At 06:23 PM 28-07-00 -0700, Ted Shelton wrote:

>All:
>
>There has been a lot of speculation about Inprise and InterBase.
> My name is Ted Shelton. I am the Sr. VP of Business
>Development for Inprise.

Business **development** ? Does Inprise do business development by
declaring war on its customers?

>I have attached below a press release
>which is being sent out right now to clarify our position with
>respect to InterBase.
>
>Most importantly:
>
>1) We are not shutting down InterBase. We continue to have a
>solid group of InterBase employees, we will continue to support
>our existing customers, and we will continue to participate in
>the InterBase community.

"Continue to participate" ? Are you kidding?

>2) We are working to develop a plan around supporting InterBase
>as an open source product. We will be inviting the community to
>make suggestions about how we can best accomplish this goal.

You made a great start in Open Source (spelt O-P-E-N---S-O-U-R-C-E, not
O-U-T-S-O-U-R-C-E) by releasing unbuildable source code, broken binaries
and withholding the pieces that members of the Open Source community need
to actually give this product a life.

>3) We welcome the development of new companies seeking to
>support InterBase. We hope that, as with the Linux community,
>there will be many successful companies that develop around
>InterBase.

Yeah, right, many successful companies who want a piece of something that
Inprise is actively and overtly trying to kill.

What about the company that already developed around InterBase? What about
the community that staked its shirt on ISC?

>While we were not able to come to an investment agreement with
>Ann Harrison and Paul Beach we appreciate the efforts they have
>made on behalf of the InterBase community and wish them the best
>in their endeavors.

Cool. You appreciate how hard they worked at getting stiffed by
Inprise. That is soooo heartwarming.

A $10 million ransom demand is an "investment agreement"?

>Please feel free to send comments or questions to me directly [snip]

>Ted Shelton

That Inprise put a PR person "in charge" of this token effort amply
demonstrates its intentions. Someone there at Inprise believes it's going
to be OK announcing that it expects to keep milking the efforts of
volunteers and pretending they did something themselves.

An interesting study of sociopathy and self-delusion.

From now on, please don't start threads of this nature in
IB-Architect. We are cynics who have serious work things to discuss
here. Public relations B*S belongs out there in Dale Fuller's world of
lemmings, ingenues and willing victims.

Helen


http://www.interbase2000.org
___________________________________________________
"Ask not what your free, open-source database can do for you,
but what you can do for your free, open-source database."
(J.F.K.)