Re: I am being interviewed by OReilly - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

pgman@candle.pha.pa.us (Bruce Momjian) wrote:
> Lamar Owen wrote:
>> If you doubt that fact, you need to read the archives for awhile to
>> get a sense of how this project is organized.  If the steering
>> committee (the core six) decide against something, then that
>> something _does_not_happen_.  End of story.  This is not a
>> democracy.  It is an oligarchy.  Marc is one of the six oligarchs,
>> so _Deal_with_it_.  Bruce, another of the core six, has to an
>> extent agreed with some of the difficulty of the current name.  But
>> how have the rest weighed in?  Up until the last portions of this
>> thread I might have agreed with you to an extent.  But after I
>> weighed the difficulty of actually pulling off a name change, I am
>> dead set against it.  It's too much effort for too little gain.
>
> I don't think you can just "shut down" a discussion about a name
> change.  Some good things are coming out of is, such as adding "also
> called 'postgres'" to some of our documentation, and properly
> mapping postgres.org/com to postgresql.org.
>
> I think there is room for an "also called postgres" push among our
> users and for marketing.  Oracle is changing the name of their
> server all the time to position it for marketing so having a
> secondary name doesn't hurt.  Our _official_ name is PostgreSQL.
>
> (I personally voted for 'tigres' at the time we chose PostgreSQL.)

Hear, hear!

This is a _wonderful_ thing.

Note that Netscape Navigator has been spelled many ways over the
years, "but is always pronounced `Mozilla.'"

While 'tigres' sounds quite nice, and strikes me as an attractive
option were things open to a _completely_ new name, it hasn't the
merit "postgres" has of: a) Being a historical name, and b) Being highly similar to the current name.

There's NOTHING wrong with having a "legal name" as well as an
"operating as" name; companies do that _all the time_.

And if there are 20 places that say "It's officially spelled
PostgreSQL, but you can _pronounce_ that 'p\O\st-"gres', and here's
the MP3 of Bruce saying it," that can cope with the situation nicely.

I have no problem with the "PostgreSQL" _spelling_, but how it sounds
_is_ important, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect to do the
"Cliff Richard" thing where the famous British pop star coined a name
specifically so that he could regularly remind interviewers "No, no,
not `Cliff Richards,' it's `Cliff Richard.'  No 's' on the end!"

Consider the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series.  The first three
books are _tremendously_ more popular than the later sequels, and I
believe that is the result of them having been first 'honed' by being
presented as radio plays.  They actually _sound_ better than they
"read."  In contrast, later volumes like _So Long and Thanks for All
the Fish_ never were on radio, and read _very_ differently,
unfortunately not as nicely.
-- 
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "enworbbc"))
http://cbbrowne.com/info/nonrdbms.html
"One of my most often  repeated quips was the  one I made when  former
Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon stood by each other at a White House
event. 'There they are,' I said. 'See  no evil, hear  no evil, and ...
evil.'" -- Bob Dole, 1983