Re: [GENERAL] Postgres vs commercial products - Mailing list pgsql-general

> > Um - let me get this straight... you want to go buy Oracle instead of
> > kicking in a few bucks to pay someone to add it to PostgreSQL.
> >
> > OK then a quick call to Oracle would tell you that it's $295 per user, 5
> > user minimum.  If you want to use it on the web for public use that's 20
> > minimum or about $6,000.  Plus they suggest getting their application
> > server for another $195 / user - pushing your web site up by another
> > $4,000.
>
> I'll skip their application server. $6000 for Oracle? Sounds awfully cheap
> to me. You get the benefit of all those features for which I'd have to pay
> the Postgres creators, who in one year decide they want to take a vacation
> in Timbuktu, and their features will go with them...

The application server increases performance by keeping connections open.
They were very vague about exactly what it did, but I am sure that you
could skip it.  But the $6,000 I was quoted was for the workgroup server -
not the Enterprise version that has all the advanced stuff.  For example
there is no Incremental backup, no parallel backup and recovery, no
advanced replication.  If you want those features you need the "Enterprise
Edition" which is significantly more money.

As for features becoming unsupported when someone takes 'a vacation in
Timbuktu' - has that happened to Linux?  Has it happened to perl?  What
about your great commercial program when the vendor goes belly up - don't
the features go away then?  I truly believe in Open Source software and I
trust the authors of OSS more than their commercial counterparts, but
that's just me.

> Won't happen? In the last couple of weeks I've seen a dozen questions
> pertaining to Postgres's object capabilities, such as how to cleanly insert
> values of a contained type and how to select them back. Up to this minute,
> nobody answered. To me, this indicates that the "O" in PostgreSQL's ORDBMS
> claim is no longer maintained.

Not necessarily - the reply might have gone to the user directly.

> When you rely on an organization to maintain something, you know that even
> if someone gets married or dies in a car accident, your application will
> continue to be supported. If I pay an individual to do it, can you make the
> same claim?

Bullsh*t - Does MS still support DOS?  Does MS still support Windows 3.X?
How about other vendors... does Lotus still support 1-2-3?  Does
Ashton-Tate still support dBase?

Also note that neither I nor the person that posed the original question
to you suggested that a person individually be paid to develop the
feature.  I'm suggesting that sending a small amount of money to someone
could be used to motivate having them put off other "for pay" work to do
the work on the feature for Postgres.

Putting the money aside for a moment I believe someone else already asked
you what features you thought were missing.  Maybe the features you want
are probably already scheduled for development.  I suspect that many if
not most are indeed somewhere in the pipe.

> Besides, there's no way I could get away with paying an individual any sum
> of money. It's not my money - it's the university's. They will pay
> organizations, not individuals - unless the individual would like to sign a
> contract or something. And come the next day, I need another feature, I
> need to pay yet another individual. And yet another.

OK - get the university to donate $1,000 to the 'PostgreSQL Global
Development Group' and let them write a check for the same amount to a
developer as I mentioned above.  Or make it part of a software development
class.  I know I would have loved to take part in helping develop
something like Postgres as part of my database systems class.

> Never mind having a Postgres version which nobody else has, meaning I won't
> be able to apply patches as they are posted for the main version - or
> should I pay *all* the Postgres developers so that they will all finish
> development, testing and beta to make everybody's version the same as mine?

Come on - be reasonable... The person that asked if you would be willing
to pay some money to get the development of features you want was not
suggesting that you would have a special version of PostgreSQL.  Any
additions made would wind up back in Postgres itself for everyone to use.

Now since you have avoided the question posed by that other person I will
ask again.  What feature or features were you looking for?

Chris
(not a Postgres developer, but annoyed enough to reply)