Kudos, Sponsors, Comments

Folks:

First off, a message from John Koenig, co-leader of SDForum's Open
Source series:

> > The new web site looks fantastic.  Nice job.

I'd have to echo that; the new website is a world-and-a-half
improvement and it's great that it's finally up. Even with a few
technical issues.

Second, please take a moment to check out:
http://www.postgresql.org/about/sponsors

1) I'd like to change this from "sponsors" to "corporate contributors".
Sponsors implies money and we want to list code contributors as well
-- if not primarily. We can keep the URL of the page, just change the
title.

2) Can we put the following text at the top:
"Below are a few of the corporate contributors to the PostgreSQL
Project. In January, we will be assembling a more complete list of
companies who have made significant contributions of code and
resources."
The current page has the implication that the 5 listed are *all* of our
contributors, which is really unfair to CMD, Fujitsu, Vale Housing,
etc.

3) The "sponsor the project" link takes you back to the PostgreSQL.org
home page. Can we just not use it for now?

Third and finally, is it really necessary to copy all of the comments
to this list? I can put a filter on them, but it seems like
unnecessary traffic. Isn't there a better way to deal with these?

--Josh Berkus

On Thursday 23 December 2004 17:23, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Folks:
>
> First off, a message from John Koenig, co-leader of SDForum's Open
>
> Source series:
> > > The new web site looks fantastic.  Nice job.
>
> I'd have to echo that; the new website is a world-and-a-half
> improvement and it's great that it's finally up. Even with a few
> technical issues.
>
> Second, please take a moment to check out:
> http://www.postgresql.org/about/sponsors
>
> 1) I'd like to change this from "sponsors" to "corporate contributors".
> Sponsors implies money and we want to list code contributors as well
> -- if not primarily. We can keep the URL of the page, just change the
> title.
>

Well, back when it was on advocacy, the idea (as I understood it) was to
recognize those companies the truly sponsor our development, and by sponsor I
do mean money, since afaik Tom/Jan/Bruce etc all get paid in actual money by
these companies to hack on PostgreSQL.

As came up on advocacy, just about anyone and thier little brother can be a
"contributor", so this isn't exactly a subtle change. I'm not saying there
aren't valid reasons to have a contributors page, just pointing out the
previous goals since people seem to have a tendancy to think that there was
no reasoning going on before they showed up.

Another thing to think about is just how this will play once the foundation is
up and running, since we will have a listing of "sponsors" there too.

> 2) Can we put the following text at the top:
> "Below are a few of the corporate contributors to the PostgreSQL
> Project. In January, we will be assembling a more complete list of
> companies who have made significant contributions of code and
> resources."
> The current page has the implication that the 5 listed are *all* of our
> contributors, which is really unfair to CMD, Fujitsu, Vale Housing,
> etc.
>

We stated it before and I'll restate it now, as soon as someone comes up with
logos for those companies, they can be added to the list.

> 3) The "sponsor the project" link takes you back to the PostgreSQL.org
> home page. Can we just not use it for now?
>

I'll try to fix that tonight.

>
> Third and finally, is it really necessary to copy all of the comments
> to this list? I can put a filter on them, but it seems like
> unnecessary traffic. Isn't there a better way to deal with these?
>

Isn't this the 4th thing? ;-) This was discussed before, the quick summary
being that folks didnt think people on pgsql-docs would want to see them and
since the people doing the moderating were all on this list no one really
wanted to subscribe to yet another list. We're only less than a week out, I
think we should try to stick with the status quo for now and see how things
go once traffic dies down a bit.

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

Robert Treat wrote:
> > 1) I'd like to change this from "sponsors" to "corporate contributors".
> > Sponsors implies money and we want to list code contributors as well
> > -- if not primarily. We can keep the URL of the page, just change the
> > title.
> >
>
> Well, back when it was on advocacy, the idea (as I understood it) was to
> recognize those companies the truly sponsor our development, and by sponsor I
> do mean money, since afaik Tom/Jan/Bruce etc all get paid in actual money by
> these companies to hack on PostgreSQL.

I don't see how hiring someone to work on PostgreSQL is more
"money"-like than contributing resources, time, or code.

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

On Thursday 23 December 2004 19:53, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Robert Treat wrote:
> > > 1) I'd like to change this from "sponsors" to "corporate contributors".
> > > Sponsors implies money and we want to list code contributors as well
> > > -- if not primarily. We can keep the URL of the page, just change the
> > > title.
> >
> > Well, back when it was on advocacy, the idea (as I understood it) was to
> > recognize those companies the truly sponsor our development, and by
> > sponsor I do mean money, since afaik Tom/Jan/Bruce etc all get paid in
> > actual money by these companies to hack on PostgreSQL.
>
> I don't see how hiring someone to work on PostgreSQL is more
> "money"-like than contributing resources, time, or code.

As with most things in life "it depends" :-) Over the years when I've sent in
a few patches and fix a few bugs in various projects, there were things I
uncovered in the course of doing work for someone so I contributed back those
changes, but that wasn't my employers end goal. I think a lot of people who
work on the project professionally are like this, they work on things as
needed to get thier other jobs done, and thier contributions are added with
others and this makes the open source world go round. However, this is
different from a company who says to an employee "your primary job is to work
on postgresql". Even if that work is directed (like jan and arc or some of
the changes neil is working on now) having those full time developers is
really a huge boost to the community, and something I am sure we would all
like to see more of.

Now, is that enough to split hairs over? Maybe not, but again, as the
discussion went on -advocacy, it's a slippery slope when you through out a
blanket "anyone who contributes resources, time or code". A good example?
Arkeia could claim they are contributing to the community by integrating
postgresql support into thier product. This is a donation of resources since
they will be putting out press releases with our name in it, spreading the
cword on postgres to the 4 corners. I willing to bet a few people have
decided not to use postgresql since it didn't have an "enterprise backup
solution", and now thanks to Arkeia, we do (at least thats the story that
will be sold to some phb's).

As Josh pointed out though, maybe it is better to list a 500 companies that
have any involvement with postgresql rather than only 10 who are really
integral to making things happen...

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

Robert,

> Well, back when it was on advocacy, the idea (as I understood it) was
> to
> recognize those companies the truly sponsor our development, and by
> sponsor I
> do mean money, since afaik Tom/Jan/Bruce etc all get paid in actual
> money by
> these companies to hack on PostgreSQL.

Hmmm? How is this any less actual money than the money CMD spent to
develop trigger-safe pl/perl, or the billable time Dave C. gives up to
work on JDBC, or other code contributions? Sure, paying a full-time
salary for someone to hack on PostgreSQL full-time is *more* money, but
it's not *different* money.

If we want to just list companies that employ full-time programmers to
contribute to PostgreSQL, as a threshold of amount, then we should be
clear about that.

> Another thing to think about is just how this will play once the
> foundation is
> up and running, since we will have a listing of "sponsors" there too.

Precisely. And that's why I'm worried about confusing the issue.
"Sponsor" has some specific meanings in fundraising and American
English; it refers to a cash donor (of a substantial amount, usually),
or someone who underwrites the expenses for another person to
participate in something. By the latter definition, RH, SRA and
Fujitsu could loosely be considered to be sponsors but
Hub.org/PostgreSQL Inc. would not. The word "contributor" is much
broader.

If we plan on seperating the fundraising activities of the foundation
from the development activities of PostgreSQL.org, then it's probably a
good idea to use language that doesn't confuse the two things. If your
concern is to only list the companies who contribute major resources,
then we can simply call them "major contributors".

If you want an illustration of the confusion that the word "sponsor"
causes, just see the discussion where I unwisely used it on the
advocacy list last month.

> We stated it before and I'll restate it now, as soon as someone comes
> up with
> logos for those companies, they can be added to the list.

I really want a cohesive policy about who gets listed and who doesn't
before we start adding people ad-hoc. How much, in code/resource/time
contributions, is required to get listed?

If we put up language, NOW, that makes it clear that this is not a
complete list of corporate contributors, that gives us time to agree on
a policy. The current language implies that the list is complete,
which could be offensive to some companies who have contributed a lot
and are not yet listed.

> Isn't this the 4th thing? ;-)

Nope, it's the 3rd. Count again ;-)

> This was discussed before, the quick
> summary
> being that folks didnt think people on pgsql-docs would want to see
> them and
> since the people doing the moderating were all on this list no one
> really
> wanted to subscribe to yet another list.

Well, I'm not clear on why *anyone* needs to see them on a mailing
list, but I can easily filter them. So don't worry about me.

--Josh

______AGLIO DATABASE SOLUTIONS___________________________
Josh Berkus
Complete information technology josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com
and data management solutions (415) 752-2500
for law firms, small businesses fax 752-2387
and non-profit organizations. San Francisco

Robert,

> As Josh pointed out though, maybe it is better to list a 500
> companies that
> have any involvement with postgresql rather than only 10 who are
> really
> integral to making things happen...

Or, per my suggestion on Advocacy, you can list the "major
contributors" in one small section at the top, and "everyone else" in a
long text-only list at the bottom.

--Josh Berkus

There's no doubt about the importance of both cash and programming as
resources, so what about identifying other contributions that are worthy of
note?

For example, Afilias didn't only front Jan but back in OSCON and Linux World
San Francisco of this past year they took a chunk of money and pressed the
pg_live iso that I created. It wasn't that expensive an act but it sure was a
great marketing device and everybody agreed that it was a definite plus.

There's three phases to the successfull application: coding, debugging, and
documentation (marketing/propaganda). So how about identifying those
companies who have "clearly" supported the project by allocating real money
and resources by supporting the project in the generation of articles, books,
and any other activity that helps put the word out?

Do we have an existing manifesto, or some publicly accessible document,
defining a contributor/sponsor?

Robert Bernier

On December 23, 2004 11:37 pm, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Well, back when it was on advocacy, the idea (as I understood it) was to
recognize those companies the truly sponsor our development, and by sponsor I
do mean money, since afaik Tom/Jan/Bruce etc all get paid in actual money by
these companies to hack on PostgreSQL.

> > We stated it before and I'll restate it now, as soon as someone comes
> > up with logos for those companies, they can be added to the list.
>
> I really want a cohesive policy about who gets listed and who doesn't
> before we start adding people ad-hoc. How much, in code/resource/time
> contributions, is required to get listed?
>
> If we put up language, NOW, that makes it clear that this is not a
> complete list of corporate contributors, that gives us time to agree on
> a policy. The current language implies that the list is complete,
> which could be offensive to some companies who have contributed a lot
> and are not yet listed.