Great Bridge release on Bruce, Tom, and Jan

All,

Following is the announcement that hit the wires today. You can see
it and other Great Bridge news at
http://www.greatbridge.com/news/press.html

Regards,
Ned Lilly

--

Leading open source software developers join Great Bridge
in challenging proprietary vendors for enterprise business

PostgreSQL development leaders Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane and Jan Wieck
provide open source startup with technical advantage in providing
superior support services

Norfolk, Va, October 10, 2000 - Great Bridge LLC, the startup
company that provides open source solutions based on PostgreSQL, the
world's most advanced open source database, announced today the
hiring of three highly respected developers from the open source
community. Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane and Jan Wieck, part of the
six-member international steering committee leading the development
of PostgreSQL, will assume senior-level positions at Great Bridge.
Their hiring strengthens links between Great Bridge and the
thousands of skilled open source developers who collaboratively
develop robust, quickly evolving open source applications.

Momjian will join the company as vice president for database
development, where he will continue to manage critical PostgreSQL
projects and provide ongoing support to the open source community.
Lane and Wieck, veteran software developers who joined Postgres'
elite steering committee last January, have been appointed as senior
software engineers. They are responsible for developing software
features for Great Bridge-supported open source technologies. The
three developers will help build Great Bridge's technical support
team and lead open source development projects that meet the needs
of Great Bridge's business customers. Great Bridge plans to launch
its commercial support services for the PostgreSQL database
application next month, including a certified release of Postgres
7.0 and a range of technical support solutions.

"Bruce, Jan and Tom provide Great Bridge with an unparalleled level
of technical expertise in open source development. By joining Great
Bridge, they can turn their part-time passion into full-time
careers," said Great Bridge President and CEO Robert Gilbert. "It is
also a strong endorsement of Great Bridge's efforts to build a
strong support system for businesses that use open source software.
We share the belief that open source is the best, most efficient
model for producing powerful software, and our business targets the
single most significant barrier to its being adopted on an even
larger scale - the perceived lack of corporate support services."

Momjian is a leader and co-founder of the PostgreSQL Global
Development Team and author of PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts
(Addison-Wesley). He has independently developed open source
software since 1991. Momjian maintains the official Postgres "To Do"
list, and is heavily involved in the meritocracy-driven peer review
of software code contributed to the Postgres project. Since 1989, he
has served as a senior consultant to Wilson Technology Associates,
where he created customer relational database applications for some
of the nation's largest law firms. He holds a master's degree in
mathematics education from Beaver College and a bachelor's degree in
history from Columbia University.

In his new role at Great Bridge, Momjian will continue to oversee
and promote the development of Postgres as a fully open source
project, albeit with greater access to corporate support and
resources. "Great Bridge will be a major contributor to the open
source community by providing more developer time, support
infrastructure and increased promotion, which will accelerate the
already incredible open source development process. Great Bridge's
efforts will increase the user base for Postgres and bring it into
markets that would have taken it years to enter otherwise," said
Momjian. "The (open source) technology is powerful, and Great Bridge
will provide the marketing, support and assurance that will make it
more appealing to businesses."

Tom Lane brings 10 years of independent open source software
experience to Great Bridge, during which he has contributed hundreds
of bug fixes and was a leader in the development of the widely used
JPEG technology for compressing graphical images. Previously, Lane
served as director of research and development for Structured
Software Systems, where he developed software for financial trading
and stock analysis. Earlier he worked as software engineer for
Hewlett-Packard, where he was involved in pioneering efforts to
develop computer operating systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in
electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie
Mellon University. "My position with Great Bridge enables me to do
in more depth what I've done in my free time for many years," said
Lane. "I'm enthusiastic about the opportunity to devote my full
attention to open source projects that are sophisticated enough for
enterprise business applications."

Wieck, a native of Germany, is a leading contributor to the
PostgreSQL database. He led efforts to integrate crucial foreign key
support into version 7.0, and developed an innovative solution that
removed an arcane limitation on database table row sizes. He has
also overhauled the program's query rewrite rule system, written
several of its procedural languages (including the widely used
PL/pgsql language) and added support for several ANSI SQL-standard
datatypes to the database. Wieck began his career in banking, where
he first became interested in the role of databases in
mission-critical business applications. He has worked for the past
10 years as an SAP application consultant, system manager and
programmer for debis Systemhaus, the German software services
division of DaimlerChrysler AG, and its ancestor companies.
"Businesses around the world are hungry for more flexible technology
solutions," said Wieck, "and I'm excited to be working with Great
Bridge to leverage the power of open source to provide those
solutions."

Great Bridge President Gilbert acknowledges that these three people
will play large, pivotal roles in the company. "I have come to count
on Bruce, Tom and Jan as the open source conscience of our
organization. These highly skilled developers will not only serve as
mentors to our growing staff, but also provide technical and
administrative leadership to the larger open source community," he
said. "They will help Great Bridge understand the community's needs,
just as the company will bring the needs of enterprise-level
businesses to the fore of open source software development."

About Great Bridge

Great Bridge LLC provides open source solutions powered by
PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open source database. Great
Bridge delivers value-added open source software and support
services based on PostgreSQL, empowering e-business builders with an
enterprise-class database and tools at a fraction of the cost of
closed, proprietary alternatives. Headquartered in Norfolk,
Virginia, Great Bridge is a privately held company funded by
Landmark Communications, Inc., the media company that also owns The
Weather Channel, weather.com, and national and international
interests in newspapers, broadcasting, electronic publishing, and
interactive media.

# # #

--
----------------------------------------------------
Ned Lilly e: ned(at)greatbridge(dot)com
Vice President w: www.greatbridge.com
Evangelism / Hacker Relations v: 757.233.5523
Great Bridge, LLC f: 757.233.5555