> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Gallagher [mailto:paul@...]
> Sent: Sábado 29 de Julio de 2000 17:59

I happened to find this social analysis:
;-)

> There seems to be two groups here.

Two or three?

> Group one, wants to create a company
> called "NewCo". They are asking for venture capital to get going.
> This to me
> implys that they want to start an actual business and make money.
> Certainly
> nothing wrong with that.

AFAIK, Linux vendors are working because they sell something. Again, does
your consideration imply that only NewCo wants money so their members are
money-driven and nothing else?
:-)
What's about Borland, are they setting a full IB infrastructure only for
the sake of God or to be good boys or to nurture our future?

> Group two, seems to want IB completely open-sourced as a "community"
> project. This is obviously not a company for profit.

Do you assimilate this group with Inprise efforts? This is the reason I
asked you if you identify 2 or 3 groups. Or is this the group of the
independent people that want to work on the engine, regardless of Inprise,
NewCo or whatever else?

> We really need to get this clarified. I am more than willing to
> take part in
> a community effort. But putting time and effort into IB to help another
> company for profit seems a little odd.

That's really funny. Tell us, who owns the rights to InterBase? You, me,
superman, Monica Lewinsky, Scooby Doo, Jim Starkey or BorPrise? While your
concern is perfectly understandable, I think that either I missed a previous
email yours when you supposedly explained more on your perception or you
miss one group. You are afraid to work for NewCo or SomethingCompany, but
you don't mind to work when Inprise owns the docs and the rights. What's the
difference? Aren't you advancing the product in both cases? Or do you expect
to be paid by Inprise? For what I see, you want to give your work only for
advancing IB, not to receive money.

What I want clarified first is what Borland plans to do with the captive
bits: offer them for sale, organize an auction so db-engine competitors can
participate and assure the life of IB will be difficult, keep them to assure
that IB will remain free, sell us the printed books as a way to get money in
retribution for the coordination of the Open Source movement or what? The
latest press release is fuzzy like other previous IB-related press
announcements.

> Two years down the road,
> will the IB
> community be in the same situation it is now, at the mercy of a
> company that
> was sold by another compay?

AFAIK, Inprise has sold nothing and it's not willing to sell anything now
that the shareholders decided that it was better to keep the 15 years old db
that have caused them too many headaches. Of course, provided that you trust
my friend Dale. Interesting, are there masochists in the Borland's board of
directors?

> Lets not forget that ONLY the source is open
> sourced. If "NewCo" builds new documentation and test suites, they will
> probably own them.

Let's not forget that Inprise retains the final documentation and some key
pieces that make IB not a true Open Source project. While I appreciate they
are trying to cope with the task, I cannot forget their past history with
IB. Doesn't Borland own the docs currently? If you want to be fair, please
shoot both BorPrise and NewCo. The only difference is that the beta docs can
give you an idea of what's the final documentation set.

> Don't think I don't trust the people spear-heading this project.

At least it's not my perception from your previous paragraphs. If I would
have to be fair, I would say the people 110% on Open Source are those
enthusiasts that managed to compile the "uncompilable" IBConsole and the
engine itself, with little or no help.

> I trust
> them completely. But situations and personel change over time. Maybe both
> groups can co-exist, and maybe they can't. Actually, there will be three
> groups if you count Inprise, but I doubt they will be in the IB market for
> long.
>
> Paul

Ah, that's the piece of info I was missing, you see Inprise as a possible
third member. Why don't you believe they will be in the IB market? Oracle/MS
pressure, JDataStore importance, shift of the company from tools to
enterprise solutions, end of the life cycle of the BDE or acquisition of
Borland by AOL?

My apprehension is much simpler: analyze Borland/IB history. What do you
see on IB story since 1991, when Ashton-Tate was acquired? A product that
was downplayed. A product that was ill-marketed and positioned. A product
that generated only headaches to Borland. A product that if we trust Dale,
generated last year a loss of NN millions. A product that lost its
ahead-of-time features in the hands of Borland. What did Borland do when
they purchased Ashton-Tate? They got the list of clients and Dbase. Maybe
Philippe Kahn was more worried about the future of the parrot Ashton than
what do to with "InterWhat". :-) The parrot deserved a fair treatment, after
all. Borland cancelled the Darwin Project in Ahston-Tate. But the Darwin
architects refused to see how their product would die and migrated and the
product still exists and it's not dying (I showed the URL in Mers). Then,
Borland came to think how to continue IB. And never found the magic formula.
They got rid of QPro because they weren't an office tools producers. They
god rid of Paradox because Corel paid well. They got rid of Dbase and sold
it to A.A.Katz because the CEO stated "we aren't a database company". They
created ISC to get in charge of IB, Dbase and Paradox and later reabsorbed
ISC when Dbase and Paradox were sold. They tried to catch with the buzzword
and extended the idea of Embedded SQL to market IB as the Embedded Engine.
But Sybase won the race with SqlAnyWhere. Ok, until then, consistent. But
they decided to pursue JDataStore objectives. Interesting, a non-db company
that decided to create a new database product. Or is JDataStore an
application server or a pager for some of you? Last year, the CEO stated
that Oracle was magnific. I don't disagree (except in the price, of course)
but he appeared like asking Larry Ellison for mercy because they had some db
products like JDataStore and Interbase. Analyze Dale's interviews in the
press site inside Borland: did he name Interbase at some time the past year?
If yes, how many times? The European VAR that reported to Olivier Mascia
that IB was being phased out... was kidding? Are clowns picking the phone on
serious consulting companies? I don't believe that. The VAR was not joking,
maybe that person got a phrase in a hurry and deemed it to be the truth.
Dale could have said in January "hey, geeks, come and take all the source
code, don't ask me anything about it and go to hell" but certainly a clever
person as Dale is, decided to Open Source the product and make the company
healthier in economic terms. The only problem is that after 6 months, you
start on delusion after delusion, so the enthusiasm begins to be cooled
quickly.

So, given the sordid history of InterWhat (aka InterBase TM, code named
kinobi, a registered trademark of Inprise Corporation in Scotts Valley, USA,
North America, The Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, before Mr. Keith
Gottfried sues me), I wonder really what Borland wants to get this time from
a cow that for them, it doesn't give milk. If before 2000 the sales of IB
returned money and even so they produced a net loss, I wonder what's the
fuzz with a product that no longer is tied to a per-seat license nor to a
Internet license and with a company that lacks experience in the open source
market, as already evidenced because we got not a real open source product,
but a partial and lame open source duck. What happens if this time, Borland
fails to manage IB? Will they kill the product? Will they nullify the open
source state? If they didn't devote enough marketing resources in the past,
they certainly expect people to work in enhancing the product. What if one
works as a hobbyist for NewCo or for BorPrise? According to the license, in
both cases, changes must be public.

When IB was crushed in December, some people thought on offering Borland
money for the product and buy it, same way Mr. Katz bought Dbase. But I
think that this time things are different. There's a complete test suite
under the GNU license available in the web; in plain words, it doesn't cost
10 million dollars and also, the IB code is here for any geek, lurker or
entrepreneur to take a look.

I admire Borland for its tools and strong tech assessment. I never could
know exactly were the name Borland comes, but this is another story. :-) The
most credible story to me is that it was an European company that died in
1980 and Kahn took the name. I admire how they resisted the attacks of
MickeySoft until the DOJ pissed MS and MS looked for a friend in the jungle
and put 110 millions in the hands of Dale, maybe as a way to assure Borland
woudln't turn 100% to the application servers and Linux market. It's
comforting to see that even Bill Gates feels pissed sometimes same as I felt
in December when Bill Karwin resigned... and I still don't believe Mr.
Karwin resigned because Dale blessed him and offered him a 3X improvement in
the payment due to high sales of InterWhat. ;-) But even if I admire
Borland, I've been pissed indirectly many times by their incredible
marketing decisions and now, I like Delphi and BCB but I also like IB,
regardless if this means to be harsh with BorPrise until the haze is cleared
and they state in facts their future intentions. The road to the hell is
paved with good intentions that never were realized.

<EOV> = End of Vitriol.

C.