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by clra 1738 days ago
Just to play devil's advocate — OOC, what do you think the end game for Álvaro would be under this scenario?

Under the most cynical interpretation, I guess he'd convert Ongres from a Postgres consultancy to a trademark troll and sue other companies who try to use "Postgres"? Maybe, but that's a pretty serious professional change, and seems a little unlikely, especially given that's a considerable chance that he loses the trademark again if it does end up in court.

For my money, the most likely explanation is that it was a land grab move for prestige purposes that went too far. (And one which may backfire as Google ties this press release to his name.)

2 comments

I get the impression that Álvaro has issues with the governance of the core team and PGCAC and thus wanted trademarks to protect his consultancy that were under the control of his non-profit which he believes has stricter governance. He also seems to be interested in leveraging the trademarks to force governance changes on the core team and PGCAC.
Yeah. My comments are from before Alvaro started commenting in this thread, and I've since changed my position based on reading his responses.

> He also seems to be interested in leveraging the trademarks to force governance changes on the core team and PGCAC.

This is it. The strategy was to acquire the trademarks and then use them as leverage to force the dissolution of Postgres Core and its associated organizations, to be replaced with a new power structure which includes him as a key member.

The very last part is me editorializing somewhat (although it's not very much of a stretch), but he's been quite explicit about the rest of it.

Trademark trolling is specifically the use case for this. Sue every sub $300k/yr company than mentions that they use PostgreSQL in their stack. They won't have the funds to defend themselves, he makes off with $10k-$30k in settlements and goes on to the next one until a court stops him.