4 ms·

anytime a huge multi-decades-old FOSS project lands a milestone, I can't help but equate it to something like a moon landing. So much (unpaid) work and thought

anytime a huge multi-decades-old FOSS project lands a milestone, I can't help but equate it to something like a moon landing. So much (unpaid) work and thought goes into stewarding open software. Kudos to the whole team. Software infra is just as important as bridges and roads -- here's hoping we can fund it at least as well, for humanity's sake. [1] [1]: https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-reports/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/ https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-report...

ZiiS 3y ago
[flagged]
- pas 3y ago
  schools either never worked or stopped working. after all, look, almost all the people who went to school don't give a fuck about underperforming underfunded school systems. (or healthcare or ... or if they care they are ignorant and clueless about what to do with the problem, and easily fell prey to political dogma of some group.) it's simply time to stop worrying about it.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    School systems are not underfunded. They're underperforming despite being overly funded. We're throwing good money after bad.
    - patmorgan23 3y ago
      Teachers are under funded in the US. In many states if your lucky teachers wages top out at the median income. And they often have little to no funding for class room decorations or much beyond very basic materials. If we don't pay our teachers decently how can we expect them to put in the effort to do the very difficult task of raising the next generation? (And yes teachers raise their students just as much as parents do)
    - pas 3y ago
      well, real value of salaries of teachers are plummeting. of course the same thing happens in other hard-to-scale demand-for-quality service sectors (like healthcare, but also construction work, where standards simply increased, which have a lot of associated labor, which now cost a lot more due to multiple factors, eg. less immigration, shrinking of the active population - end of the positive effects of the baby boom demographic boost, of course there's also the inescapable Baumol effect).
  - dijit 3y ago
    The people underfunding our schools had their private schooling paid for by virtue of being unconscionably wealthy. The more you realise what has happened the more maddeningly upset you will get, so it's best not to think about it. Sufficed to say: you're wrong, additionally: dead wrong and it's not relevant for a topic about databases.
    - pas 3y ago
      nah, there's a broad consensus of US (and alas also in most countries') population of not wanting to pay for "externalities", they want cheap gas and cheap labor, cultural homogeneity, and so on. if a few thousand private school darlings can bamboozle hundreds of millions for decades, then the problem is not just with them. of course it's cultural and it's due to the very strong biases of the last who-knows-how-many centuries. > and it's not relevant for a topic about databases it's very relevant for the whole concept of FOSS "moon landings" and the commons
xslvrxslwt 3y ago
[flagged]
- dijit 3y ago
  if they're getting more than $200 then it's already way more money than I think. It's true that there is some money (after all, there is pgcon); and it's true that some people are paid to work on postgresql. However: it's additionally true that there are many volunteers, and that it's free for us to use, modify, hack on and so forth. coordinating that effort must be absolutely herculean.
  - epcoa 3y ago
    > It's true that there is some money This is such a misleading understatement. There is a ton of money. Many of the core Postgres contributors have fully remunerated employment where much of their time is dedicated to postgresql development. This is fully deserved and appropriate - but Tom Lane, et al are not working on this for free (that they still might if they had to do is another thing) but these are all highly compensated contributors. The total payroll spend on postgresql is distributed and decentralized but it is clearly in the multimillions. People should not be mislead about true costs regardless how they’re meted out.
riku_iki 3y ago
They significantly increased major versions frequency, transition from 9 to 10 took 7 years, and now they release major version every year.
- clarkdave 3y ago
  They just changed the versioning scheme; it used to be that e.g. 9.3 -> 9.4 was a major version (i.e. can't be upgraded in-place). Starting with PG 10 major versions are now 10 -> 11, etc. I don't believe the major release cadence itself changed that much
  - eestrada 3y ago
    It seems like they fell more inline with Semantic Versioning when that format came in vogue. Semantic Versioning is what most devs expect now; it makes sense to communicate the version in a format that has a broadly understood meaning for devs.
    - riku_iki 3y ago
      I think there is no semantic versioning anymore, they just release one major number version every year, regardless how large and backward compatible changes are there.
simonw 3y ago
PostgreSQL is also one of the most impressive projects out there in terms of being community maintained, as opposed to many large FOSS projects which have some kind of corporate backing employing the majority of the core team.
- dekobon 3y ago
  Isn't the good part of the core team part of EnterpriseDB?
  - brand 3y ago
    3 of 7 work at EDB, and the core team doesn’t drive the project roadmap. And EDB hackers fail to get patches in all the time, just like everyone else :)
  - lfittl 3y ago
    You can see a break-down of the core team and major contributors here, as well as their current company affiliation: https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ (and as noted in the other comment, whilst EDB certainly makes important contributions, they are one of many)
    - h0l0cube 3y ago
      TIL Julian Assange was a contributor to PostgreSQL
bdcravens 3y ago
Isn't the work in large projects often done by those paid by their employers on "company time"? For instance Bruce Momjian by EDB.
- epcoa 3y ago
  Yes, and Andres (literally the “main hat” they wear at Microsoft is work on PostgreSQL, and Tom, etc. I don’t understand why pointing out what should be obvious gets people to lose their mind here and is such a controversy. PostgreSQL like Linux is a massively commercially sponsored project - that there are some volunteers doesn’t change that. I used to be paid full time to mostly work on a Linux kernel subsystem. This discussion is silly.
brainzap 3y ago
16 contains paid work
game_the0ry 3y ago
Agreed - just think about the billions, possibly trillions of economic value (jobs, shareholder value, utility to society, etc) that a project like postgres or ruby on rails has created.

ZiiS 3y ago

[flagged]

pas 3y ago
schools either never worked or stopped working. after all, look, almost all the people who went to school don't give a fuck about underperforming underfunded school systems. (or healthcare or ... or if they care they are ignorant and clueless about what to do with the problem, and easily fell prey to political dogma of some group.) it's simply time to stop worrying about it.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  School systems are not underfunded. They're underperforming despite being overly funded. We're throwing good money after bad.
  - patmorgan23 3y ago
    Teachers are under funded in the US. In many states if your lucky teachers wages top out at the median income. And they often have little to no funding for class room decorations or much beyond very basic materials. If we don't pay our teachers decently how can we expect them to put in the effort to do the very difficult task of raising the next generation? (And yes teachers raise their students just as much as parents do)
  - pas 3y ago
    well, real value of salaries of teachers are plummeting. of course the same thing happens in other hard-to-scale demand-for-quality service sectors (like healthcare, but also construction work, where standards simply increased, which have a lot of associated labor, which now cost a lot more due to multiple factors, eg. less immigration, shrinking of the active population - end of the positive effects of the baby boom demographic boost, of course there's also the inescapable Baumol effect).
- dijit 3y ago
  The people underfunding our schools had their private schooling paid for by virtue of being unconscionably wealthy. The more you realise what has happened the more maddeningly upset you will get, so it's best not to think about it. Sufficed to say: you're wrong, additionally: dead wrong and it's not relevant for a topic about databases.
  - pas 3y ago
    nah, there's a broad consensus of US (and alas also in most countries') population of not wanting to pay for "externalities", they want cheap gas and cheap labor, cultural homogeneity, and so on. if a few thousand private school darlings can bamboozle hundreds of millions for decades, then the problem is not just with them. of course it's cultural and it's due to the very strong biases of the last who-knows-how-many centuries. > and it's not relevant for a topic about databases it's very relevant for the whole concept of FOSS "moon landings" and the commons

xslvrxslwt 3y ago

[flagged]

dijit 3y ago
if they're getting more than $200 then it's already way more money than I think. It's true that there is some money (after all, there is pgcon); and it's true that some people are paid to work on postgresql. However: it's additionally true that there are many volunteers, and that it's free for us to use, modify, hack on and so forth. coordinating that effort must be absolutely herculean.
- epcoa 3y ago
  > It's true that there is some money This is such a misleading understatement. There is a ton of money. Many of the core Postgres contributors have fully remunerated employment where much of their time is dedicated to postgresql development. This is fully deserved and appropriate - but Tom Lane, et al are not working on this for free (that they still might if they had to do is another thing) but these are all highly compensated contributors. The total payroll spend on postgresql is distributed and decentralized but it is clearly in the multimillions. People should not be mislead about true costs regardless how they’re meted out.

riku_iki 3y ago

They significantly increased major versions frequency, transition from 9 to 10 took 7 years, and now they release major version every year.

clarkdave 3y ago
They just changed the versioning scheme; it used to be that e.g. 9.3 -> 9.4 was a major version (i.e. can't be upgraded in-place). Starting with PG 10 major versions are now 10 -> 11, etc. I don't believe the major release cadence itself changed that much
- eestrada 3y ago
  It seems like they fell more inline with Semantic Versioning when that format came in vogue. Semantic Versioning is what most devs expect now; it makes sense to communicate the version in a format that has a broadly understood meaning for devs.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    I think there is no semantic versioning anymore, they just release one major number version every year, regardless how large and backward compatible changes are there.

simonw 3y ago

PostgreSQL is also one of the most impressive projects out there in terms of being community maintained, as opposed to many large FOSS projects which have some kind of corporate backing employing the majority of the core team.

dekobon 3y ago
Isn't the good part of the core team part of EnterpriseDB?
- brand 3y ago
  3 of 7 work at EDB, and the core team doesn’t drive the project roadmap. And EDB hackers fail to get patches in all the time, just like everyone else :)
- lfittl 3y ago
  You can see a break-down of the core team and major contributors here, as well as their current company affiliation: https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ (and as noted in the other comment, whilst EDB certainly makes important contributions, they are one of many)
  - h0l0cube 3y ago
    TIL Julian Assange was a contributor to PostgreSQL

bdcravens 3y ago

Isn't the work in large projects often done by those paid by their employers on "company time"? For instance Bruce Momjian by EDB.

epcoa 3y ago
Yes, and Andres (literally the “main hat” they wear at Microsoft is work on PostgreSQL, and Tom, etc. I don’t understand why pointing out what should be obvious gets people to lose their mind here and is such a controversy. PostgreSQL like Linux is a massively commercially sponsored project - that there are some volunteers doesn’t change that. I used to be paid full time to mostly work on a Linux kernel subsystem. This discussion is silly.

brainzap 3y ago

16 contains paid work

game_the0ry 3y ago

Agreed - just think about the billions, possibly trillions of economic value (jobs, shareholder value, utility to society, etc) that a project like postgres or ruby on rails has created.