Thread

1. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> — 2002-12-09T06:54:47Z

   Vince, Peter:
   
   I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
   marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL.  However, your being opposed to
   promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me.  How
   can you be against promoting PostgreSQL?   Don't you want poeple to use
   your code?
   
   For me, it's not just a matter of preference, but of necessity; if
   Postgres becomes obscure, I stop being able to participate in the
   project.  While there are people on this list who are fortunate enough
   to be able to code whatever they want and still get paid, for a lot of
   people, our participation hinges on the cycle:
   
   Postgres Users --> Postgres Contracts --> Postgres Jobs --> Postgres
   Contributors --> Improvement *and Promotion* of Postgres --> Postgres
   Users ...
   
   The Promotion part of that step is *not* dispensable; all of the best
   features in the world are not going to expand the Postgres commmunity
   if people haven't heard of it, can't find it, and know a lot more about
   MySQL anyway.   While this may not be true for everybody, some of us
   have clients or bosses who do read trade periodicals and demand that we
   follow their technology reccomendations.  I already have one client
   using MySQL because of MySQL's "much more professional" web site and
   "better support" and "better performance".
   
   Frankly, if we blow off marketing PostgreSQL as "irrelevant", we
   *deserve* to get steamrollered by MySQL.  
   
   I think it's terrific that Postgres is a real, programmer-centric,
   democratic Open Source project.  I believe that programmers and
   contributors should lead the project, and decide features and schedules
   based on technical and not marketing reasons.  Nobody on the Advocacy
   team is trying to take control of the project and turn it into a
   dot-com.
   
   But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
   loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention.   I'm not asking
   everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
   list to recognize the utility of the effort.
   
   -Josh Berkus
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

2. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> — 2002-12-09T12:29:41Z

   On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote:
   
   > But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
   > loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention.   I'm not asking
   > everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
   > list to recognize the utility of the effort.
   
   Here are my main problems with it.
   
   1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.
   2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
      stay informed on what they're doing.
   3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)
      how or they'll never be taken seriously.
   
   That's all I'm going to say on this subject.
   
   Vince.
   -- 
    Fast, inexpensive internet service 56k and beyond!  http://www.pop4.net/
      http://www.meanstreamradio.com       http://www.unknown-artists.com
            Internet radio: It's not file sharing, it's just radio.
   
   
   

3. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net> — 2002-12-09T13:41:42Z

   On Mon, 09 Dec 2002 07:29:55 -0500, Vince Vielhaber wrote:
   > On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Josh Berkus wrote:
   > 
   >> But once Postgres has been packaged, we need to have a group making a
   >> loud enough noise to get the world to pay attention.   I'm not asking
   >> everyone on this list to participate, but I am asking everyone on this
   >> list to recognize the utility of the effort.
   > 
   > Here are my main problems with it.
   > 
   > 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it. 
   
   I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
   converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
   7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed. 
   
   > 2) They are,
   > or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
   >    stay informed on what they're doing.
   
   I think it was only suggested that you join since you obviously have a
   lot of feedback you'd like to give to the group. Since a lot of people on
   -hackers don't want to be involved in the process, it seemed a bad idea
   to post all of the detail work to this list.
   
   > 3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)
   >    how or they'll never be taken seriously.
   > 
   
   I've seen more posts saying that "until you get a decent website your
   not going to be taken seriously" than anything else, by far. While I'm
   hoping that's not entirely true, I do agree that until we get a coordinated and
   open web development process the advocacy group is going to have a much
   harder go of it.
   
   Robert Treat
   
   

4. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> — 2002-12-09T15:31:41Z

   Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:
   > 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.
   
   I think the upshot of the prior discussion was that the outside press
   release shouldn't have been used as the release announcement for the
   existing mailing lists.  Fine, they made a one-time mistake.
   
   > 2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
   >    stay informed on what they're doing.
   
   It seems to me that people have made it perfectly clear that they don't
   want to hear about marketing on the -hackers or -general lists.  Taking
   it to a marketing-specific list seems like exactly the right response.
   Where do you think it should be discussed?
   
   			regards, tom lane
   
   

5. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> — 2002-12-09T17:15:46Z

   Vince,
   
   > Here are my main problems with it.
   > 
   > 1) They're marketing to those that are already sold on it.
   
   First off ... not "they", "you".  I'm a member of Advocacy; so are
   Robert, Justin, Neil, Marc, Bruce and several other members of this
   list.   The advocacy group is not some privately sponsored bunch of
   marketeers; *we* are your fellow contributors.
   
   Yes, we should have released a different version of the announcement to
   the internal lists.   I believe that I have already explained how that
   happened.
   
   > 2) They are, or at least were, insisting that I join their list to
   >    stay informed on what they're doing.
   
   Unless you don't want to stay informed.   In which case, you're welcome
   not to, and one or more Advocacy people will join wwwdevel to keep
   links synchronized.  Nobody's going to make you do anything.  This is
   Open Source.
   
   > 3) They need to learn HOW to market from someone who knows (not me)
   >    how or they'll never be taken seriously.
   
   One of our volunteers is a professional PR person.   Two are periodical
   writers.  I started (with 2 partners) the OpenOffice.org Marketing
   Project, which was cited by one columnist (Amy Wohl) as a better
   volunteer marketing team than Sun could put together for a
   million-dollar budget (paraphrased).  3 of us are small business
   owners.  I think we have as much or more combined experience as the
   marketing department of any start-up, without the baggage.
   
   Also, half a marketing effort is better than none.   At the very least,
   we need to keep Postgres in the press, else we are likely to see
   PostgreSQL fade into permanent obscurity.  The technology world is full
   of technically good but poorly marketed products -- FoxPro anyone?
   Paradox?  Beta video?  Amiga?
   
   Last week I got a 5-page long database developer survey from EvansData.
    It mentioned 10 other database platforms -- including Ingres! -- but
   not PostgreSQL.  I personally don't want to see that again.
   
   Sure, we got off to a rocky start.   However, I will point out that our
   first release happened to fall on a major American holiday; this made
   it extra hard to organize the effort, and things didn't work out well.
     But the answer to that is not to abandon the effort, but to plan and
   prepare better in the future.
   
   I would also be grateful if us folks on the Advocacy team could look to
   Hackers to make sure that we *aren't* going off on a tangent, or
   pushing Postgres in a way that's inconsistent with the development
   goals for the database.   We *want* Advocacy to be an integral part of
   the Postgres community, serving the general goal of making Postgres the
   best possible ORDBMS in existence.  
   
   -Josh Berkus
   
   
   

6. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> — 2002-12-09T17:50:24Z

   Robert Treat writes:
   
   > I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
   > converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
   > 7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed.
   
   Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
   Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
   release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.
   
   Release notes:
   
      Schemas
             Schemas allow users to create objects in their own namespace so
             two people or applications can have tables with the same name.
             There is also a public schema for shared tables. Table/index
             creation can be restricted by removing permissions on the
             public schema.
   
   Press release:
   
      Schemas
           PostgreSQL now joins the handful of ORDBMS's to support
           the SQL 92 Schema specification, improving both enterprise
           database management and security through the use of namespaces.
   
   This not only removes all information about the actual use of schemas,
   it contains completely bogus information, because SQL 92 is obsolete,
   there is no "SQL Schema specification", and none of this has to do
   with being an ORDBMS.  And besides, whose hands were used to do the
   counting?
   
   
   Release notes:
   
      Drop Column
             PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN
             functionality.
   
   Press release:
   
      <void>
   
   
   Release notes:
   
      Table Functions
             Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are
             now much easier to use than before. You can call such a "table
             function" in the SELECT FROM clause, treating its output like a
             table. Also, PL/pgSQL functions can now return sets.
   
   Press release:
   
     Table Functions
           PostgreSQL version 7.3 has greatly simplified returning result sets
           of rows and columns in database functions.  This significantly
           enhances the useability of stored procedures in PostgreSQL, and will
           make it even easier to port Oracle applications to PostgreSQL.
   
   Again, this removes all details about how the feature can be used, and
   again it inserts completely bogus information.  There are no "sets of
   columns", and PostgreSQL does not have stored procedures.  Also, it
   makes it look as though PostgreSQL exists merely to reimplement
   Oracle.
   
   
   Release notes:
   
      Prepared Queries
             PostgreSQL now supports prepared queries, for improved
             performance.
   
   Press release:
   
          - Prepared queries for maximized performance on common requests.
   
   I'm curious to know how the marketing department determined that this
   is, in fact, the maximal performance.
   
   
   Release notes:
   
      Dependency Tracking
             PostgreSQL now records object dependencies, which allows
             improvements in many areas. "DROP" statements now take either
             CASCADE or RESTRICT to control whether dependent objects are
             also dropped.
   
   Press release:
   
          - Enhanced dependency tracking for complex databases.
   
   Again, all relevant information dropped, replaced by marketing fluff.
   
   
   Release notes:
   
      Privileges
             Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and
             functions can be defined to run with the privileges of their
             creator.
   
   Press release:
   
       Security Advances
           In response to community demands, PostgreSQL has added schema,
           function, and other permissions and settings to increase the database
           administrator's granular control over security.
   
   Information dropped, replaced by broad and repetitive verbiage.  But
   at least they didn't write, "in response to market pressures".
   
   
   And my personal favorite is this:
   
   Release notes:
   
      Internationalization
             Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled.
   
   Press release:
   
           - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP,
             EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...)
   
   That is just plain wrong.  Support for various character sets is years
   old.
   
   -- 
   Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net
   
   
   

7. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Lamar Owen <lamar.owen@wgcr.org> — 2002-12-09T18:34:44Z

   On Monday 09 December 2002 12:50, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
   > Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
   > Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
   > release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.
   
   If people want to see the details, let them read the release-notes themselves, 
   and let it be the detail document.  A press release of the detail that the 
   release notes have will not get any 'press' -- and I say that wearing my 
   radio broadcaster hat, where I have personally approved or disapproved 'press 
   releases' in news stories in the past.  Getting 'press' is what a 'press 
   release' is all about.
   
   So, IMHO, the pgsql-announce mailing list should get the press release along 
   with the other 'outside' press outlets -- and the developers' lists (since 
   hackers is far from the only one) should, IMHO again, get a copy of the 
   release notes.
   
   > And my personal favorite is this:
   
   > Release notes:
   
   >    Internationalization
   >           Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled.
   >
   > Press release:
   >
   >         - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE,
   > EUC_JP, EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256,
   > etc...)
   
   > That is just plain wrong.  Support for various character sets is years
   > old.
   
   It IS true that the current release supports all of these.  The blanket 
   'Supports' statement above quoted was not true in the blanket case until the 
   'support' became default, since there were cases that this would not be true. 
   Support != 'if you pass the right parameters to configure this will work', at 
   least not at the press release level.
   -- 
   Lamar Owen
   WGCR Internet Radio
   1 Peter 4:11
   
   

8. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Jason Earl <jason.earl@simplot.com> — 2002-12-09T18:36:25Z

   Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
   
   > Robert Treat writes:
   > 
   > > I think we've already shown why it doesn't hurt to market to the
   > > converted. I'll add that if you compare the 7.2 press release with the
   > > 7.3 press release, you'll see none of the technical content was removed.
   > 
   > Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
   > Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
   > release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.
   
   <snip for brevity>
   
   So does this mean that you are volunteering to proofread the next
   marketing announcement?  I would wager that only a PostgreSQL
   developer (such as yourself) could have picked out the inconsistencies
   that you were able to find.  The press release might have seemed
   "obviously ill-informed" to you, but it seemed just fine to me, and I
   can guarantee you that I am at least an order of magnitude more
   informed about PostgreSQL than the average manager.
   
   The difference between the press release and the Release Notes is the
   intended audience.  The folks that the press release is aimed at
   probably don't have any idea that SQL 92 is obsolete, or that
   internationalization has been supported for years.  Chances are good
   that they will skim over the new features entirely.
   
   What *is* important to these people, however, are the customer
   testimonials at the beginning of the press release and the list of
   happy customers at the end.
   
   Once management has read the press release they can ask their
   developers to read the Release Notes.  Press releases don't supercede
   Release Notes, they complement them.  The difference between the 7.3
   Release Notes and the press release is that I could give the press
   release to my boss.
   
   PostgreSQL desperately needs marketing help.  In fact, at this point I
   would say that PostgreSQL needs more marketing help than it needs
   development work.  Technically PostgreSQL is clearly a winner, but
   despite its myriad features and impressive performance PostgreSQL is
   still not being deployed nearly as much as it *should* be.  The team
   that has been assembled to market PostgreSQL has some fairly
   impressive credentials.  They are certainly *much* better than what
   you would expect considering how much they are getting paid :).
   
   In short, if you want to help the folks writing the press releases,
   then that's fine and dandy.  But if all you want to do is throw rocks
   at the people doing the marketing, then that's another story
   altogether.
   
   Jason Earl
   
   

9. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

   Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> — 2002-12-09T19:14:52Z

   Jason Earl <jason.earl@simplot.com> writes:
   > Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
   >> Compare the 7.3 release notes, written for the most part by Bruce
   >> Momjian and revised by a couple of other developers, to the "press
   >> release", written by people who were obviously ill-informed.
   
   > So does this mean that you are volunteering to proofread the next
   > marketing announcement?  I would wager that only a PostgreSQL
   > developer (such as yourself) could have picked out the inconsistencies
   > that you were able to find.
   
   FWIW, the press release looked fine to me too (and yes, I saw it in
   advance).
   
   > The difference between the press release and the Release Notes is the
   > intended audience.
   
   Exactly.  The level of detail in the release notes is aimed at hackers
   (and usually gets criticized as "insufficient" by them ;-)), but a press
   release has entirely different purposes.
   
   > In short, if you want to help the folks writing the press releases,
   > then that's fine and dandy.
   
   One error that I think the advocacy team made is that they didn't invite
   review of the press release from a wider part of the community.
   Although I generally agree with the viewpoint that marketing issues
   should be on a separate list and not on -hackers or -general, I think it
   wouldn't be out of place to send one message to those lists saying "a
   draft of the press release for <event FOO> is up at <this URL>, please
   send comments to <advocacy mail list>."  That seems like a reasonable
   compromise between filling the lists with unwanted material and having
   people feel that they were excluded from the process.
   
   			regards, tom lane
   
   

10. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

    Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> — 2002-12-09T19:49:18Z

    Josh Berkus writes:
    
    > I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
    > marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL.  However, your being opposed to
    > promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me.  How
    > can you be against promoting PostgreSQL?
    
    I'm not against promoting PostgreSQL.  I'm against promoting PostgreSQL in
    ways that embarrass me.
    
    -- 
    Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net
    
    
    

11. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

    Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> — 2002-12-09T20:07:40Z

    Peter,
    
    > > I can definitely understand someone not wanting to *participate* in
    > > marketing/advocacy of PostgreSQL.  However, your being opposed to
    > > promoting PostgreSQL as an organized activity *at all* baffles me.  How
    > > can you be against promoting PostgreSQL?
    > 
    > I'm not against promoting PostgreSQL.  I'm against promoting PostgreSQL in
    > ways that embarrass me.
    
    What, specifically, were you embarassed by?   
    
    -- 
    -Josh Berkus
     Aglio Database Solutions
     San Francisco
    
    
    

12. Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Global Development Group

    Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org> — 2002-12-10T00:02:00Z

    Peter Eisentraut wrote:
    <snip>
    > Press release:
    > 
    >         - Supports data in many international characters sets (UNICODE, EUC_JP,
    >           EUC_CN, EUC_KR, JOHAB, EUC_TW, ISO 8859-1 ECMA-94, KOI8, WIN1256, etc...)
    > 
    > That is just plain wrong.  Support for various character sets is years
    > old.
    
    Sure is.  Notice it didn't say "just added" or "added with this release"?
    
    It just says "supports".  It's to highlight the fact that it can be used 
    for non-English character sets.  Sure, a whole bunch of people know 
    this, but the main target of the press release is people new to 
    PostgreSQL that don't.
    
    :-)
    
    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