Postgres: The next generation
So many thoughts on this. The community has definitely ebbed and flowed, on this for a while. A few varying pieces of insight with no intention other than to share a bit more on the PG community. And I&#x27;m sure some current and former colleagues already in comment threads are going to correct me on nuance of a lot of this.<p>For several years there were no new committers at all. In recent years the team has tried to be a little more intentional about adding new ones and culling those no longer involved.<p>About 15 years there was a phase of letting a lot of younger people earn their commit bit. I can recall 3 people by name that all got a commit bit before the age of 25, and they may have actually all been under 22. One of those three shortly after moved on to work outside of the Postgres community, another quietly was busy on other things for over 10 years before coming back, and the third was actively involved going forward. I suspect there was some unease of folks getting a commit bit and then sort of falling off a cliff so it slowed for a few years on adding new folks. Edit - sounds like it was less age driven but maybe still slightly related to some folks falling off that there was a slow down in new committers – tldr - you&#x27;re not getting a commit bit right out of college for Postgres.<p>What to me would be interesting but likely hard to gather is what age to people become a committer to Postgres. It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me if the average age of getting a commit bit is closer to 45 than not. Many folks contributing come to Postgres after other systems work or just don&#x27;t consider contributing to they&#x27;re a bit more seasoned because it feels intimidating–I mean patches sent on a mailing list who does that any more? Postgres thats who.