Re: pluggable compression support

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 9:56 PM, Daniel Farina <daniel(at)heroku(dot)com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Huchev <hugochevrain(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> How come any compressor which could put some competition to pglz is
>> systematically pushed out of the field on the ground of unverifiable "legal
>> risks" ?
>
> Because pglz has been around for a while and has not caused patent
> trouble. The risks have been accepted and the downsides have not
> materialized. Were pglz were being written and distributed starting
> today, perhaps your reasoning would be more compelling, but as-is the
> pglz ship has sailed for quite some time and empirically it has not
> been a problem.
>
> That said, I hope the findings are in favor of lz4 or snappy
> integration. It does seem lz4 has picked up a slight edge.

Yeah, I'm also in favor of a new compression format, whatever we can
agree on. However, I'm uncertain we're actually moving toward that
goal in any meaningful way.

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