As a long time (and mostly silent) PostgreSQL user, I
would like to say that I agree with Alfred.  The more
time core members can spend working on PostgreSQL the
better, and if you can finagle it so that you get paid
actual money for doing it, then more power to you. 
You certainly deserve it.

Working on an open source project is drastically
different then working on a closed source one.  The
source is out there, and it can be forked if all of
you decide to sell your souls to the devil.  Remember,
you yourselves didn't start the work on PostgreSQL,
and you have put a lot of work into documenting what
you have done.  A fork would probably easier for the
next batch of hackers than it was for you.  Not only
that, but if your employer pushes you to do something
to PostgreSQL that you don't agree with you can always
walk away and start your own PostgreSQL based company.
  If PostgreSQL was a closed-source project your
employer would own your work, but it isn't, and they
don't, so why worry?

Great Bridge and PostgreSQL Inc. can't buy your souls,
and they can't steal your work.  All they can do is
feed your families and help you sell PostgreSQL to the
world.  Great Bridge and PostgreSQL Inc. aren't even
paying for your code (they could get that for free),
they are paying for your expertise.  Like the rest of
your users they realize that your talents are worth
investing in.

However, you might want to commit your changes to the
public CVS server a little more often :).

Thanks for the hard work,
Jason Earl

--- Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> wrote:
> * Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> [001010 10:03] wrote:
> 
> > > From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
> > > : One thing we have agreed to is that there must
> not be an unseemly fraction
> > > : of core members working for the same company. 
> With six people on core,
> > > : probably about two working at the same company
> would be a reasonable
> > > : limit.
> > 
> > I knew someone was going to bring that up ;-).
> > 
> > There's already been discussion of this point
> among core.  What we
> > now have is three core members employed by Great
> Bridge and the
> > other three either fully or partly employed by
> PostgreSQL Inc.
> > In one sense that's a stable situation, but on the
> other hand it does
> > not agree with our original informal goal of
> keeping any one company
> > to a minority position of the core membership.
> > 
> > None of the core members are interested in giving
> up their new
> > positions.  En masse resignation from the core
> committee would preserve
> > our high moral standards, perhaps, but it wouldn't
> do the project any
> > good that I can see.  So it seems like the choices
> are to accept the
> > status quo, or to appoint some more core committee
> members to bring
> > the numbers back where we said they should be.
> > 
> > While I can think of a number of well-qualified
> candidates for core
> > membership, I don't much like the notion of
> appointing core members
> > just to meet some kind of numerical quota.  Also,
> suppose we do appoint
> > more members, and then some of them accept
> positions with GB or PgSQL
> > Inc; do we repeat the exercise indefinitely? 
> (This is not an unlikely
> > scenario, since the sort of people who'd be asked
> to join core are
> > exactly the sort of people whom both companies
> would love to hire.)
> > 
> > Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. 
> Opinions from the 
> > floor, anyone?
> 
> I think anyone with doubts should take a good look
> at the initial
> companies backing Linux, (Redhat, VA, Debian) to see
> what a boon
> this can be to project.
> 
> It is open source, so if you guys do happen to piss
> us off too much
> we can always fork off our own version no? :)
> 
> So instead of panicing, it makes much more sense to
> ride it out and
> get a feel for where things are going, there's never
> going to be
> anything terribly binding that will come out of this
> because it is
> an opensource project.
> 
> It's much more important to continue on with the
> rapid pace of
> developement than to fear black helicopters that
> haven't even
> shown up as blips on the radar.
> 
> -- 
> -Alfred Perlstein -
> [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
> "I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on
> my desk."


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Tue, 10 Oct 2000 12:45:40 -0700 (PDT)
Jason Earl <jdearl@yahoo.com>
Re: Re: [HACKERS] My new job