Edward,

> Nope. It's open and it's free.

What is? If you mean Interbase then

a) it is not yet

b) we still don't know the license

c) to suceed open source projects need a community, the community (and
all users) need the source code. Having a closed development group who
do all the work on a new version and then release it with the source
will not work, the code will fragment, you will not get a community.

> There's no such thing as Open Source standard.

Of course there is, it is just not official, go and take a poll of open
source projects and check on the version control used. 99% will be cvs,
all the open source hosting projects eg at VA Linux use CVS, every big
project uses it (Apache, Linux [currently, will switch to bitkeeper], I
believe the BSD projects do, Postgresql etc etc).

Remember that in the Open Source world Interbase is the newbie, newbies
cannot decide a different standard in a volunteer community - nobody
will join them.

Probably the key reasons why CVS is in this position are

a) unlike PCVS, Source Integrity etc it does not rely on Locks. Any
locking version control system is bad news for widely distributed
projects with volunteers.

b) it's open source

c) it's available for many different platforms

d) it works well for distributed projects and has always been used that
way, not like many of the modern GUI tools like Source Integrity etc.

> I can agree with compilers, but choice of version control system is totally
> upon the development group. This is an internal matter. People are getting the
> stable sources with releases, but as long as this is a DBMS, I'd think twice
> before making snapshots available.

Sorry but what you are saying here has no relation to the Open Source
world. In the open source world you get the code, not just snapshots.
The key control is who is allowed to commit changes to the code and I am
happy for that to be restricted and controlled. But if we do not get
read-only access to the development and stable source tree's then I am
off - it is not then open source.

In fact compilers are less of an issue, as long as patches to support
other compilers are accepted it is generally good to support more than
one, there is no compiler that is available and best on all platforms
(eg several projects do not use GCC on all platforms). My original
statement on compilers is just that a free compiler must be supported.
ie we must not have to buy Visual C++ to compile Interbase. Visual C++
can still be supported for those who want to use it.

> Just IMHO, of course. Anyways, this is an initiative, and I think it's good
> not because I'm taking part in it, but because it was, potentially a flame war,
> but it turned into productive collaboration. And I must thank Kudzu and other
> contributors for that. Moreof, this is a possibility to learn more.

Sorry I had missed the original thread as it was tucked away under the
survey stuff (which I can't comment on until there is an html version).

I am not flaming, I am not against learning, I am not against other
products. What I am totally against is Open Source Interbase failing
because it just does not grok the two most critical things that relate
to the sucess of open source products. I have said them before and I
repeat them

1. License. It has got to be proper Open Source, otherwise it sinks

2. Community. It has got to build a big beautiful community of users and
DEVELOPERS. The developers must be encouraged to join. This will only
happen if they are welcomed, if their contributions are accepted, if
they get recognition and if it is technically easy. To be technically
easy it has to fit in with the normal open source conventions. Currently
those are things like CVS and GCC, that may change.