Re: criticism about hosting download packages

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 4:23 AM, Susanne Ebrecht <miracee(at)web(dot)de> wrote:
> Hello Robert,
>
> On 25.02.2011 03:57, Robert Haas wrote:
>>
>> company to take this approach.  For example, Adobe does exactly the
>> same thing when you download Adobe Reader.
>
> FYI: that is totally wrong. Adobe not even shows a register page.
> I just tested.

When you say something is totally wrong, you imply that I should have
known better than to make the statement in the first place. But in
fact, I tested it too, and at least from my computer, it is not
totally wrong, but 100% correct. When I Google Adobe Reader, I get
this link:

http://get.adobe.com/reader/

That page has a yellow-orange box on it that says "Download Now".
When I click on that page, I get a yellow box that says "Thank you.
Your download will start automatically. If it does not start, click
here to download. If a dialog box appears with the option to run or
save, click run." Below that, it says "Register Adobe Reader.
Receive up-to-date information about new releases and security updates
by registering your copy of Adobe Reader." That is quite similar to
what happens on the EnterpriseDB site - when you click the button to
download the particular installer you want, the download starts
automatically and you get prompted to register.

> I think the discussion came up - because we have to deal here with
> culture differences - between some European countries and US / UK.

I think it is important to be clear about whether we are talking about
a legal difference or a cultural difference. At least here, saying
that someone is or may be breaking the law is a very serious
accusation which shouldn't be made without convincing evidence. To my
way of thinking, saying that a web site may be breaking an unspecified
law in an unspecified European country doesn't meet that standard.
Which country? Which law?

If we're only talking about a cultural difference, that's another
matter altogether. I'm certainly not going to argue that everyone in
the world *likes* that registration page; I'm pretty sure that's not
even true of everyone who works at EnterpriseDB. Certainly, to the
extent that the page turns people off, that's bad for EnterpriseDB
*and* the community. To the extent that the community wants to have
installers of similar quality to the ones that EnterpriseDB produces
without any associated commercial speech, that's going to take some
significant funding which the community doesn't currently have.
Personally, I think our efforts would be better spent elsewhere. I
care a lot more about whether PostgreSQL gets index-only scans and
global temporary tables and timely security fixes and a multi-threaded
background writer than I do about whether some link on our download
page goes to EnterpriseDB. If we actually had the budget to hire five
people to work on PostgreSQL full-time, I'd pay them to do that stuff,
not this.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company