[Info-Ingres] ingres janitors

[On Web]

"Roy Hann" <specially at processed.almost.meat> wrote in message 
news:39adnSW5GucK66DanZ2dnUVZ8rKdnZ2d at pipex.net...
> "On Web" <a at b.com> wrote in message 
> news:Nkd%i.32228$%j2.28372 at newsfe2-win.ntli.net...
>> Given that ingres is about to spruce up an ingres janitor programme, how 
>> many people does ingres think are waiting in the wings to become a 
>> janitor (what an awful term)?
>
> First off let's talk about that term, because you are right, it looks 
> awful. The initialive is actually called the Ingres *Apprentices* program. 
> The purpose is to provide Ingres Corporation with a framework for making 
> assistance available to the nascent developer community.  Under the 
> program senior Ingres management have agreed to commit a fraction of the 
> internal development team's time to mentoring and assisting newbies.  That 
> is essential, because we might be volunteers but those people aren't and 
> they need to be paid and their time managed.
>
> The Apprentices are expected to undertake a number of projects, only one 
> of which has been agreed so far, and that is the Janitors project.  Being 
> a janitor doesn't sound very grand, and it's not meant to be.  The sorts 
> of things janitors might do is things like systematically correcting 
> sloppy pointer casts.  The main sense of accomplishment will probably come 
> from just getting a successful build.
>
> Unfortunately, I think in our eagerness to get started with more ambitious 
> changes, like adding new (albeit minor) features, these are being 
> suggested for the Janitors too, and that's probably not right.  Those will 
> be apprentice projects in their own right.
>
>> How many people are likely to be involved in developing for ingres in 
>> this way?
>
> We're about to find out.  The current planning is mainly about lowering 
> the entry bar.  That means more and better instructions and documentation, 
> possibly supplying a development appliance along the lines of Icebreaker, 
> providing navigation aids like LXR or Doxygen, and most importantly, 
> getting would-be community developers hooked up with some mentors.
>
>> My thoughts are that those who are likely to be involved as an ingres 
>> janitor, are already involved in some way with ingres development/ingres 
>> open-source, so in that way a janitor initiative will make little 
>> difference to ingres open source development.
>
> I suspect that's not true.  The step up to get involved is currently way 
> too high.
>
>> From what I've read here, the ingres source isn't distributed with the 
>> test tools used by ingres themselves, nor the extensive test cases used 
>> to prove that the software is functioning as expected for a given build.
>
> Spot on.  We're aware of the problem and is actively being addressed. 
> Continue to watch this space.  Expect it to take a couple of months still.
>
>> It seems to me that the effort required to become a janitor is 
>> significant
>
> You are so right.  Please tell us more about what you think needs to be 
> done.  The window of opportunity is wide open just now.
>
>> and I haven't noticed anything that leads me to believe there's a long 
>> queue of people waiting to sign up.
>
> I don't know.  I suppose it depends where you look anyway.
>
>> Is an ingres janitor programme really going to work? Is the programme 
>> going to cost ingres far more than the potential benefit?
>
> Most of what Ingres needs to spend money on needs to be done anyway for 
> some of the more professional collaborations.  It's hard to see much of a 
> downside unless we pick up some really needy recruits.  A huge part of the 
> reason for wanting to use c.d.i. as the communication channel is to spread 
> the burden helping them.
>
>> For ingres, yes it's a positive news story, but I really wonder if 
>> there's a better way to invest ingres effort.
>
> It's hard to imagine a better investment.  Please feel free to make 
> suggestions though.

If we imagine there is a pool of free development effort out there (and 
there is) I can't see what is going to attract that pool towards ingres and 
there are plenty of other interesting technologies out there for them to be 
involved with.

If there was a clear trend that people are keen to board the ingres 
development train, I'd support the programme, but without any evidence that 
the demand exists (or can be built) then I think it will cost ingres money 
and worse still divert effort away from initiatives that can make money or 
build market share.

I think development effort should be driven from two directions - supporting 
existing customers with bugs, etc and secondly adding innovations that will 
help ingres build sales and market share.

Ingres is a seriously un-cool piece of software and it's vital that that 
perception needs to change. We can all laugh that such a trivial notion as 
'coolness' is important (after all it's all about keeping important data 
safe, right?), but it's so important that ingres is seen as player in the 
market. It's lost a lot of it's credibility against it's old competitors and 
needs to establish itself as a strong solution in the market. Having lost 
vast amounts of market share it needs to re-establish itself as an up and 
coming technology, not something insular.

I'd like to see development effort move towards evolving technologies and 
make ingres fit like a glove into those development pipelines. If you can 
get the product involved with such technologies you can piggy-back off 
publicity these technologies attract and re-assert ingres as a vibrant 
company and solution. I think ingres needs to be in the ground that sits 
between SQL Server/Oracle and MySQL. It's all very well saying that MySQL 
isn't as advanced as ingres - I just wish ingres were as successful in the 
market as MySQL (I just checked - turnover for ingres and MySQL is neck and 
neck - circa $51Million. But their market perception is vastly different).

The future of ingres is not dependent on maintaining the status quo with 
existing customers, but grabbing new customers in collaboration with other 
vendors technologies. Where are the ingres and silverlight/ingres and Adobe 
flex/ingres and Ruby stories?

Can anyone tell me the USP for ingres?

Paul

>> That might wake some people up on a friday..  ;-)
>
> Very public spirited.  Thanks.  :-)
>
> Roy
>