Successful open source project teams without core vendors make for great hiring wars.

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog etry about Josh Berkus, a member of the PostgreSQL project, taking a job with Sun. Josh used to work over at Greenplum, an open source vendor focused on data warehousing and business intelligence implementations of PostgeSQL. Last week, Greenplum announced that it hired Mark Kirkwood, a PostgreSQL contributor.

While individual contributor hirings aren’t always newsworthy, they are important to open source vendors that are dependent upon core contributors to lead commercialization efforts and provide a strong connection back to the project teams. This is especially true with a project like PostgreSQL, which has no core vendor. While the various vendors that employ PostgreSQL contributors (see the PostgreSQL Sponsors page for some examples) are not competing in the same market, they are all competing directly for the same talent. When a core contributor leaves one vendor for another, it can effect that vendor’s ability to successfully execute on its products and services offering.

Am I implying that there is a hiring war going on right now for PostgreSQL developers? No. But, there is movement afoot.