X-Original-To: pgsql-advocacy-postgresql.org@localhost.postgresql.org Received: from localhost (unknown [200.46.204.2]) by svr1.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2EC9ED1B8CA for ; Tue, 27 Apr 2004 15:19:06 -0300 (ADT) Received: from svr1.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.71]) by localhost (neptune.hub.org [200.46.204.2]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 11402-08 for ; Tue, 27 Apr 2004 15:19:03 -0300 (ADT) Received: from wolff.to (wolff.to [66.93.249.74]) by svr1.postgresql.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D981DD1B8B6 for ; Tue, 27 Apr 2004 15:19:01 -0300 (ADT) Received: (qmail 2150 invoked by uid 500); 27 Apr 2004 18:23:16 -0000 Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 13:23:16 -0500 From: Bruno Wolff III To: Andrew Payne Cc: Bruce Momjian , PostgreSQL-development , PostgreSQL advocacy Subject: Re: What can we learn from MySQL? Message-ID: <20040427182316.GC1712@wolff.to> Mail-Followup-To: Andrew Payne , Bruce Momjian , PostgreSQL-development , PostgreSQL advocacy References: <200404230409.i3N49jC02890@candle.pha.pa.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at postgresql.org X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 tagged_above=0.0 required=5.0 tests= X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 200404/266 X-Sequence-Number: 4238 On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 21:31:33 -0400, Andrew Payne wrote: > > At some point (probably there now), I think the lack of a "Postgres, Inc." > is going to hinder adoption. Companies want to 'buy' from vendors that look > like real, viable companies, and provide them products with support, > training, features, and direction. With MySQL, you get one stop shopping. > With Postgres, you've got to find and assemble the parts yourself. Most > CIOs stop there, and start waiting for MySQL to get better before switching > from Oracle. I would expect that technical people (which would be DBAs and application developers) should be doing this research and reporting the results to the CIO. > The other issue is marketing: in mature software markets, the best > marketing (not the best technology) often wins. Without a sizeable > marketing budget earmarked for Postgres, MySQL could be 60% as good and > still win, unfortunately. It is not clear that Postgres needs to "win". It needs to have enough people interested in it in order to continue to significant development. It doesn't need to have a majority of the market share in order to do this. I suspect that get a larger market share amoungst some categories of users will hurt development by requiring more support than they contribute back to the project. > For those that look to Apache: Apache never had a well-established > incumbent (Oracle), an a well-funded upstart competitor (MySQL). Rob > McCool's NCSA httpd (and later, Apache) were good enough and developed > rapidly enough that they prevented any other HTTP server projects from > getting critical mass. Perhaps for a while. There are open source web servers now. A derivative of AOLserver is used by openACS.