Subject: PostgreSQL rebranding

From: Lukas Kahwe Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:46:52 +0200

Hi,

I am collecting a list of PostgreSQL rebrands.

So far I have the following:

Illustra, EnterpriseDB, Bizgres, BizgresMPP, Mammoth, Red Hat Database,
Netezza, parACCEL

I will also try to find out during what time these were offered, the
company that was behind this offering, the license (BSD, proprietary
etc.) and to what extend the changes made it back into the PostgreSQL
tree (none, partially, full).

So throw me whatever names you remember and I will try to research them.
Of course I would not mind if you can provide links to get the above
information as well.

regards,
Lukas

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:50:37 -0400

> Illustra, EnterpriseDB, Bizgres, BizgresMPP, Mammoth, Red Hat Database,

Are you looking for PostgreSQL rebrands or POSTGRES (a la Berkely) re-brands?  
AIUI Illustra is the latter but not the former.  

> Of course I would not mind if you can provide links to get the above

Powergres is/was offered by SRA as a commercial, threaded windows version of 
PostgreSQL.  Also NuSphere/Peerdirect released a windows version of 
PostgreSQL that iirc was called UltraSQL.  There was also "Pervasive 
Postgres" which was recently offered by Pervasive.  I don't recall if Great 
Bridge had such a repackaging, but someone else could probably chime in on 
that. HTH. 

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

---

From: Lukas Kahwe Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:59:51 +0200

> AIUI Illustra is the latter but not the former.  

I was not going to make such a distinction.

> Bridge had such a repackaging, but someone else could probably chime in on 

I was not sure where I should sensibly draw the line, as there will 
likely be little differences in every distribution (since they tend to 
make their own choices about what to backport etc). So I settled on 
"rebrandings". But thats not a clear distinction either.

I guess what I really am looking to list is all the intentional "forks" 
that added functionality or that removed the "PostgreSQL" label to at 
least on the surface make it non obvious that it is based on PostgreSQL.

So the question is if "Pervasive Postgres" was really a modified 
version. Since it kept "Postgres" in the name I would not count it among 
the "rebrands".

However I guess the question is if there is a general interest to 
maintain such a list from the PostgreSQL project and in that case we 
maybe should discuss what everybody thinks should end up on there.

Maybe a newly created wiki would be a place to build up this list?

regards,
Lukas

---

From: "Lamar Owen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:25:06 -0400

> Bridge had such a repackaging, but someone else could probably chime in on

Yes, Great Bridge did have their own packaging.  I can dig up the name; I did 
the packages for them for 7.0.x a few years back as a consultant.  Hmm, 
unless I'm remembering badly, it was simply 'Great Bridge PostgreSQL' and 
they did very little modification from my packaging.  Tom Lane worked for 
them around that time (late 2000).  The task was to develop 
cross-distribution RPMs for TurboLinux, Caldera, SuSE, and RedHat/Mandrake.  
That unfortunately didn't last long.... the Caldera OpenServer 2.3 RPM in 
particular was very gnarly, being that Caldera was still using rpm 2.5.x 
instead of a post 3.0 RPM, and they had redefined all the RPM macros...

My contact inside GB was Terry Carlin; initial contact was with Ned Lilly (who 
is still around here somewhere; hi Ned!).

Wow, nice trip down memory lane as I read through my GreatBridge 
correspondence archive... :-)
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu

---

From: "Lamar Owen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:40:07 -0400

On Tuesday 29 August 2006 09:25, Lamar Owen wrote:
> Tom Lane worked for 
> them around that time (late 2000).  

Bruce Momjian also worked for them; sorry I forgot about that, Bruce.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu

---

From: Ned Lilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:30:56 -0400

> correspondence archive... :-)

Hey Lamar.  Yeah, I responded to Lukas, but neglected to cc the list.  By his "fork" definition, the Great Bridge product wouldn't count.  It was in fact called Great Bridge PostgreSQL, and was basically some other stuff bundled with the 7.0 and 7.1 community server releases... RPM-i-fied by Lamar, as he says.

Cheers,
Ned

---

From: elein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:08:46 -0700

> Illustra, EnterpriseDB, Bizgres, BizgresMPP, Mammoth, Red Hat Database,

I worked for (Miro' -> Montage -> Illustra)
and am still in touch with the founders of that company(ies?).
Feel free to ask me what you would like.

Keep in mind, however, the timeline of some of the older companies.
At the time of ingres and postgres' releases it was mostly universities
who open sourced.  For profits, as a rule, did not open source code.

elein
[email-masked]

> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
>       subscribe-nomail command to [email-masked] so that your
>       message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
>

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:14:52 -0400 (EDT)

> PostgreSQL.  Also NuSphere/Peerdirect released a windows version of 

Yes, called Powergres.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian   [email-masked]
  EnterpriseDB    http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:44:51 -0700

Lukas,

> > > Illustra, EnterpriseDB, Bizgres, BizgresMPP, Mammoth, Red Hat
> > > Database, Netezza, parACCEL

Note that BizgresMPP, Netezza, UltraSQL and Illustra had substantial code 
changes from the Postgres they branched off of.  For Netezza, for example, 
it would be more accurate to say that they *used* PostgreSQL code rather 
than re-branding it ... Postgres comprises only about 1/4 to 1/3 of their 
code according to the Netezza president.

-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

---

From: Lukas Kahwe Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:13:56 +0200

> code according to the Netezza president.

Yeah thats fine. Like I said my definition of what I am looking for is 
kinda fuzzy (I will try to further clarify it - I think the best 
approach so far has been to say anything that either tries to be a fork 
by renaming or that is a fork by changing/adding significant code that 
is not intended to be made available upstream).

Anyways thanks for all the input.

So should I work on this inside the newly build wiki? I guess I will 
just ask the maintainer for an account and I will see what happens :)

Otherwise I will probably just publish the list on my open source 
related stuff wiki ..

regards,
Lukas

---

From: Ron Mayer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 02:50:31 -0700

> Illustra, EnterpriseDB, Bizgres, BizgresMPP, Mammoth, Red Hat Database,

Sun's "Thumper" [1] arguably counts at least as much as Netezza does,
in that they're both hardware appliances derived more or less from PostgreSQL.

And not sure if you'd count domain specific apps built on postgresql
like Cisco's CSR / Carrier-Sensitive Routing product[2].  If you
count that there are probably dozens of similar products that are
built on top of a bundled postgresql.

Fujitsu's FSP (Fujitsu Supported PostgreSQL) [3] should probably be
added to your list.   This one's a useful one to remember when you
encounter a pointy-haired boss that wants support from a large
company - you wouldn't want to trust your business to a database that's
only supported by little companies like Oracle, would you? :-)
I think like Netezza they heavily modified postgresql; in this case
with their own storage manager.

[1]http://www.techworld.com/storage/features/index.cfm?featureid=2738
[2]http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/voice/csr/usergd/ver1_1/csrover.pdf
[3]http://www.fastware.com/postgresql.html

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 07:11:47 -0400

> with their own storage manager.

Yes, and fujitsu also has it's own storage engine that they use for some 
clients though they also support standard postgresql under that label too 
aiui.  Liam O'Duibhir, who is on this list, is probably the best contact for 
more info.

---

From: Alvaro Herrera <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 09:44:19 -0400

> > Illustra, EnterpriseDB, Bizgres, BizgresMPP, Mammoth, Red Hat Database,

TelegraphCQ seems to be related as well ...

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

---

From: David Fetter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 07:05:46 -0700

> TelegraphCQ seems to be related as well ...

TelegraphCQ spun off as Amalgamated Insight
<http://www.aminsight.com/>, where Neil Conway worked this summer.

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

Remember to vote!

---

From: elein <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 07:54:44 -0700

> in that they're both hardware appliances derived more or less from PostgreSQL.

Don't count hardware appliances that use postgres.  There are a several that
I know about and probably a lot more.  You won't get them all.

--elein
[email-masked]

> TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
>

---

From: Neil Conway <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:22:41 -0700

> in that they're both hardware appliances derived more or less from PostgreSQL.

As I understand it, Thumper runs Bizgres MPP, so it probably doesn't
count as a distinct Postgres derivative.

ExtenDB[1] is another company with a proprietary extension of
PostgreSQL. And as David mentions elsewhere in the thread, I can
personally confirm that Amalgamated Insight[2] are using PostgreSQL.

-Neil

[1] http://www.extendb.com/pr81.php
[2] http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-07/msg01310.php

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 14:24:06 -0400 (EDT)

Should we have this information on our web site somewhere?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Ron Mayer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:26:30 -0700

> Should we have this information on our web site somewhere?

I think so.

The number of successful third party products derived from postgresql
is one of the more impressive aspects of the project.

---

From: Andreas Pflug <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:06:50 +0200

> is one of the more impressive aspects of the project.
I wonder if there are derivatives of other OSS dbms projects. Being a
rock-solid base for many offspins appears as a major strength of pgsql
to me, this really should be emphasized on the website.

Regards,
Andreas

---

From: Ron Mayer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 14:19:01 -0700

> I know about and probably a lot more.  You won't get them all.

OTOH it would be interesting to also have a list of postgrsql
based hardware appliances too.... Can you mention the ones you know?

---

From: Robert Bernier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 22:06:26 -0400

Would it be possible to set up a page on the postgres site that would allow 
people to submit examples of rebranding?

On Wednesday 30 August 2006 10:54, elein wrote:
> Don't count hardware appliances that use postgres.  There are a several
> that I know about and probably a lot more.  You won't get them all.
>
> --elein
> [email-masked]
>
> > [2]http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/voice/csr/usergd/ver1_
> >1/csrover.pdf [3]http://www.fastware.com/postgresql.html
> >
> TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

---

From: mdean <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:41:16 -0700

>>On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 02:50:31AM -0700, Ron Mayer wrote:
IMNSHO, I firmly believe that as exhaustive a compendium of ALL users of 
postgresql in the Enterprise, Web, where ever, should be included and 
annotated.  Perhaps some of these companies, once reocgnized, or maybe 
they would think of as "outed" perhaps would contribute their code. 

By the way, what is everyone's take on the new open source SolidDB for 
MYSQL product offering?

Michael

-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.7/432 - Release Date: 8/29/2006

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:02:17 -0700

> they would think of as "outed" perhaps would contribute their code.

No, typically we get a cease and desist letter.

Joshua D. Drake

-- 

    === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
    Providing the most comprehensive  PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
              http://www.commandprompt.com/

---

From: Lukas Kahwe Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:12:55 +0200

> Should we have this information on our web site somewhere?

I just added an initial version of a list on the new wiki. There is 
still plenty missing as I just wanted to get something up there quickly:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/index.php/pgwiki:Variations

Next week I will be away from all my books, so its the perfect time to 
do internet research and futher expand this page. Maybe once it has 
become somewhat stable it could be moved to the main site?

regards,
Lukas

---

From: Robert Bernier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 05:55:40 -0400

> By the way, what is everyone's take on the new open source SolidDB for

http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/unix/bsd/archives/oscon-interviews-solid-10796

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 11:07:58 -0400

> unless I'm remembering badly, it was simply 'Great Bridge PostgreSQL' and 

That's what was the label on the CD that Bruce showed us at the
Toronto conference this summer, FWIW.

-- 
Andrew Sullivan  | [email-masked]
This work was visionary and imaginative, and goes to show that visionary
and imaginative work need not end up well. 
		--Dennis Ritchie

---

From: Lukas Kahwe Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 21:12:49 +0200

> http://wiki.postgresql.org/index.php/pgwiki:Variations

Ok finally had time to work on this some more .. this time on my own wiki:
http://oss.backendmedia.com/RDBMS/PgSQLVariants

I am not sure on some of the information (especially licenses). Also I 
am not sure what other relevant information should be on there. Maybe a 
separate column for the company name or a column with information on the 
availability (from when til when the db was available). Maybe there are 
some variants missing?

Please just add a comment on the wiki or reply here and I will add it to 
the table. If someone points me that the necessary steps to get this 
list added to the official site I would also be willing to write the 
necessary patch.

regards,
Lukas

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 17:07:35 -0400 (EDT)

> http://oss.backendmedia.com/RDBMS/PgSQLVariants

Correction.  There is Powergres, by SRA, and Powergres Plus by Fujitsu. 
Both are proprietary.  Powergres is native Win32 port before we the
community had one, and Powergres Plus has a fujitsu-developed storage
engine replacing the community one.

---

From: Lukas Kahwe Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 09:02:54 +0200

> engine replacing the community one.

Ok, I guess its Powergres HA, or is this another variant of Powergres?
Also can anyone give me the name of the Great Bridge distro? Also was 
that distro BSD licensed?

regards,
Lukas

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 14:13:03 -0700

Lukas,

> that distro BSD licensed?

It was "Great Bridge PostgreSQL".  I don't know whether they changed the 
license.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:03:15 -0400 (EDT)

> Ok, I guess its Powergres HA, or is this another variant of Powergres?

HA is High Availability, and it is another variant.

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:03:27 -0400 (EDT)

> It was "Great Bridge PostgreSQL".  I don't know whether they changed the 

It was BSD licensed.

---

From: Lukas Kahwe Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:46:31 +0200

> HA is High Availability, and it is another variant.

Actually it seems to be simply be a combination of tools added to Powergres:

PowerGres HA solution includes:
PowerGres with PostgreSQL database Clustering Software: NE
Database Agent (for Wind
LifeKeeper (for Linux)
PowerGres Recovery Kit
PowerGres yearly support
Clustering software yearly support

So I will list it just as Powergres.

regards,
Lukas

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:38:42 -0400 (EDT)

> So I will list it just as Powergres.

Yes, that is accurate.