Re: 8.5 vs. 9.0, Postgres vs. PostgreSQL

On Friday 22 January 2010 23:44:11 Tom Lane wrote:
> "David E. Wheeler" <david(at)kineticode(dot)com> writes:
> > On Jan 22, 2010, at 4:54 PM, Mark Mielke wrote:
> >> MS SQL, MySQL, SQLite - do they have advocacy problems due to the SQL in
> >> their name? I think it is the opposite. SQL in the name almost grants
> >> legitimacy to them as products. Dropping the SQL has the potential to
> >> increase confusion. What is a Postgres? :-)
> >
> > Something that comes after black, but before white.
>
> Yeah. As best I can tell, most newbies think that PostgreSQL means
> Postgre-SQL --- they're not too sure what "Postgre" is, but they guess
> it must be the specific name of the product. And that annoys those of
> us who would rather they pronounced it "Postgres". But in terms of
> recognizability of the product it's not a liability.

Well, it clearly is a liability to have your product name be confused in 3 or
4 different ways. I don't think it's impossible for people to not connect the
dots that someone talking about "postgrey" is talking about the same thing as
someone talking about "postgres-sequel".

> The business about
> pronunciation is a red herring. It's just as unclear whether MySQL is
> to be pronounced my-se-quel or my-ess-cue-ell, but how many people have
> you heard claiming that's a lousy name?
>

The difference is that that product name is still easily searchable. Looking
for a job? type in mysql. trying to find talent? mysql. looking for product
support? mysql. need training? mysql. Every one of these things (and many
more) is made harder by the constant confusion of our product name.

We're currently looking to hire new dba's, and we have to adjust search
information to account for the potential use of postgres or postgresql as a
skill (we're currently on the fence philosophically about hiring someone who
calls it postgre). But we're lucky, because we know enough to try to account
for these things. Consider someone new to Postgres looking for a job. Go to
monster.com and search on postgre, postgres, or postgresql and you will get a
different list of jobs for each keyword.

<digs a little> A yes, and here are those statistics I posted a couple of
years ago, showing site traffic into our website.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-advocacy/2007-09/msg00108.php
These are for the people who figure it out, I wonder how many people we miss
out on because they get sidetracked trying to find out more about postgre?

You once said "Arguably, the 1996 decision to call it PostgreSQL instead of
reverting to plain Postgres was the single worst mistake this project ever
made." I think I would have to agree, and I can't see this issue ever going
away as long as we stick with PostgreSQL. I'm not saying there aren't
downsides, but having a name the community can unify on is a definite plus, and
imho that name has to be Postgres.

--
Robert Treat
Conjecture: http://www.xzilla.net
Consulting: http://www.omniti.com