All of your points are valid, but there is always room for a larger user community, especially in one that is almost entirely voluntary. It's OK to be aloof and niche, Debian has done just fine by it, in very many ways it far superior to Mandrake, Redhat, and many many others (I use it myself on all of my servers) but it doesn't excel in terms of accessability to the novice or even intermediate Linux users. Visit the #debian channel, and most of the people there will help you a great deal until they get bored with your newbieness and start sighing and telling you to RTFM. There is always a hardcore of advanced users however who will always help as far as they can, as long as they are Debian related Q's (I don't think anyone would be interested in "How do I use ftp" type Q's), a very similar story is true of the perl community (nothing personal Randall). I see very many parallels in all the advanced OS software and there are elements of this in PostgreSQL community, whilst the PG people in general are not quite as aloof as the Debian crowd, there are definite undertones of "Hey, If you're not good enough to appreciate us, then Tough Poopie to you!"
This was very much how the Linux community was seen for the longest time, fortunately due to some vary hard advocacy work by some very dedicated people and talent programmers working hard on accessibility issues, Linux itself is now (mostly) far more accessible to many more people. I never expected to see so many people talking about Linux on the desktop so soon.
The main point I'm trying to hit, is this how PostgreSQL community chooses to be viewed, or do they want to become a little more warm and fuzzy and have journalists cooing over PG. Either choice is a double edged sword.
Those who can RTFM nearly always will, the others will probably use MySQL instead and get spoonfed by a more accessible piece of software that also runs on Windows.
I'm trying to provoke thought rather than conflict here. Where does PG community see its place in the big picture?
Regards
T. PostgreSQL, Putting the .org into your Organization. ======== Casey Allen Shobe wrote:
Tony (Sunday 28 December 2003 10:30)
I think...you read my E-mail quite a bit differently than how I wrote it.
Vertu sæll,
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