8 ms·

PostgreSQL is a very unique community compared to other database community(MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, ClickHouse et.c). It is INDEED decentralized, which means NO s

by west0n 3y ago

PostgreSQL is a very unique community compared to other database community(MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, ClickHouse et.c). It is INDEED decentralized, which means NO single company control it. This is related to the style of PostgreSQL's primary maintainers and leaders, who have ensured that the project's decisions and direction are determined collectively by the community members, rather than being controlled by a single company. Hopefully, their departure will not change this aspect.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
Design by committee has downsides. Let’s not put Postgres’ development practices on a pedestal.
- jeltz 3y ago
  Design by committee is not really common in the PostgreSQL community. Instead people just work on whatever they or their employer wants to. Makes having a roadmap or cohesive plan impossible but the issues of design by committee rarely show up.
- ngrilly 3y ago
  PostgreSQL's development never looked like design by committee.
- acdha 3y ago
  Postgres is one of the top open source projects of all time. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect with no room for improvement but almost anyone could learn from what’s worked there.
ergonaught 3y ago
Wow
fieldcny 3y ago
This is how ALL open source used to be! Like literally ALL, this is the norm not this bullshit VC funded fremium restricted/tiered fuck the customer trap nonsense. People built things because they loved it and wanted to help others , not to get rich. Now everyone just wants to get rich, and fast.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- planb 3y ago
  While I agree with your sentiment, maintaining software like postgreSQL is a full time job. But your last sentence seems to apply to everything on the internet lately. People used to do podcasts, create guitar tabs or publish cooking recipes because it was their hobby and they wanted others to participate. Now everything seems about making money.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    People would do these things for free because they had a stable job which guaranteed their material needs. Now every type of job can be automated and done better/cheaper by a machine, people will be forced to "monetize" everything that exists unless we get a literal revolution in how we tax and distribute the produced wealth.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - xcrunner529 3y ago
      The jobs we’re talking about here, podcasting, development, etc aren’t jobs where everyone is forced out. Everyone is just more into making money these days and decide they want to make money doing those things rather than just fun. Let’s not try making excuses.
      - rglullis 3y ago
        You are getting at it backwards. People are doing podcasts about investing, cooking, music production, <anything> because even those careers are being automated away and the money that they could be getting working is going away. Even Software Engineers: take all the swaths of engineers who were productive but didn't want / didn't make to a FAANG company and now are having to compete in a world where most companies can replace a lot of the people they don't need a team of 8 engineers because their team of 4 now can have Co-Pilot and most of their "middle management" roles could be effectively replaced by some cheap, off-the-shelf SaaS. I'm literally in this scenario. I'm too old to be interested in competing with someone who is 20 years younger than me but can call themselves a "programmer", and whatever knowledge/experience I have can be had at a fraction of my "cost" by using a commodified service that automates a process. So, what is left for me? Either I need to go downmarket and work for "programmer" jobs (further increasing the supply and lowering salaries) or I need to find someone who is willing to invest in my "idea for a startup" (thus getting into the Silicon-Valley way of life), or I need to find a way to take my unique experience and repackage as something of value - and then get to be called "greedy" by people like you. By the way, may I interest you in becoming a customer of my not-yet VC funded company (https://communick.com https://communick.com) and/or join the people sponsoring me for $4/month for my Fediverse work (https://github.com/sponsors/mushroomlabs https://github.com/sponsors/mushroomlabs)?
weinzierl 3y ago
The foundation is set up as a 501(c)(3) and to the benefit of the public. While it is not the only open-source project foundation working like that, many others are 501(c)(6)'s and primarily for the benefit of their (most often corporate) sponsors.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Redis ownership is decentralized as well. Redis the company owns the trademark and they were responsible for about one fifth of commits in recent years. The majority of contributions is external to them. The code base is BSD licensed and anyone is free to create a fork and continue development. Which looks like it is exactly what will happen now that Redis has decided that they don't need the input of the other 80% of commits from external contributors. Those contributors will inevitably shift their attention to one or several of the other forks. The Linux Foundation's Valkey fork looks like one of the main likely candidates for committers to rally behind. The biggest change will be the name change. The notion of the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. abandoning their Redis user base is unthinkable. They'll continue to offer that and they'll continue to lead the development of Redis. Redis the company will loose what little influence they had. I've never heard of anyone using hosted Redis directly from them. In general, projects like Postgresql and other successful open source projects have in common that generally contributors are not coming from a single company. Community diversity is what gives open source projects resilience against corporate shenanigans. Mysql in some form or another will persevere as well. It has survived a lot of this stuff already and it's still there as an open source option. I use it as a guide to select which things I use. I look for three things in open source tools and libraries that I use: 1) proper licensing (No agpl or shared source nonsense) 2) community diversity (no single companies that can change their mind), 3) active & recent development demonstrating the project is healthy. Of course the tragedy of individuals like Simon Riggs passing away is that they are so important for the health of these projects. With postgresql, I'm confident that there are others that can step up. But still, he's been very important and it's important to recognize their amazing contributions. The OSS world is full of these type of hero developers and it's what makes using OSS so wonderful. With Redis, that person would be Antirez. And he stepped back from Redis the company some time ago. It will be interesting to see what he does post fork.
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  > MySQL What‘s the point of it, by the way? Why would one start a new project based on MySQL instead of postgres today?
  - 3y ago
wslh 3y ago
Interesting comment, why do you think PostgreSQL succeeded where others with the some structure don't? Is it most probably the kind of people involved more than the structure?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- enonimal 3y ago
  I don't have an answer but I'd love to know this too. Why has Postgres got this unique staying power?
  - byronic 3y ago
    Coming at this from a small sample size, every time I've seen it used has been because some of the developers on a team love it and think it's cooler than the other options. And, over time, the operational experience has gotten better (AWS' Postgres support for RDS/Aurora is all recent, for example); and, in fairness, I'd take psql over SQL Server any day of the week. Regarding why it has popularity beyond mySQL/mariaDB is still a confounding mystery as far as I'm concerned. The additional behaviors Postgres tends to encourage (I'm looking at you, publisher/subscriber and trigger functions) seems to lead to devs advocating it as 'easy' while those in my position are left to keep the damn thing running.
    - mdavidn 3y ago
      I developed my preference for PostgreSQL years ago, before MySQL supported foreign key constraints or defaulted to durable commits. MySQL also had this annoying tendency to silently store invalid timestamps as zero. All of these things have been fixed since (I hope?), but I still can’t shake my impression that PostgreSQL takes correctness more seriously.
  - heresie-dabord 3y ago
    I would say it's similar to Linux: It's a free, solid foundational technology, guided by steady hands. In a software economy full of profiteers, charlatans, and marketing babble, the project is providing real value to users.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by west0n 3y ago

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

Design by committee has downsides. Let’s not put Postgres’ development practices on a pedestal.

jeltz 3y ago
Design by committee is not really common in the PostgreSQL community. Instead people just work on whatever they or their employer wants to. Makes having a roadmap or cohesive plan impossible but the issues of design by committee rarely show up.
ngrilly 3y ago
PostgreSQL's development never looked like design by committee.
acdha 3y ago
Postgres is one of the top open source projects of all time. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect with no room for improvement but almost anyone could learn from what’s worked there.

ergonaught 3y ago

Wow

fieldcny 3y ago

This is how ALL open source used to be! Like literally ALL, this is the norm not this bullshit VC funded fremium restricted/tiered fuck the customer trap nonsense. People built things because they loved it and wanted to help others , not to get rich. Now everyone just wants to get rich, and fast.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
planb 3y ago
While I agree with your sentiment, maintaining software like postgreSQL is a full time job. But your last sentence seems to apply to everything on the internet lately. People used to do podcasts, create guitar tabs or publish cooking recipes because it was their hobby and they wanted others to participate. Now everything seems about making money.
- rglullis 3y ago
  People would do these things for free because they had a stable job which guaranteed their material needs. Now every type of job can be automated and done better/cheaper by a machine, people will be forced to "monetize" everything that exists unless we get a literal revolution in how we tax and distribute the produced wealth.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - xcrunner529 3y ago
    The jobs we’re talking about here, podcasting, development, etc aren’t jobs where everyone is forced out. Everyone is just more into making money these days and decide they want to make money doing those things rather than just fun. Let’s not try making excuses.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      You are getting at it backwards. People are doing podcasts about investing, cooking, music production, <anything> because even those careers are being automated away and the money that they could be getting working is going away. Even Software Engineers: take all the swaths of engineers who were productive but didn't want / didn't make to a FAANG company and now are having to compete in a world where most companies can replace a lot of the people they don't need a team of 8 engineers because their team of 4 now can have Co-Pilot and most of their "middle management" roles could be effectively replaced by some cheap, off-the-shelf SaaS. I'm literally in this scenario. I'm too old to be interested in competing with someone who is 20 years younger than me but can call themselves a "programmer", and whatever knowledge/experience I have can be had at a fraction of my "cost" by using a commodified service that automates a process. So, what is left for me? Either I need to go downmarket and work for "programmer" jobs (further increasing the supply and lowering salaries) or I need to find someone who is willing to invest in my "idea for a startup" (thus getting into the Silicon-Valley way of life), or I need to find a way to take my unique experience and repackage as something of value - and then get to be called "greedy" by people like you. By the way, may I interest you in becoming a customer of my not-yet VC funded company (https://communick.com https://communick.com) and/or join the people sponsoring me for $4/month for my Fediverse work (https://github.com/sponsors/mushroomlabs https://github.com/sponsors/mushroomlabs)?

weinzierl 3y ago

The foundation is set up as a 501(c)(3) and to the benefit of the public. While it is not the only open-source project foundation working like that, many others are 501(c)(6)'s and primarily for the benefit of their (most often corporate) sponsors.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Redis ownership is decentralized as well. Redis the company owns the trademark and they were responsible for about one fifth of commits in recent years. The majority of contributions is external to them. The code base is BSD licensed and anyone is free to create a fork and continue development. Which looks like it is exactly what will happen now that Redis has decided that they don't need the input of the other 80% of commits from external contributors. Those contributors will inevitably shift their attention to one or several of the other forks. The Linux Foundation's Valkey fork looks like one of the main likely candidates for committers to rally behind. The biggest change will be the name change. The notion of the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. abandoning their Redis user base is unthinkable. They'll continue to offer that and they'll continue to lead the development of Redis. Redis the company will loose what little influence they had. I've never heard of anyone using hosted Redis directly from them. In general, projects like Postgresql and other successful open source projects have in common that generally contributors are not coming from a single company. Community diversity is what gives open source projects resilience against corporate shenanigans. Mysql in some form or another will persevere as well. It has survived a lot of this stuff already and it's still there as an open source option. I use it as a guide to select which things I use. I look for three things in open source tools and libraries that I use: 1) proper licensing (No agpl or shared source nonsense) 2) community diversity (no single companies that can change their mind), 3) active & recent development demonstrating the project is healthy. Of course the tragedy of individuals like Simon Riggs passing away is that they are so important for the health of these projects. With postgresql, I'm confident that there are others that can step up. But still, he's been very important and it's important to recognize their amazing contributions. The OSS world is full of these type of hero developers and it's what makes using OSS so wonderful. With Redis, that person would be Antirez. And he stepped back from Redis the company some time ago. It will be interesting to see what he does post fork.

Traubenfuchs 3y ago
> MySQL What‘s the point of it, by the way? Why would one start a new project based on MySQL instead of postgres today?
- 3y ago

wslh 3y ago

Interesting comment, why do you think PostgreSQL succeeded where others with the some structure don't? Is it most probably the kind of people involved more than the structure?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
enonimal 3y ago
I don't have an answer but I'd love to know this too. Why has Postgres got this unique staying power?
- byronic 3y ago
  Coming at this from a small sample size, every time I've seen it used has been because some of the developers on a team love it and think it's cooler than the other options. And, over time, the operational experience has gotten better (AWS' Postgres support for RDS/Aurora is all recent, for example); and, in fairness, I'd take psql over SQL Server any day of the week. Regarding why it has popularity beyond mySQL/mariaDB is still a confounding mystery as far as I'm concerned. The additional behaviors Postgres tends to encourage (I'm looking at you, publisher/subscriber and trigger functions) seems to lead to devs advocating it as 'easy' while those in my position are left to keep the damn thing running.
  - mdavidn 3y ago
    I developed my preference for PostgreSQL years ago, before MySQL supported foreign key constraints or defaulted to durable commits. MySQL also had this annoying tendency to silently store invalid timestamps as zero. All of these things have been fixed since (I hope?), but I still can’t shake my impression that PostgreSQL takes correctness more seriously.
- heresie-dabord 3y ago
  I would say it's similar to Linux: It's a free, solid foundational technology, guided by steady hands. In a software economy full of profiteers, charlatans, and marketing babble, the project is providing real value to users.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]