Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on
On 9/1/06, Peter Eisentraut [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: Do we want to keep relying on the system libraries for collation, or do we want to use a cross-platform library like ICU or do we want to create our own collation library? ICU seems fine. +1 t.n.a. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
On Sun, 3 Sep 2006, mdean wrote: Guys, a multiple perspective is important. Your perspective is valid, but doesn't address the true purpose of these easy certs. They are designed to give the companies involved larger mind space among programmers, admins, and companies hiring them. They are a self-fulfilling prophecy -- here is our trained army of certified blah blahs. Of course the tests are easy. They are meant to suck in the maximum number of mediocre technos with large training fees, while at the same time getting commitments from these folks to be a Microsoft something or an Oracle something or a Redhat something. The cream of the crop are then enticed into tougher courses with larger fees. Certification is a Profit Center And don't mistake their force. a MSCE does get more money, does find it easier to get hired in small companies. Maybe Postgresql should think like the big companies. Establish a Postgreesql certification process as a profit center, where the profits can be funnelled into bounties for getting development things done with the database. No matter who we are, money drives our efforts. Pervasive demonstrated that. But for every good writer like Momjean there are 100 programmers less gifted in human relationships who need to eat. Instead of a guru in charge which I will call the linus model, a long range blueprint or roadmap could be constructed by the core group, with bounties placed on the less heroic development efforts that cause no increase in presitge. And a bonus system for work completed on time could be established. As someone that is constantly selling into corporates, this is sad (except for the money part) but true. For accountants that have NO idea what the techspeak mean, the only thing they have to trust is those little pieces of paper from companies they have heard from. I think the quality of the RedHat certs are higher than some of the others, and that is something we should strive for. Anton -- Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
Joshua D. Drake wrote: Training I agree with, but certifications can go either way. Guys, a multiple perspective is important. Your perspective is valid, but doesn't address the true purpose of these easy certs. They are designed to give the companies involved larger mind space among programmers, admins, and companies hiring them. They are a self-fulfilling prophecy -- here is our trained army of certified blah blahs. Of course the tests are easy. They are meant to suck in the maximum number of mediocre technos with large training fees, while at the same time getting commitments from these folks to be a Microsoft something or an Oracle something or a Redhat something. The cream of the crop are then enticed into tougher courses with larger fees. Certification is a Profit Center And don't mistake their force. a MSCE does get more money, does find it easier to get hired in small companies. Maybe Postgresql should think like the big companies. Establish a Postgreesql certification process as a profit center, where the profits can be funnelled into bounties for getting development things done with the database. No matter who we are, money drives our efforts. Pervasive demonstrated that. But for every good writer like Momjean there are 100 programmers less gifted in human relationships who need to eat. Instead of a guru in charge which I will call the linus model, a long range blueprint or roadmap could be constructed by the core group, with bounties placed on the less heroic development efforts that cause no increase in presitge. And a bonus system for work completed on time could be established. JMTCWAAMG Michael -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.7/436 - Release Date: 9/1/2006 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
Tom Lane wrote: Josh Berkus josh@agliodbs.com writes: In general, I think that people who harp on PostgreSQL's lack of a benevolent dictator as an inhibitor to progress are people who are not comfortable with democracy and are looking for excuses why company X needs to take over the project for its own good. I don't recall having seen that idea being pushed for Postgres ... not seriously anyway. However, it's certainly true that historically we've had effectively *no* project leadership, in the sense of anyone setting feature goals for releases or creating a long-term roadmap. Would we be better off if we had done that? I'm not sure. I actually found the whole writeup thought provoking in one very important way: 1) Most of the issues cited in the article appear on the surface to exist in our community but 2) We are seemingly amazingly productive as a community. I just want to share my thoughts on a few of these issues. Strong leadership exists in the PostgreSQL community in terms of an actual meritocracy. There are people here who work hard, deliver quality results, and are recognized as community leaders in various roles. Pretty much everyone on the core team fits that description. However, this leadership is largely hands-off, more of a mentor in a meritocracy than a project manager. This works well in our community because we have a lot of people who are take a huge professional interest in pushing the project forward, and the core team does a good job of encouraging people to take an active part. As for locking, there are good and bad aspects. Certainly, there are times when locking is a Bad Thing(TM). On the other hand, if a developer knows that a competent developer is working on a problem, they may be inclined to look for other areas where they can more efficiently put in their time. The general rule IMO is-- if you really need it, do the work even if it is locked. If you can wait for a few versions and don't really care, then find a place where you can better donate your time. We don't need to go to the extent of encouraging duplication of effort. In the end, many different leadership models may work, but the goal must be the building of community and the recruiting of competent developers. These are the areas that I think PostgreSQL has done particularly well and some other projects have failed at. Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting It's pointless to suppose that individual developers would really be answerable to any project-wide management, since that's not who they're paid by. So I tend to think that a project roadmap would be more of an exercise in wishful thinking than a useful management tool. OTOH it *could* be useful, if there are any developers out there wondering what they should work on next. Are there any ... and would they listen to a roadmap if they had one, rather than scratching their own itches? regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings begin:vcard fn:Chris Travers n:Travers;Chris email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED] tel;work:509-888-0220 tel;cell:509-630-7794 x-mozilla-html:FALSE version:2.1 end:vcard ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Josh Berkus wrote: In general, I think that people who harp on PostgreSQL's lack of a benevolent dictator as an inhibitor to progress are people who are not comfortable with democracy and are looking for excuses why company X needs to take over the project for its own good. One problem I see the postresql at the moment (and I'm porbably touching a can of worms here) is the lack of some sort of certification. One thing linux (or Red Hat) is doing well is supplying the things that corporates are looking for. And the first thing they look for when they seriously start looking at a new technology is training. When they look at training, they go for certifications (as we see all the time with the RHCE). We have a number of large corporate clients here in South Africa, including some of the biggest banks, of which a few are asking for training at the moment. It would be really nice to have some form of certification available that we could present that had some international credentials. Anton -- Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on
Alvaro Herrera wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: Tom Lane wrote: It's pointless to suppose that individual developers would really be answerable to any project-wide management, since that's not who they're paid by. So I tend to think that a project roadmap would be more of an exercise in wishful thinking than a useful management tool. OTOH it *could* be useful, if there are any developers out there wondering what they should work on next. Are there any ... and would they listen to a roadmap if they had one, rather than scratching their own itches? I would certainly listen to a roadmap if it talked to me ... I think the longer someone is with the project the more they start working on what is good for the project, rather than what interests them. I think we have seen many cases of that. On my particular case, I generally grab some problem that I perceive as important and unhandled, and try to do something to remedy it. This is how I got here in the first place, by fixing some problems in the CLUSTER implementation. This is how I got to doing shared dependencies, shared row locks and autovacuum -- neither of them were problems that affected me in any way. Savepoints were a different matter. I chose to work on them because Bruce and other people on this list suggested them to me, back when I was looking for something to do my undergrad project in. So yes, I'd probably work on something the community considered important. heh if this is a request for a wishlist then I would suggest that we should finally tackle one of the things most databases are doing better then we (including MySQL) - that is better charset/locale/collate support. especially for new users or users converting from other database this is one of the major stumbling blocks (at least as seen on irc regulary) Stefan ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on
On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 12:40:53PM +0200, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote: heh if this is a request for a wishlist then I would suggest that we should finally tackle one of the things most databases are doing better then we (including MySQL) - that is better charset/locale/collate support. especially for new users or users converting from other database this is one of the major stumbling blocks (at least as seen on irc regulary) Yeah well, I got reasonably far on that. To the point of being able to have different collations on different columns, creating indexes with different collations and having collation-sensetive comparisons: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-12/msg01121.php Where I got stuck is teaching the planner how to use the collation info to produce appropriate plans. There wasn't a lot of feedback on the patch itself, so I didn't know how to proceed. I don't have time for it anymore but if someone wants to pick it up and run with it... Note however that it's not easy, there are a number of related issues which need to be solved at the same time: Supporting SORTFUNC_LT/GT is going to get much harder, but there no idea as to how much it's used anyway: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-12/msg01154.php The concept of operator class needs to be expanded into something more general, into something that's actually describes the type, rather than just how btrees work. Do we want to keep relying on the system libraries for collation, or do we want to use a cross-platform library like ICU or do we want to create our own collation library? Have a nice day, -- Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog@svana.org http://svana.org/kleptog/ From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to litigate. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on
Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 12:40:53PM +0200, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote: heh if this is a request for a wishlist then I would suggest that we should finally tackle one of the things most databases are doing better then we (including MySQL) - that is better charset/locale/collate support. especially for new users or users converting from other database this is one of the major stumbling blocks (at least as seen on irc regulary) Yeah well, I got reasonably far on that. To the point of being able to have different collations on different columns, creating indexes with different collations and having collation-sensetive comparisons: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-12/msg01121.php Where I got stuck is teaching the planner how to use the collation info to produce appropriate plans. There wasn't a lot of feedback on the patch itself, so I didn't know how to proceed. I don't have time for it anymore but if someone wants to pick it up and run with it... Note however that it's not easy, there are a number of related issues which need to be solved at the same time: yeah I had some hopes for this getting done - and what you have seems like a nice start - but the whole thing is quite difficult and I expect that project to need quite a lot of further work :-( Supporting SORTFUNC_LT/GT is going to get much harder, but there no idea as to how much it's used anyway: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-12/msg01154.php The concept of operator class needs to be expanded into something more general, into something that's actually describes the type, rather than just how btrees work. Do we want to keep relying on the system libraries for collation, or do we want to use a cross-platform library like ICU or do we want to create our own collation library? that is probably something that we really need to decide on - system libaries do seem to be easy but I have some doubts about portability and quality of implemtations (like getting different behaviour on different platforms) and some of our supported platforms (like the BSDs) have rather limited support for collation either. On the ICU vs. our own library I'm not sure what would be a good thing to do - ICU is _LARGE_ and we already have some perfectly fine and proven code for things like character conversion or timezone handling in the core ... Stefan ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on
On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 04:16:31PM +0200, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote: On the ICU vs. our own library I'm not sure what would be a good thing to do - ICU is _LARGE_ and we already have some perfectly fine and proven code for things like character conversion or timezone handling in the core ... Well, there's the pros: - It's faster than glibc - Patches to do it have already been submitted - There doesn't exist any other library that does it I'm not sure the size is that much of an issue, the point being to use it if it's installed on people's machines. Besides, it not that big, it'd fit inside one of our WAL segments :) I think the bigger question is: collation is hard, is anyone here interested in maintaining such code? If not, we outsource to a group who *is* willing to maintain it. Have a nice day, -- Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog@svana.org http://svana.org/kleptog/ From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to litigate. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
Anton de Wet wrote: One problem I see the postresql at the moment (and I'm porbably touching a can of worms here) is the lack of some sort of certification. One thing linux (or Red Hat) is doing well is supplying the things that corporates are looking for. And the first thing they look for when they seriously start looking at a new technology is training. When they look at training, they go for certifications (as we see all the time with the RHCE). We have a number of large corporate clients here in South Africa, including some of the biggest banks, of which a few are asking for training at the moment. It would be really nice to have some form of certification available that we could present that had some international credentials. Anton Training I agree with, but certifications can go either way. A good example of where certifications are generally NOT going to work in your favour is the fiasco that Oracle has created with their OCP certification over the past 6 or so years. So many people were pushed through these OCP mills that their certifications have become worthless. HR types were finding that these Oracle-certified dba/developers are of dubious quality at best -- even though they have a piece of paper stating that they are officially trained. I know that when we look at prospective employees, that designation is totally ignored. It is their experience and ability to do the job properly that count more than anything. my two bits. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
On Thursday 31 August 2006 14:41, Josh Berkus wrote:
We do have portions of a meritocracy in place but we are by no means
mature in that arena. Likely because of our lock problem ;)
What specific issues do you see? We're pretty strongly merit-based -- the
only reservation I see on that is a bias toward more eloquent writers
having disproprotionate influence. But I don't see any way to avoid that.
I think some members of this community confuse volunteerism with meritocracy.
--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
---(end of broadcast)---
TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on
Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: Do we want to keep relying on the system libraries for collation, or do we want to use a cross-platform library like ICU or do we want to create our own collation library? ICU seems fine. -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
Training I agree with, but certifications can go either way. A good example of where certifications are generally NOT going to work in your favour is the fiasco that Oracle has created with their OCP certification over the past 6 or so years. So many people were pushed through these OCP mills that their certifications have become worthless. HR types were finding that these Oracle-certified dba/developers are of dubious quality at best -- even though they have a piece of paper stating that they are officially trained. I know that when we look at prospective employees, that designation is totally ignored. It is their experience and ability to do the job properly that count more than anything. There are ways around that though. I don't know much about the OCP but I know that the Cisco certs are *tough*. Microsoft is another cert that is useless. They key is simple: You should not be able to pass the test by reading an exam. There needs to be things on the test that you *only* gain from real world experience. Joshua D. Drake my two bits. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly -- === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. === Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240 Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997 http://www.commandprompt.com/ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
Josh, It is current, to the point and has some direct correlations with our project that we may want to be aware of. Well, we're not in any danger of the board of a foundation taking over Postgres. ;-) The only part of this that I see as relevant to us is setting of development goals. And we've already discussed this ad nauseum on the Hackers list and AFAIK have an initial plan (the enhanced TODO), lacking only the resources to implement it this month. -- --Josh Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
The only part of this that I see as relevant to us is setting of development goals. And we've already discussed this ad nauseum on the Hackers list and AFAIK have an initial plan (the enhanced TODO), lacking only the resources to implement it this month. Almost the whole thing is relevant :). Keep in mind that I am not saying that it is negative. For example the NetBSD core is obviously cranked, where our Core tends to stay out of the way. That is a positive. On the other hand, we do suffer from the locked project problem (the recent recursive query debacle is a perfect example). We do have portions of a meritocracy in place but we are by no means mature in that arena. Likely because of our lock problem ;) We are also better at having cross over between sub projects so that many people who are the same people are part of many projects. This allows communication to flow between sub projects. Not perfect of course :) but better then many I see. Another odd issue, which may or may not be a positive is that we don't have a public leader. We have half a dozen people (less I think) that are very, very public (I am not talking mailing list public). Anyway, the post as I said was for provoking thought, not for antagonistic measures. I saw good and bad and thought it would be good for everyone to review as we are as a project dealing with some of our own growth problems. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake -- === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. === Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240 Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997 http://www.commandprompt.com/ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
Josh, On the other hand, we do suffer from the locked project problem (the recent recursive query debacle is a perfect example). Yep, and that was immediately recognized as a problem in need of a solution. In fact, some of the arguments againts the issue/feature tracker were that it would encourage the locked project issue. So the NetBSD experience should inform our design of the future feature/bug tracker: it should be used to encourage new developers (by providing clear specs and status information) rather than locking in old ones. We do have portions of a meritocracy in place but we are by no means mature in that arena. Likely because of our lock problem ;) What specific issues do you see? We're pretty strongly merit-based -- the only reservation I see on that is a bias toward more eloquent writers having disproprotionate influence. But I don't see any way to avoid that. Another odd issue, which may or may not be a positive is that we don't have a public leader. We have half a dozen people (less I think) that are very, very public (I am not talking mailing list public). Actually, this issue is a complete red herring. People like to point to Linux as successful because of Linus's benevolent dictatorship, but Linus is the exception rather than the rule. Most of the very successful projects (Apache, Perl, MySQL, Debian, X.org, etc.) are led by councils or companies without a dictator. I can name more than a few projects where the charismatic leader was the main thing preventing the project's success. In general, I think that people who harp on PostgreSQL's lack of a benevolent dictator as an inhibitor to progress are people who are not comfortable with democracy and are looking for excuses why company X needs to take over the project for its own good. -- --Josh Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
In general, I think that people who harp on PostgreSQL's lack of a benevolent dictator as an inhibitor to progress are people who are not comfortable with democracy and are looking for excuses why company X needs to take over the project for its own good. Well I definitely don't think we need a benevolent dictator... however considering the relatively small number of people in the public eye, a definition of goals that we all speak too might be good :) Joshua D. Drake -- === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. === Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240 Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997 http://www.commandprompt.com/ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
Joshua D. Drake wrote: The only part of this that I see as relevant to us is setting of development goals. And we've already discussed this ad nauseum on the Hackers list and AFAIK have an initial plan (the enhanced TODO), lacking only the resources to implement it this month. Almost the whole thing is relevant :). Keep in mind that I am not saying I totally agree! that it is negative. For example the NetBSD core is obviously cranked, where our Core tends to stay out of the way. That is a positive. On the other hand, we do suffer from the locked project problem (the recent recursive query debacle is a perfect example). Yep, but fortunately this problem doesn't happen to us often. Anyway, the post as I said was for provoking thought, not for antagonistic measures. I saw good and bad and thought it would be good for everyone to review as we are as a project dealing with some of our own growth problems. Yes. There are lessons to be learned. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] EnterpriseDBhttp://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 11:18:27AM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote: On the other hand, we do suffer from the locked project problem (the recent recursive query debacle is a perfect example). Maybe, but we don't have the extreme form. Patches have been submitted by people other than the ones saying they'd do it, and no-one got their head bitten off for it. Indeed, the original person was often grateful that it wasn't their problem anymore. One thing about the discussion about locking was where we wanted a more formal locking strategy (keeping a list). I think this is the wrong approach. If you want some feature that hasn't seen any recent discussion, *do it*, don't wait around seeing if someone else will do it. This was in the article also: ... there was no sense that anyone else owned a piece of Linux (although de facto ownership has happened in some parts); if you didn't produce, Linus would use someone else's code. If you wanted people to use your stuff, you had to keep moving. I really think that's a better idea than tracking who is doing what. Have a nice day, -- Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog@svana.org http://svana.org/kleptog/ From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to litigate. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
On the other hand, we do suffer from the locked project problem (the recent recursive query debacle is a perfect example). Yep, but fortunately this problem doesn't happen to us often. I think this might happen more then you think. I ran into it with Alvaro just a couple of days ago. I brought up 3/4 items I thought he might be interested in working on for 8.3. The immediate response was well that is such a person's or that a person's. Now, all we have to do is actually communicate ;) to make sure that we move forward to eliminate the lock and we will. However it does point to the fact that not everyone is going to take that extra step, some are going to assume that it is being worked on. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake -- === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. === Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240 Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997 http://www.commandprompt.com/ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
In response to Joshua D. Drake [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On the other hand, we do suffer from the locked project problem (the recent recursive query debacle is a perfect example). Yep, but fortunately this problem doesn't happen to us often. I think this might happen more then you think. I ran into it with Alvaro just a couple of days ago. I brought up 3/4 items I thought he might be interested in working on for 8.3. The immediate response was well that is such a person's or that a person's. Now, all we have to do is actually communicate ;) to make sure that we move forward to eliminate the lock and we will. However it does point to the fact that not everyone is going to take that extra step, some are going to assume that it is being worked on. In my experience, some of this is culture. Some groups communicate more easily than others. When people don't communicate well, stuff has to be done to encourage it. At the extreme end, stuff has to be done to enforce it. I think it's best if it happens naturally, but you can't always count on that. -- Bill Moran Collaborative Fusion Inc. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on NetBSD
Josh Berkus josh@agliodbs.com writes: In general, I think that people who harp on PostgreSQL's lack of a benevolent dictator as an inhibitor to progress are people who are not comfortable with democracy and are looking for excuses why company X needs to take over the project for its own good. I don't recall having seen that idea being pushed for Postgres ... not seriously anyway. However, it's certainly true that historically we've had effectively *no* project leadership, in the sense of anyone setting feature goals for releases or creating a long-term roadmap. Would we be better off if we had done that? I'm not sure. It's pointless to suppose that individual developers would really be answerable to any project-wide management, since that's not who they're paid by. So I tend to think that a project roadmap would be more of an exercise in wishful thinking than a useful management tool. OTOH it *could* be useful, if there are any developers out there wondering what they should work on next. Are there any ... and would they listen to a roadmap if they had one, rather than scratching their own itches? regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on
Tom Lane wrote: Josh Berkus josh@agliodbs.com writes: In general, I think that people who harp on PostgreSQL's lack of a benevolent dictator as an inhibitor to progress are people who are not comfortable with democracy and are looking for excuses why company X needs to take over the project for its own good. I don't recall having seen that idea being pushed for Postgres ... not seriously anyway. However, it's certainly true that historically we've had effectively *no* project leadership, in the sense of anyone setting feature goals for releases or creating a long-term roadmap. Would we be better off if we had done that? I'm not sure. It's pointless to suppose that individual developers would really be answerable to any project-wide management, since that's not who they're paid by. So I tend to think that a project roadmap would be more of an exercise in wishful thinking than a useful management tool. OTOH it *could* be useful, if there are any developers out there wondering what they should work on next. Are there any ... and would they listen to a roadmap if they had one, rather than scratching their own itches? I think the longer someone is with the project the more they start working on what is good for the project, rather than what interests them. I think we have seen many cases of that. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] EnterpriseDBhttp://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [GENERAL] [pgsql-advocacy] Thought provoking piece on
Bruce Momjian wrote: Tom Lane wrote: It's pointless to suppose that individual developers would really be answerable to any project-wide management, since that's not who they're paid by. So I tend to think that a project roadmap would be more of an exercise in wishful thinking than a useful management tool. OTOH it *could* be useful, if there are any developers out there wondering what they should work on next. Are there any ... and would they listen to a roadmap if they had one, rather than scratching their own itches? I would certainly listen to a roadmap if it talked to me ... I think the longer someone is with the project the more they start working on what is good for the project, rather than what interests them. I think we have seen many cases of that. On my particular case, I generally grab some problem that I perceive as important and unhandled, and try to do something to remedy it. This is how I got here in the first place, by fixing some problems in the CLUSTER implementation. This is how I got to doing shared dependencies, shared row locks and autovacuum -- neither of them were problems that affected me in any way. Savepoints were a different matter. I chose to work on them because Bruce and other people on this list suggested them to me, back when I was looking for something to do my undergrad project in. So yes, I'd probably work on something the community considered important. -- Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/ PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
