At 09:18 AM 7/26/00 +0300, you wrote:

>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.

It does not matter in the least bit. Now that IB has been released out into
the wild it will find it's own way around. Along with this comes the
distinct possiblity that it will venture where no one ever thought it
would. My guess is that it will not fork so far no major open source
project has ever forked not even the most flogged mozilla project. I
suspect that inprise will eventually have to let go of any delusions it may
have have about "owning" interbase. The community now owns it.

>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

Same with any and all access technologies. Maybe someone will come up with
a better IBX then IBX or maybe someone will come out with a TCL or Rebol
wrapper. Who knows!

IB is a newborn child out of the warm and comforting womb. The future is
wide open, the air is filled with the smell of unexpected surprises. I
can't wait to see what happens next.




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Tim Uckun
Mobile Intelligence Unit.
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"There are some who call me TIM?"
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