Robert:

Thanks for your note.

Ann and ISC proposed to have an independent company from Inprise and
asked
for the technology, trademarks, and for a venture capital investment.
There
were, in addition, a number of legal requirements that they placed
around
the transfer of these funds and the intellectual property. A
significant
effort was made to reach a middle ground in our negotiations with Ann.
However we were not able to bridge the differences in opinion. As we
have
an obligation to our shareholders and employees in addition to our
obligation to our customers, we could not simply agree to ANY conditions
that a third party was going to put on a transaction of this kind. The
conditions had to be reasonable and at the end of the day, both sides
left
the table without a compromise having been reached.

I can certainly understand your concerns, as we are still in the process
of
putting together our plans for continued support for the product.
However,
I believe that we have done the right thing by going ahead and releasing
the
source code to the community. We hope that many successful companies
are
developed around InterBase and by releasing the source code right away,
we
hope that those companies can get started on their business plans. I
want
to continue to do the right thing -- for all of my stakeholders
(employees,
customers, and shareholders). Your advice on what we can do to support
you
would be welcome.

yours,

Ted Shelton

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert F. Tulloch" <tultalk@...>
To: <tshelton@...>
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2000 9:39 AM
Subject: IB6 Release


Mr. Ted Shelton

I would like to let you know that I appreciate your release of open
source IB6. I do however have some problems with not releasing it
through ISC.

I have developed a big app, originally in dialect 1 using Crystal
Reports and the intersolv ODBC driver. I converted to dialect 3 and
there is no ODBC driver for dialect 3 so the reports are in limbo. Jim
Starkey was working on the driver and I (and many others) were
anticipating having it available to continue development:

INPRISE/BORLAND FORMS NEW COMPANY TO OPEN-SOURCE INTERBASE® 6

Inprise/Borland and Venture Capitalists to Fund New Company
Called InterBase

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. -- February 14, 2000 -- Inprise/Borland
(Nasdaq: INPR) today announced the formation of a new company that
will provide service, support and hosting for a new version of
InterBase®,
the first open-source embedded relational database product.
The formation of the new company comes on the heels of
Inprise/Borland's
announcement last month to release InterBase 6, which is currently in
beta,
in open-source form for multiple platforms, including Linux, Windows NT
and
Solaris. The source code for InterBase 6 is scheduled to be available
mid-2000.

The executive team of the new company, called InterBase, will be
led by Ann Harrison as president, Paul Beach as vice president of sales
and marketing, and Jim Starkey, the founding architect of the original
InterBase product, will serve as the technology software architectural
advisor for InterBase.

When this was not consummated as we had all anticipated, we are left
without an ODBC driver for dialect 3. Going back to dialect 1 is a
possibility but that is supposedly going to be abandoned in favor of 3.
So what are we to do, those of us who have investeed a great deal of
development time based on the Feb. 14 announcement and the commitments
made by the "Executive Team" of the "new" company based on their
anticipation of the Feb. 14th announcement.

We cannot develop a product and market it when the foundation on which
it is built is in an apparent state of confusion. Who would buy such a
product?


Thanks.

Best regards