Re: Time to work on Press Release 8.0

Robby Russell wrote:

>On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 09:27, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
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>>Command Prompt tries to do the same with the Community. We try
>>to take care of the community by:
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>>In return we "hope" that the community will help take care of us, so we
>>can continue to provide these resources.
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>Odd, shouldn't it be the other way around? Do you not have a product
>line that is based on the efforts of more than 10years (don't recall the
>actual number) of development by the community? It would seem like you
>would be returning the favor and partaking in the open source efforts
>(as you have with plPHP, plPerlNG..).
>
>The community already takes care of you. ;-)
>
>
>
Hi Robby,

I believe that the Linux Documentation Project for a long time
maintained a list of commercial, proprietary applications for Linux.  I
believe that this became defunct due to the explosion of ISV support.

Such a document served one extremely important advocacy purpose-- the
furtherance of the image of a viable platform.  I.e. telling your boss
that Oracle is supported on Linux is a good argument against the idea
that "nobody uses it."  People like RMS might disagree with this
viewpoint because Oracle is not Free Software, but anything, in my view,
which helps to introduce people to Free Software is a good thing, even
if it is only half-way at first.

I don't think it is a good idea to mention companies in the press
release out of a sense of indebtedness.  I think that leads to a number
of problems down the road that we don't want.  There are other ways to
thank SRA, Command Prompt, Red Hat, etc. for their contributions.  But I
think that such a mention could serve two different better purposes.

First, it would act as a way of expressing to the community that
PostgreSQL has some heavy-hitters behind it, and that there is a
community of developers which produce quality add-ons.

Secondly, I think it would help to distance PostgreSQL the Project from
PostgreSQL, Inc. the Company, and put this in its proper perspective.

While I don't think it is our job to promote any projects other than
PostgreSQL the Project, I think that mention of the other companies and
some of their products will, at present, help substantially to promote
PostgreSQL the Project.  That is what we are here for.  The question is
how best do we do it?

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting