Re: [HACKERS] Increased company involvement

On Sat, 30 Apr 2005, Tom Lane wrote:

> Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
>> Regarding the secret code stuff - I predict that it will quickly bite
>> whoever does it, unless they are extremely lucky.
>
> Yeah.  Bruce and I were worrying about this on the phone today.
> If a company is doing some work with the intent that it's a proprietary
> extension they can sell, no problem --- the BSD license is specifically
> intended to let them do that.  What's bothering us is the thought that
> people are off in corners developing code that they think they are going
> to contribute back into the community code base "after it's done".  Past
> history shows that the odds of getting such things accepted into the PG
> community code base are *very* bad if you didn't communicate with the
> community from the start of your development process.
>
> We'd like to avoid such unpleasant surprises, but how to get the word
> out?

Well, any company that is going to do something like this is going to have
some sort of representative on the lists ... why not write up a short FAQ,
posted once a month to -hackers, explain how we contributions work, and
that any company lookin gdown this direction should contact the list, and
make sure that there is some sort of liason ...

that is by no means the wording I'd suggestion, just the concept ... this
thread will act as a good 'heads up' to those already here, but its
something that needs to be brought up regularly for those 'new to the
lists' ...


  ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664