I've deliberately let the dust settle slightly on this.
One thing that might help is a more open sponsorship "clearing house". Example (not meant as a bid, but just to illustrate): the JDBC driver needs a scanner overhaul - it breaks on dollar quoting and a bunch of other stuff. I could do that work (as could others, of course) but I don't have time, unless someone buys some of my professional time. Someone might want to do just that, but how would they find me?
Regarding the secret code stuff - I predict that it will quickly bite whoever does it, unless they are extremely lucky.
cheers
andrew
Bruce Momjian wrote:
I am very excited to see companies involved in PostgreSQL development. It gives us funding for developers and features that is new for us. We
had Fujitsu funding some features for 8.0 and that really helped us.
However, there was a lot of coordination that happened with Fujitsu that I don't see happening with the current companies involved. Companies are already duplicating work that is also done by community members or by other companies. The big issue is communication. Because the PostgreSQL code base is common for most of the companies involved, there has to be coordination in what they are working on and their approaches.
If that doesn't happen, two companies will work on the same feature, and only one can be added, or a complex process of merging the two patches into one patch has to happen --- again duplicated effort. I am willing to do the coordination, or even better, have the companies involved publicly post their efforts so all the other companies can know what is happening. I realize this is hard for companies because their efforts are in some ways part of their profitability. Does profitability require duplication of effort and code collisions? I am not sure, but if it does, we are in trouble. I am not sure the community has the resources to resolve that many collisions.
Second, some developers are being hired from the community to work on closed-source additions to PostgreSQL. That is fine and great, but one way to kill PostgreSQL is to hire away its developers. If a commercial company wanted to hurt us, that is certainly one way they might do it. Anyway, it is a concern I have. I am hoping community members hired to do closed-source additions can at least spend some of their time on community work.
And finally, we have a few companies working on features that they eventually want merged back into the PostgreSQL codebase. That is a very tricky process and usually goes badly unless the company seeks community involvement from the start, including user interface, implementation, and coding standards.
I hate to be discouraging here, but I am trying to communicate what we have learned over the past few years to help companies be effective in working with open source communities. I am available to talk to any company that wants further details.
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