David Fetter <david at fetter.org> writes:
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 02:44:04PM +0100, Dave Page wrote:
>> Well your accent can be kinda hard to understand sometimes :-) but
>> the point I was trying to make was that whilst it might be an
>> interesting exercise to draw up such guidelines, we can't expect
>> *any* of our providers to actually guarantee anything
>
> In fact, we can do just that.  Part of the deal of becoming a provider
> is that you agree to certain terms, which we can spell out.

Well, this is something of a two way street...

On the one hand, "beggars can't be choosers;" if we are in a position
of having to accept whatever services we are offered, then you can't
expect any guarantees.

On the other hand, when there are choices (and there clearly are),
that means that we *can* have some expectations.

In any case (on the "gripping hand"), it is perfectly reasonable for
reasonable people to ask for reasonable things, and to have some hope
of getting them.

Further, it is NOT reasonable for the PostgreSQL project to have
aspersions of being an "enterprise-capable" system if the project
hosting capabilities are not in keeping with that.  

When the Slony-I project, which is all about the notion of redundancy
and getting away from single points of failure, falls off the net for
a couple weeks, that's EMBARRASSING.  Agreeing to things that would
cause the risk of such failure to persist would be way more than
merely "shame on us," it's more along the lines of "why should we
listen to anything they say when they can't keep their project
online..."
-- 
"cbbrowne","@","ca.afilias.info"
<http://dba2.int.libertyrms.com/>
Christopher Browne
(416) 673-4124 (land)