Subject: Re: PostgreSQL and success of OSS

From: "Brent Wilkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 12:38:08 -0600

I wanted to first thank you guys for the help so far.  I can tell from
the number of responses that you guys like/care about PostgreSQL,
which is what you would expect on an open source project.

I plan on running through the available data like the CVS
repositories, and a tool like the one that Guido suggested
(http://statcvs.sourceforge.net/) looks helpful.  I would also like
any other data that you guys can supply me.  One data set in
particular would be a count of downloads.  Really everything that is
available for Source Forge projects would be nice.  I think that I can
probably mine data on bugs from the mailing list, but is there any
chance that there is a bug report database which I might be able to
get data from?

If you are interested here is a link to a similar study that another
student in my department did which I am using as a guideline:

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/%7ebieman/Pubs/tse05TrungBieman.pdf

Again, thanks for the help.

-- 
A pessimist says the glass is half-empty. An optimist says the glass
is half-full. An engineer recognizes that the glass is simply too big.

---

From: David Fetter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:20:39 -0700

On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 12:38:08PM -0600, Brent Wilkins wrote:
> I wanted to first thank you guys for the help so far.  I can tell
> from the number of responses that you guys like/care about
> PostgreSQL, which is what you would expect on an open source
> project.
> 
> any other data that you guys can supply me.

Downloads are a very difficult (and, I would argue, somewhat useless,
but that's your call) thing to measure because there are so many
sources of the software.  For example, just about every Linux
distribution now comes with it.  Almost nobody who isn't a developer
of PostgreSQL actually goes to a CVS repository.

> One data set in particular would be a count of downloads.  Really
> everything that is available for Source Forge projects would be
> nice.  I think that I can probably mine data on bugs from the
> mailing list, but is there any chance that there is a bug report
> database which I might be able to get data from?

The "bug report database" is the archives of the pgsql-bugs,
pgsql-hackers and pgsql-patches mailing lists.

> Again, thanks for the help.

A *real* engineer realizes that a safety factor of two may be enough
for some applications, but worries occasionally that it may be too
small. ;)

Cheers,
D
-- 
David Fetter <[email-masked]> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778        AIM: dfetter666
                              Skype: davidfetter

Remember to vote!

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 16:13:07 -0700

Brent,

 >  I would also like
> particular would be a count of downloads. 

Direct downloads for 2005 were 1.4 million.
For a list of the problems with this number as an indicator of any real 
information at all, see:
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/database/soup/archives/the-count-of-downloadia-part-i-5621

  Really everything that is
> chance that there is a bug report database which I might be able to

You'd need to mine the archives of the pgsql-bugs list and weed out 
irrelevant discussions, non-bugs, and duplicates.   We've discussed 
adopting a database-driven bug tracker, but so far the advantages don't 
outweigh the burdens for a good number of our contributors.

--Josh Berkus