The question rises: will Inprise products Delphi and CBuilder support Interbase
as their NATURAL database engine? Now it is made through IBX. And if IB is open
sourced now, who can guarantee it will continue to be ONE branch, not
different engines with DIFFERENT APIs? It would be hard to support such
different and unknown databases. So Inprise must make the decision - which
company it will consider as the Interbase Software Company, or they should quit
supporting IB via natural components.

And another corresponding question is - what about IBX?
Now the sources are opened and does it mean that Inprise allows others (I mean
ISC) to develop it? If it's true, the community can look at Fib+, which is the
continuation of original FIB. It was greatly advanced and excluding the IB
management components is much more complicated and functional than IBX is now.
It supports also Delphi 4. The link is here

http://www.geocities.com/buzz_ss/buzz.html

I think that the author will not be against such an idea.


With respect
Alexander Rabtchevich