Message-ID: <4091432B.40909@travelamericas.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 11:02:19 -0700
From: Chris Travers <chris@travelamericas.com>
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To: Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to>
Cc: Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com>,
	pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: What can we learn from MySQL?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0404281313200.8346-100000@css120.ihs.com>
	<ea45dc1f1c5310a778d0a88855eaee80@biglumber.com>
	<20040429044848.GA22881@wolff.to>
In-Reply-To: <20040429044848.GA22881@wolff.to>
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Bruno Wolff III wrote:

>
>
>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.
>  
>
I don't see support questions as being that much of a detractor.  Maybe 
if it happens, we can start a Pgsql-newbie's list and initially feature 
those who provide commercial support for the RDBMS?  Understand that 
everyone has to start somewhere, and having a fresh perspective on it 
from a newbie may help make a better project.  We just need a little 
more insulation between newbie support and development (though the lack 
of such insulation is a general strength of open source software).

I personally think that the way to do this is to create a good set of 
documentation which will help newbies with no RDBMS experience begin to 
understand the basics of PostgreSQL.  For better or worse, MySQL owes 
most of their success to the newbies.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers