Re: [HACKERS] Daemon News article

OK, I can't resist adding my two cents worth ...

"Henry B. Hotz" <hotz@jpl.nasa.gov> writes:
> I don't think Eric is claiming that a bazzar is ideal, just that there are
> enormous advantages to going ahead and releasing code which isn't quite
> done.  Once you have a good framework set up an awful lot of people can
> help with the detail debugging.

Actually, I think we are closer to the bazaar model than you say; we
just don't use some of the terminology that has been popularized by
Linux etc.  For example, we *do* release current code --- anyone can
pull the current sources from the CVS server, or grab a nightly
snapshot.  And we do accept patches from anyone, subject to review by
one or more of the "inner circle"; I doubt that Linus allows world
write access on his kernel sources either ;-).

There is a difference in emphasis, which I think comes from the agreed
need for *all* Postgres releases to be as stable as we can make them.
But that's really not much more than a difference in naming conventions.
Postgres major releases (6.4, 6.5, etc) seem to me to correspond to
the start of a "stable version" series in the Linux scheme, whereas the
current sources are always the equivalent of the "unstable version".
We don't normally make very many releases in a "stable version" series,
but that's partially due to having a strong emphasis on getting it right
before the major release.  (Also, I believe that one focus of the new
commercial-support effort will be on improving maintenance of past
releases, ie, back-patching more bugs.)

I'll close by saying that both Jolly and Eric are right, and that what
is really working well for Postgres is a core group of people with a
heavy commitment (Marc, Bruce, Vadim, Thomas) and a much larger group
of people with smaller amounts of time to contribute.  I don't think
that's so much different from what other open-source projects are doing.
        regards, tom lane