Re: On what we want to support: travel?

bruno@wolff.to (Bruno Wolff III) writes:
> On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 20:29:43 -0500,
>   Dan Langille <dan@langille.org> wrote:
>> On 1 Nov 2006 at 20:36, Stefan 'Kaishakunin' Schumach wrote:
>>
>> More users mean more resources to draw from.  When people get
>> enthusiastic about something, they have energy to contribute.  In
>> general, people do not go out of their way to contribute to projects
>> they have no interest in.
>
> It also means more users to support. Depending on the mix of new users,
> the overall effect on the project could end up being negative.

If this was a project deploying an address card application for
[GNOME/KDE] where we were considering a new release that would make it
usable to a vast new set of clueless newbies that couldn't articulate
their problems let alone help report back issues, then that argument
could make some sense.

However, this is a *database* system, which is a "some assembly
required" sort of thing.

In order to use PostgreSQL, one of the following needs to be true:

 1.  Would-be users need to be quite capable with PostgreSQL as well as
     with languages and tools for their deployment project as they build
     PostgreSQL into their "bespoke" system.

 2.  Would-be users need to be capable enough with PostgreSQL and other
     languages and tools to port their favorite package to run atop
     PostgreSQL.

 3.  Would-be users can be completely ignorant as they run [name of
     some DB-based application] which hides them from needing to know
     anything about PostgreSQL.

In both scenarios 1 and 2, the users are anything but "helpless
clueless newbies."  And the reason to jump into category #3 is not
because we send someone out to do a talk on PostgreSQL, but rather
because there's some "killer app" that happens to embed PostgreSQL
inside it.
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="linuxfinances.info" in name ^ "@" ^ tld;;
http://linuxdatabases.info/info/postgresql.html
REALITY is a mescaline deficiency.