Magnus Hagander's PostgreSQL blog

This post was inspired by Montys post about MySQL release 5.1, and the many discussions it has created both around the web and offline. The question mainly being - why has nobody made such a post about PostgreSQL yet? Is it because it hasn't happened, or just because nobody has posted about it.

We all know that there is no such thing as bug-free software. This obviously includes both PostgreSQL and MySQL, as well as all the commercial competitors - claiming anything else is clearly untrue. But what I find remarkable from Montys post are mainly:

• MySQL 5.1 has been released with known critical bugs (crash/wrong result). As far as I know, this has never been done with PostgreSQL (at least if we're talking "modern times", since after the product became reasonably stable). And certainly not the number of issues that Monty has listed for MySQL 5.1 - it's not just one or two!
• There are also critical bugs that were present in 5.0, that still haven't been fixed in 5.1.
• We already know that MySQL 5.0 was released "too early". We already know that MySQL 5.1 was declared RC "too early". It's remarkable that 5.1 was also released "too early" in that case - and for non-technical reasons again. In theory, this "can't happen" with the PostgreSQL release model, since it's based only on when the features are "ready", not when you need a new release for some other reasons. That's in theory. I know in the past we have tried to schedule releases around certain conferences and such, for better announcement effects. In practice, though, I think this has only led to a release being postponed, never being rushed.
• MySQL apparantly keep some bug reports hidden from the public (the referenced bug 37936 for example). How's that for open... I approve of keeping them hidden for security bugs only - but if that bug is a security bug, it's clearly taken way too long to fix, given the dates on bugs around it.
• I still think they've designed their version numbering system to deliberately confuse the customers about what is a beta, what is a release candidate and what is a release. What is so easy with either labeling them as PostgreSQL does (8.3beta, 8.3RC, 8.3.0), or using the in open source popular system of using even-numbered releases for stable releases and odd numbers for beta/testing releases?
• It took them over a year to get from Release Candidate to release.

Now, there are several posts I found that are questioning Montys post, saying that the quality is just fine - and backing this up with actual experiences in deploying 5.1. I do think both sides are right here - it's perfectly possible to deploy 5.1 without hitting these bugs, as they are "corner-case" issues. But that does not decrease the importance of having releases without known bugs in them. And if there are known bugs, they should at least be listed very clearly in the release notes/announcement. Not doing this is, IMHO, simply irresponsible. Especially least for a database server which is supposed to safeguard all your work...

So how does PostgreSQL measure up