Re: [HACKERS] SAP and MySQL ... [and Benchmark]

Lamar Owen wrote:
> On Thursday 12 June 2003 08:40, Justin Clift wrote:
>
>>Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>
>>>I assume we don't want to mimick FreeBSD's infighting.
>>>
>>>I don't have any problem with doing voting, but I will say that the
>>>stated PostgreSQL core leadership goal, "to do as little as possible",
>>>has served us well.
>
>
>>Or not.
>
>
> Each Open Source project has its own personality. I often use PostgreSQL as
> an example of a well-run OSS project; I do believe that the current model is
> working well.

I strongly disagree. The current model is stable, and thus far it has let us
putter along without any major community disputes that may potentially divide
the community.

However, it's also had a chilling effect on our community, not letting us
drive the expansion nor give the right attention to the non-code parts of
PostgreSQL that are important.

If we had some kind of voting system in place for core, then we would likely
have a more active and larger community - generated by the people at the top
being more involved, enthusiastic, energetic, and giving solid leadership
and direction.

Getting involvement in this from the PostgreSQL Advocacy and Marketing group would
be extremely beneficial as well, as it's presently lacking vision, coherent
plans and goals to bring the vision to reality, and consistent effort by all but
a handful of members. Good leadership + direction would be welcome there and
should be included in the PostgreSQL "core" group as well.

<snip>
> We want marketing? The someone steps up to the plate and markets (which has
> happened).

It's not that we need marketing... we need *consistent* marketing.

> We want funding? Then some of our users need to step up to the
> plate and do some funding. (which has also happened).

Ha! I've seen more funding and offers of assistance that made sense
_rejected_ by members of the core group - for reasons beneficial to them
privately even though the PostgreSQL Community would have benefited -
than I have seen accepted.

However, your right in that this also demonstates we have a fairly tight-knit
Community that will help one another out when needed, and that's all good.

:-)

> To borrow from another projects model, no one is asking Linus Torvalds to
> accept a voted-in core team for the Linux kernel. He is also one who governs
> as little as possible.

Through delegation. :)

> We're not commercial software; why must we act like commercial software?

People seem to get this confused a lot. Why are you associating a successful
method of organising resources (time, people, etc) with only commercial software
projects? _Any_ project that grows to various size points and wants to maintain
it or keep on expanding will have to figure out ways of co-ordinating their
time, efforts, communications, etc, that work for them appropriately at all of
these size points. That's just common sense.

Commercial Software projects and companies often use "models of organisation" that
are proven to work, and although neither they nor us are limited to just those
models, we don't need to write them off as being "not good enough" just because
we don't like the other places that have employed them.

Hope that makes sense, I'm getting really tired about now.

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi