At 07:37 PM 30-07-00 +1000, you wrote:

>Earlier today, Helen Borrie wrote:
>
> > But let's work on matching up idealistic piffle with cold reality. You
> > [Tom] don't care a snoot whether IB lives or dies. Others do...
>
>People who don't care whether or not IB lives or dies are not participating in
>this or similar discussions - *that* is cold reality.

On the contrary, Tim Uckun has been posting regularly in the IB lists to
the effect that people should use PostGreSQL in preference to
InterBase. You will notice I addressed those remarks to him. Too me, his
attitude shows that he does not care whether InterBase lives or
dies. Those who want to commit to the development of InterBase don't
generally display this behaviour.

> > ...and others have a better appreciation of the elements of InterBase's
> > life history and the community around it, that make this erstwhile
> > commercial product different and better.
>
>Moment of truth, Helen - do existing InterBase users see this whole episode as
>merely a way of wresting IB away from Inprise, or are they genuinely
>interested in seeing growth in the product's usage by those who hitherto would
>not have even considered IB? Honest question, I'd like an honest answer.

Some may - I have seen such opinions expressed, especially over the past
few days. As to generalizing this observation to the whole community - it
is not my impression of the general view. If you have followed the whole
progression of the InterBase/Inprise story over its time in the
Inprise/Borland stable and especially for the past year, you will have an
understanding of why IB never thrived under its ownership. Nevertheless,
the majority of current IB developers use Borland tools and favour the
continuation of an equitable and equable relationship with Inprise.

And so it seemed it would be - until the events of recent days.

> > Then we will all get what is best - including a future user base that
> > appreciates the technical strength and credibility of a well-regulated Open
> > Source community.
>
>At last, the truth starts to leak - the intention is for this to be a
>"well-regulated Open Source community", not really a "bazaar" at all; that's
>fine, but it would be nice if that was made clear when trying to round-up
>support from other users and developers otherwise you shouldn't be surprised
>when people have differing expectations and opinions.

People do have differing expectations and opinions. At one extreme, we
have academics who want to play with databases for a hobby; at the other
extreme, we have people whose entire businesses and careers are committed
to a living and thriving InterBase. Although InterBase 6 is free, for
previous versions companies invested many thousands of dollars in licensing
for the commercial predecessors. Customers don't make those commitments
without expecting some longevity of the product. Until December, they had
expectations that hobby developers could not imagine. Between those
extremes are all flavours and combinations of expectation and expertise but
the common expectation of all would be for builds to be stable and at least
as reliable as we expect from previous experience.

This is NOT Linux. It didn't start like Linux and it didn't grow like
Linux. It hits Open Source with an existing commercial user base.

Try to understand the "bazaar" analogy, which I made in allusion to Richard
Stallman's famous article. If you read that article, you will see that the
bazaar and the well-regulated Open Source community are the same thing.

> > Those of us with a serious stake in InterBase care little for those who
> > just want toys to play with.
>
>And that, dear readers, is why InterBase (the product, regardless of name)
>will most certainly die; existing users with blinkered views ignoring the
>opinions of anyone disagreeing with themselves.

And that, dear readers, is pure bunkum. Existing users need the
reassurance that the product will progress in an orderly fashion. Open
source adds diversity and with it, energy and synergy not possible in a
development environment that is driven from the cathedral. Without perfect
control, a database will earn a reputation for instability. That is what
will kill a database.

>I said it before, I'll say it
>again - InterBase will die not because of Inprise,

We won't let InterBase die because of Inprise....

>but because the existing
>userbase refuses to make the product sufficiently open (nothing to do with
>copyright so stop whining about it) and accessible to a wider audience.

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So - let's hear what David Begley thinks is "sufficiently open" for
development of software upon which businesses, careers and livelihoods depend.
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>Helen, anyone building an application on a database comes to rely on that
>database - regardless whether or not money is involved (separate to their
>existing wages/salaries); your opinion that anyone not paying money or being
>paid money to develop on InterBase just wants "toys to play with" is both
>wrong and ignorant.

Your interpretation of what I said is wrong and ignorant because you
completely twisted what I said. You profess to be "getting at the truth"
while actively misrepresenting it.

During the Open Beta phase, we dealt with many hobbyists who picked up the
beta because it was free and they had spare time. Their questions
demonstrated that they knew nothing about databases or even basic SQL, yet
they expected list members to respond. To them, Interbase is a toy to play
with. That is OK - those players may someday become real database
developers whom many of us would have pleased to help along the way. Tim
Uckun is a PostGreSQL proponent who moved into our patch to try to collect
converts to his cause. To him, InterBase is a toy to play with and to make
noise about.

The lifeblood of our community is those who know InterBase well and
appreciate its worth in commercial application environments. Those who
want free beer need to be somewhere else.

>But at least it's best that the truth be revealed now, rather than later.

You now have the opportunity to express the "truth" as you think it should
be. Tell us the "truth" about open source database development. Tell us
the "truth" about why well-controlled development of a mission-critical
RDBMS with 41 Mb of source code is an evil thing.

Helen