Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:48:48 -0500
From: Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to>
To: Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>
Cc: pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: What can we learn from MySQL?
Message-ID: <20040429044848.GA22881@wolff.to>
Mail-Followup-To: Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>,
	pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org
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	<ea45dc1f1c5310a778d0a88855eaee80@biglumber.com>
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On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 01:30:23 -0000,
  Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com> wrote:
> I care. More market share equals more jobs, which equals more people
> working on the project. It's all well and good to treat Postgres as
> an academic exercise, but at some point the work needs to be applied
> to real world stuff. We are competing with real-world, commercial
> projects right now, and the success of how well we do will directly
> impact this project. Do you think that Red Hat will continue to employ
> Tom Lane if Postgres fades away into a footnote and something else
> becomes the database of choice for Red Hat? Do you realize that every
> time a company chooses us, jobs are created for people who use,
> test, and even develop PostgreSQL?

And more support questions get asked taking time away from development.
For companies the net balance is probably in postgres' favor on average.
However, getting individuals to use postgres who have no background
in databases may be a net minus. Hopefully that won't happen. It will
be interesting to see what happens to the support lists after the
windows port is available.