> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ted Shelton
> Sent: Viernes 28 de Julio de 2000 21:24
>
> All:
>
> There has been a lot of speculation about Inprise and InterBase.
> My name is Ted Shelton. I am the Sr. VP of Business
> Development for Inprise. I have attached below a press release
> which is being sent out right now to clarify our position with
> respect to InterBase.

Sir, this may be one of the first times a VP of Business Development posts
directly on a newsgroup to try to get in touch with developers. However, let
me tell you that for any person in his/her sanity, the only way your
statements can be made credible is to be sure your press releases are in
sync with real and concrete facts, not with manipulation of the news. This
is a task for you the ones inside Borland: to recover the lost faith in you.
I give you excuses and offer my apologies in advance for what I'm going to
say and hope I won't spoil your day, so you can imagine I'm not going to be
soft. Again, sorry, but you asked for comments and I'm giving my sincere
comments. In this context, when I write "you", I mean "your company".
Finally, I warn you that my native language is Spanish and I'm concious that
for some reason, Spanish to English translations sound aggressive many
times, maybe because in Spanish one cares less about euphemisms, don't know
really.

I don't remember how many years you're with Borland, but as a developer,
I've followed Borland since 1990. I've seen several Borland press releases
that are defeated by the cruel reality a weeks after. Worse, I've read many
contradictory press releases in the Borland history. The
http://www.borland.com/about/press/
part of your site offers a high level view of some of those evident
contradictions. You haven't posted all your press articles there but I have
much more than those, archived in a CD-ROM, just to be sure I can backtrack
your history. Borland stated that OWL wouldn't die, and it died some months
after (it was the classic BC++'s Windows library). Borland stated that
IntraBuilder, JBuilder, Delphi and BC++ would be a strong package. Some time
after, BC++ died and Intrabuilder died. People that relied on Intrabuilder
got freaked, because you killed the product in version ONE. There are much
older examples, like TurboProlog and some framework (OBX, maybe?) that were
swallowed. And there're the rumors about your Borland Dead Engine (aka BDE)
that is dying since a year ago at least due to technology obsolescence and
MS's UDA in rise. You stated that BDE would be for many years with us and it
wouldn't be replaced; but other information stated that you considered it
mature and steady. Isn't that press confusion? Is "steady" equal to no more
development? Is there any trace of the BDE team after Inprise was split up
in two companies, ISC reabsorbed and Visigenic re-launched? Now, you want to
replace BDE by IBX, ADOExpress, dbExpress and only God knows what more. The
problem is not on dropping products, because some of them probably should be
discarded for N reasons. And if the company didn't have the money to be
behind those products, you had to take a drastic decision. Nobody blames
your company for that. All companies drop products. I can understand that,
sincerely. But much of your problems have their roots in the same old
causes: lousy local representatives, lack of timely and honest press
releases and unfortunate sight to select your management people. The problem
is that almost invariably, your press releases stated exactly the opposite
of what happened some months after. You denied the facts. This explains the
lack of credibility of Borland announcements regarding the future of your
tools and technologies and ultimately, the perception of Borland as a random
company. From a cynical pov, one can conclude that when you say in public
that "we are committed to product X" it will be killed in less than a year.
This has been a couple of times the sad truth in these 10 years that I
follow Borland. Maybe it's only a lack of sync between the press dept and
the financial dept but this theory is a bit hard to believe as an excuse.

I understand that you might feel deeply offended with this mail, but please
try to understand me as a developer, too. I've suffered the consequences of
some of Borland's decisions, regarding the future of tools and the lack of
support outside the US. My prestige as a developer as been undermined
several times because I recommended Borland products but Borland and its
representatives didn't meet the minimal expectations of my clients, so some
of them simply turned to other vendors and their decision affected me
directly, of course. I've been flamed even by my former classmates because
they couldn't understand how I recommended "products from a company that has
no future and that drops products when you don't expect them to do so" in
their words. I've fighted my clients that wanted to go to MS, PowerSoft,
Clarion or whatever else. I need some years more to forget one of my most
embarrassing moments, when I told a technical military unit to go with
IntraBuilder because it had received good press reviews, I had tested it
myself, it was nice for their specific needs (although clumsy to install)
and probably it would survive... but version 2 never happened. Knowing how
the military takes strong decisions, I was virtually discarded from future
contracts with that unit. When I acquired BC++ 4.52 for other organization
from the official Borland partner in my country, it was impossible to get
the promised tech support when it was necessary. No surprise, that
organization never purchased any other Borland tool. I had to deliver a
quick and shameful workaround in the form of a small Delphi_1 program. (If
this was the same problem with Borland partners around the world, then it's
no surprise that BC++ 5.0 was a sales disaster and the CEO Gary Wetsel
resigned by the same time.) And I have more [boring] tales of such fiascos.
That's me as an independent developer. Now, imagine the problem for VARs and
other companies. If it's not enough with the bad communication style Borland
has with developers, almost as a rule your representatives in Latin America
simply suck. We (my country) have got better representatives but this is a
recent phenomenon. I would bet that among the people that started with me in
1990 using Borland tools, I'm the only or almost the only one that still
struggles to convince some clients to go with you. More below.

> Most importantly:
>
> 1) We are not shutting down InterBase. We continue to have a
> solid group of InterBase employees, we will continue to support
> our existing customers, and we will continue to participate in
> the InterBase community.

I know that you still have some good Interbase employees, but better I
don't enumerate the ones that have left and that Anders Ohlsson tried to
downplay in December. You have stated too many times that you aren't
shutting down Interbase, that sincerely I don't know if I must trust or not
you this time. If you fool me the first time, that's your culpa, but if I
let you fool me a second time, then I'm really silly and you're really
dangerous. I think I have the right to hold legitimate doubts about not only
the committment of Borland towards Interbase but your allocated budget and
technical capability to lead the future of the engine. With enough paranoia,
it's perfectly possible to imagine that you wanted to play nice with Oracle
and MS and so you downplayed IB to avoid clashing with them. You expected
more revenue from IB in December and it wasn't possible. It was totally
irresponsible to think in crushing the engine when it was in beta 3. The
product was already so solid that it could have been sold as it was and get
immediate cash. I know that, because I was a strong beta tester. Instead of
accepting such nasty proposition of killing kinobi and move to another
duties inside "go_com_yourself", three ISC guys resigned, followed by two
more and later another more one. You never intended to continue the engine.
Your CEO has stated CLEARLY that they are able to reap the benefits of
products that aren't being developed since 3 years ago. No surprise, IB was
the next victim... without alerting us, of course, as it always has been
your communicational policy... and you wonder why some customers are no
longer with you? You threw poor Andres Ohlsson to the jungle with a message
that "we never intended to shut down IB". False, as false as the claim that
my father was Napoleon:
- The CFO evaluated IB and informed the InterBase team of their desired
revenue level for the product.
- The monetary goal for InterBase (InterBase TM, to please your lawyers) was
not achievable. It would have required at least to get rid of 50% of the
current IB staff, which was near 40 people. Want to know one reason? You
never assigned anought resources to marketing campaigns on IB, you were
afraid of pushing it, you were ashamed of having it, you never understood
why you got it and never agreed if it was an embedded database for turnkey
systems, a tool for schools or a C/S database with full possibilities. "You
discovered it by accident after purchasing Ashton-Tate", the bad taste jokes
say. Also, you had a conflict of interests, since IB was multi-platform and
your expertise was mainly on DOS and later in Windows.
- There would be no budget to restore the struggling US marketing and sales
staff, which had already been reduced to one 3/4-time person and an intern.
I don't understand how to sell a product without marketing those days.
- This is not a workable scenario to grow a product business. Even me, an IT
engineer, can understand that, without a PhD on Business Strategy.
- Bill Karwin, Paul Beach, and Wayne Ostiguy resigned the same day these
requirements were made clear. They gave you and us a lesson on personal
dignity that we'll never forget... and you won't, too, because you didn't
expect such bold reaction.
- Mr. Fuller probably first told the remaining IB staff that he was pulling
the plug, but that they would have jobs within
Inprise if they wanted. That's not a gratuitous accusation on my part,
because when I, as a beta tester, emailed some ISC employee directly on
these shameful days after Dec-17, I got a clear answer: "sorry, I was moved
to another development group, I'm no longer involved with IB". Then after
the new year, Dale changed his mind and announced the open source plan in
the January 3 press release. Obviously, I applaud your CEO for taking a
decision that improved Borland's value and made us happy. I only have to say
that such idea of Open Source IB comes from another person, indeed.
- You didn't comment on the departure of five people and the intention to
kill IB6, but the destiny wanted that a developer happened to call Borland
and when he couldn't locate key people, the red light was turned on. You
weren't prepared, so you took some days to react and downplay the facts.
- If your CEO changed his opinion between February 14 and June 30 about the
OS move, it's a right he has, but he should have been sincere with the
community. Again, you missed another opportunity to raise your credibility.
Several companies and developers were crushed due to the long delay after
June 30 and you are aware of such fact much better than me. You remained
mute. Didn't you realize that it could hurt your image? The warning that was
written around June 10, hit the public at the end of the month thanks to
internal delays in Borland, so it never met its goal that was to prevent
customers that June 30 wasn't the happy end.
- At the time of Borcon, it was evident that the deal was running towards
its own demise. But your CEO asked for two weeks more and gave good signs.
Is this bad faith or excess of enthusiasm? Did Dale trick us again or did he
fear a boycott to Borcon? AFAIK, I can't answer this myself, because Mrs.
Harrison has said nothing more than she's no longer acting as the General
Manager for InterHazard and ultimately, she has virtually disappeared.

> 2) We are working to develop a plan around supporting InterBase
> as an open source product. We will be inviting the community to
> make suggestions about how we can best accomplish this goal.

Really interesting, Ted, but is this a joke or can I trust you this time?
AFAICT, Borland NEVER has heard the developers more than with some ideas for
improvements in Delphi. Don't you think that for the newbie, your statement
is wonderful but for the seasoned and long-time Borland advocate, it's 99%
suspicious, given your past history? You are just now trying to develop a
plan around IB Open Source when ISC had the plan ready and the ducks in a
row. You haven't released all key pieces for a successful and REAL Open
Source product. IB is either Open Source or not open source, but retaining a
part of it for your private use and pretending to charge millions for it is
to misinterpret the Open Source spirit and hence, to trick the developers.
This smells like outsourcing of your development, but done for free by the
community for you to reap million of dollars. I warn you that this partial
scheme won't get full acceptance as your CEO expects. Don't underestimate
us, please, we are people able to think same as you; we evaluate what we are
offered and what we are asked to do. If you get the things screwed and use a
cheat Open Source model, you'll face the Linux and Open Source advocates and
it would be a bitter drink for your company. You risk the future of Kylix if
you lose credibility in the Open Source and Linux market. This project is
your first signal to the "open" market. Tell your CEO that your good
intentions should not only be put in press statements but in real actions.
Tell your CEO that not all of us developers accept your candy with a fuzzy
press article plus a lame open source project that lacks important pieces.

The deal that never happened and the ISC-IV that was vaporized before
having a chance to run put you in a good position: you reaped the shares'
rise from the initial Open Source announcement, you kept the attention of
developers and some press throughout six months, you had a successful Borcon
and now, thanks to Harrison and Beach, you now own a business plan for the
long-term life of IB that you never were able to create before. It's clear
like distilled water that you didn't need Harrison after such assets that
you got for free.

Your press article contradicts your own words in the letter I'm replying,
because for one part, you stated that ISC proposal and BorPrise proposal
never converged while for the other side, you stated that the shareholders
decided that it was better to keep IB than to give it to a NewCo. So, even
if you didn't want to tell us the truth, you told it to us: after your
marketing management was notified on the clever business plan of Harrison &
Beach and the amount of deals Beach and Kemper had achieved even before
being NewCo, your stockholders decided to kill the deal and so try to
materialize the plans other people created in 5 months for you even without
being paid (except Mrs. Harrison). So, you are an absolute winner in this
moment. If the proposal didn't converged, Dale wouldn't have said in Borcon
that all was going very well, unless you are willing to accept he is a
lying, a master cheater. An auspicious agreement (Dale's impressions) went
down to the profound waters in a week and drowned. Totally suspicious. The
real motive -according to me- is that, for the first time since you acquired
Ashton-Tate, you realized that you had in IB an authentic gold mine and some
management people awakened and saw that after all, IB is not bad and that it
can produce money with or without Ann Harrison. So, you only had to get
inflexible in the negotiations and declare the deal void. (I imagine the
face of delusion of those forces inside Borland that since many years want
to be IB dead and buried.) But you were donated a long-time plan for IB and
now you want to make it happen. From the monetary pov, it's a masterpiece.
But morality, personal integrity and respect for the truth seem to be things
absent from any dictionary your board of directors use or know. As an ironic
consequence, maybe this is the first time that you are GENUINELY COMMITTED
to Interbase, called in justice by Informant Magazine "the best hidden
secret of Borland" and "the hidden crown jewell of Borland".

The sole fact that you're asking us for ideas tell us that you still are
clueless about your own move and that expect us to drive your initiatives,
your marketing campaign and your new releases. But this is not because you
love us so much, but because you don't have clarity on how to proceed and
you are frightened that you can miss the boat and risk the future of your
bets on the Open Source market, Kylix being the most prominent example. And
you want to gain time, of course. Candy, candy, candy. How many tons of
candies does Borland have for us still? What are your plans for IB in the
long time, please. If you don't state that clearly, I think I'm going to
help discredit your efforts. What happens if your CFO evaluates IB in
December of this year and finds that IB doesn't fit in the expected
revenues? Are you going to kill IB definitely? Are you going to retain the
fixed documentation forever? And the important data stored in Marion? What
kind of Open Source is this? You won't enjoy being accused sarcastically of
offering the community Open Trick or Fried Phoenix, for example.

Sir, this is the first time that I happen to open the mouth on this: I was
one of the stupid people that helped enhancing the documentation in these
months. While there's no radical changes, I'm confident that the changes
that were discussed and realized can be considered important improvements,
specially for newcomers, because several specific sources of confussions
were squashed, for example. And now, the only docs that you offer are the
same beta docs that contain some bugs that predate the kingdom of Del Yocam.
In the name of Ann Harrison, Bill Karwin, David Schnepper, Carolyn Stallard,
me and some current Borland employees that cooperated in a tiresome mail
exchange race to analyze and fix the docs in the latest months, I urge you
to allow the release of the revised documents ASAP! If you don't react in
this fiasco, I promise you that a group of developers is going to
reconstruct the documentation from scratch, in a new format and we will find
a way to make sure Borland won't get a nasty penny from our effort. Maybe
you are going to FW your counsel just in case, who knows.

> 3) We welcome the development of new companies seeking to
> support InterBase. We hope that, as with the Linux community,
> there will be many successful companies that develop around
> InterBase.

What kind of support do you expect to see? Have you posted in your web site
or do you plan to post soon the guidelines for those companies? Will you
accept multiple companies offering IB with some bells and whistles as it
happens with Linux or will you retain the exclusive right to market IB and
will leabe to others only technical support? I want to see a draft or
proposition in your site, please. I want to know clearly what can be and
can't be done, given the current license model. DOs and DON'Ts are the way
to understand the convoluted documents generated by lawyers for legal
purposes. AFAIK, nobody else can use the Interbase trademark. Where did you
get such business model? Sure, not from Linux, because anmy company selling
a Linux flavor can use such name. It seems to me that you're learning the
bad practices of MickeySoft.

Now that you are a technical person, can you explain the obvious
contradiction between "we aren't a database company" stated when you got rid
of Dbase and the efforts you are putting in JDataStore? Clearly, you write
once and deliver on several platforms. It's more painful to deliver IB on
several platforms. Then I can understand that you want to kill IB. Now, why
do you insist on retaining IB? I wouldn't retain the source of all my
headaches and money loss... unless there's a corporate masochism
established. If Borland isn't a db company, JDataStore is either a lunatic
project or a simple demo of the power of JBuilder. If JDataStore is all
Borland needs, get rid of IB and period, do a favor to the community and
you'll always will be remembered as the wise company that donated a db
product's sources when you coudn't continue behind it.

> While we were not able to come to an investment agreement with
> Ann Harrison and Paul Beach we appreciate the efforts they have
> made on behalf of the InterBase community and wish them the best
> in their endeavors.

You probably suspect already what some us think of how you managed this
affair: you got credibility benefits from calling Ann Harrison and finally
reaped the benefits of the initial hype and the deals that were being done
by the new ISC. Of course I'm biased because I don't know all the details,
but you can get the idea and I think I'm not alone on this perception. Also,
since Ann & friends developed a complete business plan for Interbase that
your marketing dept missed since 1991 when you acquired Ashton-Tate, you
know are in possesion of such business plan, so it's no great surprise you
found it doable and decided to kick Ann, since you got for free what you
wanted: the sales model for Interbase that you never could devise. I know
it's rude, but I'm with the pestered developers that think you managed this
half-year history in totally bad faith and you seem to confirm it by
delivering IB in a wheelchair, not as true and full open source. Tell me,
please: who more than you can run the test suit to see if the engine's
modifications are ok? Aren't you playing the same game than MS with Internet
Explorer tighly coupled to the OS? Assuming someone else comes with an
IB-based company, do they submit the engine with extensions they created to
you, so you can run the test suit and charge them a couple of millions for a
certification? Are you going to take the idea of the W2K certification logo?
In case you haven't thought on this alternative before and you implement it,
please give me credits. Maybe you can name me senior VP of Marketing. After
all, I don't have any idea of marketing. Please, draw the limits of the
companies you want to be born and whether they can use the trademark and
other rights. But do it soon, the Internet time is not at the pace of the
street time.

> Please feel free to send comments or questions to me directly
> at:
> tshelton@...

That's what I'm doing and hope you will end reading my letter before get
infuriated. I think that we deserve a good explanation of your next moves
regarding IB to have at least a minimum confidence on you as a company. I
still want to think that Borland has a future, that IB has a future and that
Dale is not an evil criature that wants our blood and work without even a
"thanks" in return.

> yours,
> Ted Shelton

Please, remember to clean your screen and keyboard, they might be damaged
with the acid that's contained in this letter, although in chemistry I was
told that acids and bitterness (bases) are nullified mutually and both
ingredients are present here. I agree partially with an Italian gentleman
who suggested that your CEO could be sent a copy of W2K as an attachment
(assuming there's a mailer capable of handling such attachment) as a
symbolic way of tell you that (exaggeration follows) you are starting to
appear as a MickeySoft minion company with the other foot in the penguin's
land.

I hope sincerely that you never have to read again in your life a letter as
impolite, crude and ironic as the mine, because certainly I not only made
evident my apprehensions about IB but about the whole Borland thing
throughout the 10 years that I've followed you. Now, I'm trying to "go com
myself", in case I find the immortality.

I deemed unnecesary to comment on the press release after all I've said
previosly. Thanks for reading... assuming you still are reading, of course.
I don't need an answer but if you are willing to give me one or feel the
compelling need to refute me in a timely way, I will read it, of course.

Regards.

C.
---------
Claudio Valderrama C.
Ingeniero en Informática - Consultor independiente
http://members.tripod.com/cvalde
Owner of the Interbase WebRing.