[os-infrastructure] The infrastructure

[Joe Abbate]

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Ross wrote:
> Had we waited for the policy to be settled, it would likely be at least
> a year, possibly more.
>   

What makes you think that? Did Emma or Bill or Roger talk to the board 
or present a policy proposal, and if so, was it put aside?

> When it comes down to the core of what we want as a company is to enable
> others to do what is in their best interest and have this bring value to
> the Ingres ecosystem.

That is your opinion but I don't know if it is shared by Ingres 
investors, the board, Roger, others on this list, or even major 
commercial customers. From what I heard from Roger at his quarterly 
presentations is that he is more concerned with selling Ingres 
commercially and working with partners that will assist in that goal.

In any case, the above is a very broad policy that anybody could agree 
with. What I think Durwin, Bodo, David and myself are asking, with the 
"cart before the horse" comments, is whether (a) to what extent should 
Ingres employees be involved in organizing or driving the community, (b) 
to what extent should the Community Edition(s) be allowed to diverge 
from the Enterprise Edition(s), for example, in terms of supported 
platforms, (c) to what extent should internal processes be changed or 
disrupted to accommodate the community (for example, Alex's comments 
about priorities in reviewing external contributions vs. dealing with 
bugs from paying customers), and possibly others that have nothing to do 
with what tools are used. As Jo Peel put it, "Align our processes for 
community development. [*THEN*] Choose the best tool(s)" (my emphasis). 
And lest it be misinterpreted, when I'm talking about processes I don't 
mean build procedures.

> I *do* think we'd be better served if we found a way to organize our
> efforts better. Perhaps a goal per quarter. For instance, have this
> quarter be all about polishing up the environment, defining any missing
> procedures, and getting the build clean on major platforms. :-)
>   

Whenever you talk about "major platforms", you seem to be referring to 
major *Linux* platforms (major in terms of overall users) and possibly 
Windows and you're seem to be concerned only with the DBMS build. I am 
not cognizant of the current revenue breakdown by platform but VMS and 
Solaris used to be the major revenue platforms, and AFAIK both those and 
Windows build clean (as do the major commercial Linux platforms). In 
addition, Ingres doesn't just offer the DBMS; we also have other 
products such as OpenROAD obviously, but also Enterprise Access and 
EDBC, and all those have their own build procedures, supported platforms 
and schedules, but they all share Bugs, ServiceDesk and if I'm not 
mistaken Piccolo.

I agree with the "a goal (or two) per quarter" but I think it should 
first be expressed by Roger and then Bill and Emma could decide how best 
to accomplish that. It is not because I believe in strict top down 
management, but because I think that without a clear commitment from 
senior company management, we could turn our wheels for nothing. Maybe 
you are privy to Roger and Bill and Emma's thought on this, but it seems 
at least some of us are not.

Joe