Folks,

By now, I imagine a number of people have seen the piece on the
Computer Reseller News website about Great Bridge and PostgreSQL.
While I think we're all happy to see the increased visibility for
PostgreSQL (especially as compared to the Oracles of the world),
it's fair to say the article wasn't perfect.  As Nathan Myers
observed in another post, they rarely are. ;-)

I thought the reporter did a good job of talking about Great
Bridge's business model and how we work with resellers and
third-party software developers (which after all is the focus of the
magazine).  Sure, there were some minor errors of fact, like the
confusion over PostgreSQL's Berkeley origins, and the use of the
word "licensing."

But of greater concern to us, and the reason I'm writing this note,
is the lack of clarity about the open source community that has
built, and continues to build this software.  Great Bridge is one
company, one member of a large community, and a relative newcomer to
the party.  We employ several leading PostgreSQL developers, and
give back to the project in many ways, but at the end of the day,
we're still only a very small part of the larger project - which
precedes us by many years, and could very easily survive us as
well.  We are *a* marketing channel for PostgreSQL (not *the*
channel), provide services around the software, and release a
QA-certified distribution (bundled with other tools and
applications), but we know that it's not *our* software.  It's
everyone's, and I'm sorry the article didn't adequately represent
that reality.

Having said that, I'd ask everyone to take a deep breath, as Nathan
suggested, and realize that it's still early in the adoption cycle
for open source in the larger business world and the mass media.
There will continue to be nuances that seem blindingly obvious to
us, but slip right through the reporting and editing process in the
trade press.  That's ok, as long as we correct those errors, as
delicately as possible ;-)

We all have a shared stake in PostgreSQL being more widely used and
appreciated, and how we respond to things like this will go a long
way toward furthering that goal.  You can all be justifiably proud
of the work that's gone into PostgreSQL, leading up to the terrific
7.1 release; a big part of Great Bridge's job as a marketing
organization is to make sure the world finds out about it - an
ongoing job that we take very seriously.

If anyone has any questions about Great Bridge's position on this
kind of stuff, please feel free to email me off-list.

Thanks,
Ned

--
----------------------------------------------------
Ned Lilly                     e: ned@greatbridge.com
Vice President                w: www.greatbridge.com
Evangelism / Hacker Relations        v: 757.233.5523
Great Bridge, LLC                    f: 757.233.5555



Sun, 15 Apr 2001 09:52:35 -0400
Ned Lilly <ned@greatbridge.com>
CRN article

So, to sum up ... the article did a good job of representing Great Bridge,
did a great injustice (a slap in the face, so to say) to the PostgreSQL
community as a whole, so Great Bridge has no intention of correcting the
situation?

Just to clarify your position, of course ...

On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Ned Lilly wrote:

> Folks,
>
> By now, I imagine a number of people have seen the piece on the
> Computer Reseller News website about Great Bridge and PostgreSQL.
> While I think we're all happy to see the increased visibility for
> PostgreSQL (especially as compared to the Oracles of the world),
> it's fair to say the article wasn't perfect.  As Nathan Myers
> observed in another post, they rarely are. ;-)
>
> I thought the reporter did a good job of talking about Great
> Bridge's business model and how we work with resellers and
> third-party software developers (which after all is the focus of the
> magazine).  Sure, there were some minor errors of fact, like the
> confusion over PostgreSQL's Berkeley origins, and the use of the
> word "licensing."
>
> But of greater concern to us, and the reason I'm writing this note,
> is the lack of clarity about the open source community that has
> built, and continues to build this software.  Great Bridge is one
> company, one member of a large community, and a relative newcomer to
> the party.  We employ several leading PostgreSQL developers, and
> give back to the project in many ways, but at the end of the day,
> we're still only a very small part of the larger project - which
> precedes us by many years, and could very easily survive us as
> well.  We are *a* marketing channel for PostgreSQL (not *the*
> channel), provide services around the software, and release a
> QA-certified distribution (bundled with other tools and
> applications), but we know that it's not *our* software.  It's
> everyone's, and I'm sorry the article didn't adequately represent
> that reality.
>
> Having said that, I'd ask everyone to take a deep breath, as Nathan
> suggested, and realize that it's still early in the adoption cycle
> for open source in the larger business world and the mass media.
> There will continue to be nuances that seem blindingly obvious to
> us, but slip right through the reporting and editing process in the
> trade press.  That's ok, as long as we correct those errors, as
> delicately as possible ;-)
>
> We all have a shared stake in PostgreSQL being more widely used and
> appreciated, and how we respond to things like this will go a long
> way toward furthering that goal.  You can all be justifiably proud
> of the work that's gone into PostgreSQL, leading up to the terrific
> 7.1 release; a big part of Great Bridge's job as a marketing
> organization is to make sure the world finds out about it - an
> ongoing job that we take very seriously.
>
> If anyone has any questions about Great Bridge's position on this
> kind of stuff, please feel free to email me off-list.
>
> Thanks,
> Ned
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Ned Lilly                     e: ned@greatbridge.com
> Vice President                w: www.greatbridge.com
> Evangelism / Hacker Relations        v: 757.233.5523
> Great Bridge, LLC                    f: 757.233.5555
>
>
>
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>

Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org


Sun, 15 Apr 2001 11:22:00 -0300 (ADT)
The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
Re: CRN article