| Subject | Re: [IBDI] PHOENIX IN ASCENDANT |
|---|---|
| Author | Tim Uckun |
| Post date | 2000-07-29T20:30:08Z |
At 03:08 AM 7/30/00 +1000, you wrote:
an non vested outsider here they are.
1) Following this drama it is obvious to me who the good guys are and who
the bad guys are but to my friends and bosses it's not so obvious. Lets
face it whatever the newco is named it will not have the name recognition
of borland/inprise and if they are not going to use interbase they won't
have that name either. Committing to a database is a difficult decision.
Your entire business depends on it and most bosses do not want to gamble on
a product they have never heard of. Please keep this in mind when you are
thinking about the future of this product.
2) If you are going to fork do it now!. Do it early and get it over with.
Get a committee together to handle the documentation. Put the documentation
on the web site like the PHP annotated manual http://www.php.net/manual/.
Let the user base write the documents for you! same with the developers
document (see the ultra cool postgres doc at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/backend/index.html ). You will have to write
your own test suites and build scripts but what the hey that's development.
While you are at it why not build a benchmark too. It's an uphill climb
this route but only you can decide weather or not it's worth it.
3) Make nice with Dale. Sure he is being a A-Hole but he is holding a lot
of cards. Be nice and see if you can find a way to pressure him to release
the docs and such. Go to the press (slashdot or ZDNET, linux today) and
make noise about how inprise is not *really* relasing IB open source, or
about how they *just don't get this open source business*. It's true they
don't get it. If Dale sees that the perception of his company in the press
is that they don't understand open source he most likely will follow
through. Is there a web site describing the situation? Slashdot will need that.
4) Screw the whole thing. Screw Borland, Screw Inprise, Screw Interbase.
Put your energies into other truly open source databases. Contribute your
talents to postgres they could use a really nice ODBC driver, ADO driver,
delphi VCLs, they are thinking about implementing domains, they could use
the really slick collation mechanism of IB. Take your knowledge of MVC and
see if you could apply it so mysql, that would be so cool!. Let interbase
die a slow, painful and undignified death.
So there it is. I was very excited about Interbase being open sourced. I
begged the higher ups to please wait a while longer to make their decision.
I told them how the original developer was coming back. I told them how
great the documentation was. I told them how we could get ready for linux
because klyx and IB would work so well together. I begged them not to move
to ms-sql because interbase was good enough. Now I am starting to look like
a fool. IB out of the gate came stumbling out with ibconsole problems,
there is most likely going to be fork and name change. It's all a big ugly
mess and there are sure to be defectors of both users and developers. I can
no longer face these people and tell them that I truly believe IB is in
their best interests. What I told them friday was the IB is no longer an
option for at least a couple of months till we see what is going to happen.
Unfortunately they have already waited two months at my behest and they are
unlikely to give you and me two more months. I suspect that monday morning
when I go to work I will be told to start migrating to either Oracle or
MS-Sql server. I plan on making one last ditch effort to pitch postgres but
postgres and ODBC is a bad combo and the speed difference between the two
will kill me.
----------------------------------------------
Tim Uckun
Mobile Intelligence Unit.
----------------------------------------------
"There are some who call me TIM?"
----------------------------------------------
>I'm one of the people who doesn't make money off InterBase, I just look to useI am in the same position myself. If anybody is interested in a position of
>it as a tool in getting my *real* job done; in that regard, I'm like many
>other potential IB users who would also consider MySQL or PostgreSQL (or if
>you have the budget, Sybase, Oracle or DB2).
an non vested outsider here they are.
1) Following this drama it is obvious to me who the good guys are and who
the bad guys are but to my friends and bosses it's not so obvious. Lets
face it whatever the newco is named it will not have the name recognition
of borland/inprise and if they are not going to use interbase they won't
have that name either. Committing to a database is a difficult decision.
Your entire business depends on it and most bosses do not want to gamble on
a product they have never heard of. Please keep this in mind when you are
thinking about the future of this product.
2) If you are going to fork do it now!. Do it early and get it over with.
Get a committee together to handle the documentation. Put the documentation
on the web site like the PHP annotated manual http://www.php.net/manual/.
Let the user base write the documents for you! same with the developers
document (see the ultra cool postgres doc at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/backend/index.html ). You will have to write
your own test suites and build scripts but what the hey that's development.
While you are at it why not build a benchmark too. It's an uphill climb
this route but only you can decide weather or not it's worth it.
3) Make nice with Dale. Sure he is being a A-Hole but he is holding a lot
of cards. Be nice and see if you can find a way to pressure him to release
the docs and such. Go to the press (slashdot or ZDNET, linux today) and
make noise about how inprise is not *really* relasing IB open source, or
about how they *just don't get this open source business*. It's true they
don't get it. If Dale sees that the perception of his company in the press
is that they don't understand open source he most likely will follow
through. Is there a web site describing the situation? Slashdot will need that.
4) Screw the whole thing. Screw Borland, Screw Inprise, Screw Interbase.
Put your energies into other truly open source databases. Contribute your
talents to postgres they could use a really nice ODBC driver, ADO driver,
delphi VCLs, they are thinking about implementing domains, they could use
the really slick collation mechanism of IB. Take your knowledge of MVC and
see if you could apply it so mysql, that would be so cool!. Let interbase
die a slow, painful and undignified death.
So there it is. I was very excited about Interbase being open sourced. I
begged the higher ups to please wait a while longer to make their decision.
I told them how the original developer was coming back. I told them how
great the documentation was. I told them how we could get ready for linux
because klyx and IB would work so well together. I begged them not to move
to ms-sql because interbase was good enough. Now I am starting to look like
a fool. IB out of the gate came stumbling out with ibconsole problems,
there is most likely going to be fork and name change. It's all a big ugly
mess and there are sure to be defectors of both users and developers. I can
no longer face these people and tell them that I truly believe IB is in
their best interests. What I told them friday was the IB is no longer an
option for at least a couple of months till we see what is going to happen.
Unfortunately they have already waited two months at my behest and they are
unlikely to give you and me two more months. I suspect that monday morning
when I go to work I will be told to start migrating to either Oracle or
MS-Sql server. I plan on making one last ditch effort to pitch postgres but
postgres and ODBC is a bad combo and the speed difference between the two
will kill me.
----------------------------------------------
Tim Uckun
Mobile Intelligence Unit.
----------------------------------------------
"There are some who call me TIM?"
----------------------------------------------