Those of us at another arm of Salesforce ( http://postgres.heroku.com ) are incredibly honored to have Tom join the family. The team they've put together there is doing some really exciting work.

Tom Lane is a hero. Guy worked on TIFF, did a ton of PNG, then organized JPEG, and now does seriously awesome work on postgres, and has for some time.

He also responds to a ton of postgres mailing list emails http://www.citusdata.com/blog/57-postgresql-full-text-search

For a little more context on why this might matter: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/salesforce-orac...

I always look forward to reading Toms stuff on the pgsql-hackers mailing list - I hope this move means Salesforce is making a big push into Postgres core development.

BTW, the linked page also has some interesting notes on what the PG developers are planning to work on in upcoming releases, and is well worth a read.