Message-ID: <4F859B8F.3060801@dunslane.net>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:56:15 -0400
From: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
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To: Greg Smith <greg@2ndQuadrant.com>
CC: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Last gasp
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On 04/10/2012 08:43 PM, Greg Smith wrote:
> On 04/10/2012 01:28 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
>> The fact is that we have no shortage of committers - there are 19
>> people who have access to push code into our master git repository.  A
>> handful of those people have basically completely left the project and
>> their commit rights should probably be revoked on that basis; most of
>> them are still involved in one way or another but just not able to
>> devote a lot of time to reviewing other people's code.
>
> Let's use realistic numbers here:  I count 7 people who regularly 
> review and commit other people's code in a variety of areas.  There 
> are also several subject matter experts who commit things in a 
> relatively narrow area.  But most bigger patches are going to hit a 
> bottleneck whose capacity could be measured in 3 bits.


Robert's point is fairly important. A few years ago one of the Postgres 
companies hired me for a few weeks to push along some of the stuff that 
was holding up a release at a critical time. (This was in the pre CF 
days.) Several important features made it into that release that almost 
certainly would not have otherwise. But generally that hasn't happened, 
and the time I've devoted has been my own, and thus subject to competing 
demands of business and the mythical "life AFK". Sometimes that makes it 
quite hard to arrange time to spend on reviewing and committing large 
patches.


>
>
> There are a significant number of companies who are willing to sponsor 
> committers to open-source projects; there are almost none who will 
> sponsor reviewers or "contributors" of any stature unless they're 
> already deep into the PostgreSQL community.  That's one of the many 
> reasons it's easier for a committer to attract funding for core 
> PostgreSQL work, be it in the form of a full-time job or 
> project-oriented funding.  The corresponding flip side to that is that 
> the small number of committers is limiting the scope of funding the 
> project can accumulate.
>
>


Yep. The plus side is that Postgres business seems to be growing quite 
rapidly (if our experience at PostgreSQL Experts Inc is anything to go 
by), so maybe there will be more sources of funding available. More work 
needs to be done to generate funds to support getting features reviewed 
and committed. Patches seems to be getting ever larger and more complex, 
and that makes reviewing them harder and much more time consuming.


cheers

andrew