness of PostgreSQL so that people try it out and some
> become users
>
> 2. to show PostgreSQL as a legitimate business option, so that companies
> adopt PostgreSQL as well as individual developers
>
> 3. to make our users excited about current development and releases so
> that they participate in our community, or even become contributors
>
> 4. to make developers aware that PostgreSQL has ongoing development and
> new features so that we don't start losing users (and contributors) to
> newer databases which appear more exciting.
>
> No one method (word-of-mouth, analysts, press releases, blogging,
> conferences, case studies, user groups, website, internal
> communications) will accomplish all of the above. We have to use
> several methods; in fact, I'd prefer to use all of them (you'll note
> that I omitted direct marketing, though, which I don't think is
> appropriate for us).
>
> And to those who think (2) isn't important: how many features would be
> in 8.4 now if there weren't full-time paid developers contributing to
> PostgreSQL? Why do you think someone is paying those developers'
> salaries? It's not out of altruism.
>
> So in the case of analysts, it's a case of "can we influence this
> analyst to produce a favorable report? How much will it cost, and how
> many people will it reach?" Not an argument of "are analysts good or bad."
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
> PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
> www.pgexperts.com

+1

--
Adrian Klaver
aklaver(at)comcast(dot)net