> The experience of Firefox and Chrome is that long release cycles actually decrease quality, precisely because of the dynamic on display here: long release cycles create huge pressure to land under-done features just before a deadline. With date-driven short release cycles, if you're not confident in your feature you'll be happy to just slip it to the next release. It greatly reduces stress on developers in general.<p>This comment really resonates with me, and wasn't something I thought of -- the pressure to deliver when your release cycle is so infrequent is something I hadn't noticed before but once mentioned, realize it's absolutely true.
I lurk (mostly) on the Postgres general mailing list (not the hacker list), and I recognize a lot of the names in that article. I've got to say that the helpfulness and civility of the folks there is amazing. I'm sorry to hear there are tensions around the release process. I'm glad the article expressed that in spite of those tensions, there is basically good will. That fits my impression of the community. I don't write much C, but I've got a few features I'd love to find time to contribute. I'd be honored to be a part of that project.
Nothing quite like seeing the sausage get made. But, the open discussion, while perhaps unnerving, is certainly preferred (IMHO) to a closed source development process happening behind closed doors. A bit of chaos is the price to pay for the open process.<p>Command-and-control does have some advantages. And maybe as Postgres grows, the advantages related to a more orderly process become more visible. (For the record, I think Postgres is a fantastic RDBMS + JSON store)
I think the PostgreSQL Development Group does a great job overall. If they indeed have a reputation of being hard to work with, all the better in my opinion if it means guarding the integrity of the Project.
A prime example of handjamming inconsequential happenings into a good/bad/ugly blogpost format. If this is what counts as "the ugly", they're doing pretty dang good.
Article is obviously for PostgreSQL developers BUT my gripe as a user (coming from MySQL).....the hardest part about transitioning from MySQL to PostgreSQL isn't PostgreSQL itself but transitioning from phpMyAdmin to phpPgAdmin. phpPgAdmin seems like it's trying to make my life difficult.