> For starters, Helen's book could be put on line. It wasn't designed for
> that, but a) it's adequate, and b) it's all you're got. We'll skip the
> technical issues as "don't wanna". That leaves business issues. The
> business issues should be simpler than the technical issues. It is
> fairly well established that the on-line availability of large, useful,
> reasonably comprehensive book leads directly to sales of the more
> convenient print version. Consider such diverse projects as CVS and
> Microsoft's COM. Both are available on-line or bundled with tools and
> both do just fine as print versions. When the on-line availability is
> necessary for the intended audience to grow, as would Helen's book, and
> the increased audience would automatically lead to greater print sales,
> putting the documentation on-line should be a no-brainer.

Helen's book is available both on-line and off-line. Its not free
though. Since APress are the publishers - how they make it available is
up to them

> This is the golden age of open source databases. Companies and
> investors are are throwing sacks of gold at everyone in site but
> Firebird. In the time that Firebird has put out three releases
> (counting 1.5 as a release), MySQL has gone from a handful of people to
> a profitable company over over 300 people with tens of millions of
> dollars in the bank, millions of customers, and alliances with dozens of
> major products and companies. And given that MySQL started with a
> non-transactional ISAM where Firebird started with a full bore, SQL
> compliant, robust, transactional engine, the difference is more
> striking. The Postgres open source project started with an
> unsuccessful, cast-off academic research project with huge technical
> problems. It still has huge technical problems, but their most serious
> problem is to avoid being knocked on the head by the bags of money that
> companies throw at them.

Really, I hadn't noticed anybody throwing huge bags of money at Postgres
recently. Perhaps I missed something. The reference to MySQL is not
appropriate considering the licensing issues and the timing of when MySQL
becam open source.

> Firebird's biggest problem is lack of management of organization. It
> needs an organization to recognize needs and respond. The Firebird
> Foundation owns the trademark and ostensibly runs the project. Yet
> about the sole significant action of the Firebird Foundation in the last
> couple of years was to expel me for anticipated future inactivity. If
> the Firebird Foundation spent 1% of the effort they spend on personal
> vendettas on intelligent response to opportunities, Firebird might go
> somewhere.

The Foundation does not run the project. Never did, never has, never will.

Paul