Hi All,

I have been very quiet on this list for a long time.

I have gone through periods where I would advocate the gathering of a tar and
feathering mob with Dale and the whole Inprise board of directors as a target.
Thankfully, I have been able to hold my tongue and stop myself from making a bad
situation worse.

I appreciate Rob, both in his forthright approach, and his honesty.

I do not agree with his dealing with Inprise, as, from stories he has told me, he
has been badly treated in the past by Inprise. I just don't like to see someone
who I have seen help others, get hurt (although Rob will probably say that he can
take care of himself).

I have friends who I met because they were Inprise employees, and some who where
third party support groups for Borland/Inprise. As individuals, I have great
respect for all of them. Unfortunately, history has shown that as a corporate
culture, Inprise does not treat it's employee's, var's or outside consultants with
any respect. Every person I have talked to has a war story that has cost them
money or self respect because of corporate politics.

It comes down to, as end user of Interbase, and a developer who has produced
packages based upon IB, will I trust a 'certified build' from Inprise?

The fact that our company is still using IB 5.6 and currently has no plans to move
to 6, should answer that question.

When Ann and Paul produce a certified build, we will start looking at the upgrade.

If they decide not to continue with the builds, well, Distributel will keep using
5.6 until all of our many packages are ported to a new platform.

As for the open source community, it will continue, without any further prodding
from the rest of us. The daily announcements of new interfaces and platforms for
IB is a sure sign that no matter how complex the task, someone, somewhere will take
it on and overcome it.

Concerning the nasty comments and flames, has anyone here subscribed to the linux
kernel list? Some of the things that go on there makes the little tirades that go
on here, look like butterfly kisses.

So it all comes down to the test suite and whether or not the internal Inprise
Interbase team will be able to generate enough income from it to keep the division
operating. All I can do is speculate and offer my opinion.
In my opinion, the Interbase division will not last much longer than the final date
on the current long term support contracts that are still active. Once the legal
obligation is over, and the threat of lawsuits gone, I do not see Inprise
committing resources to keep the division open.
I sincerely hope I am wrong about this, but, given Inprises history of dropping
older products as quickly as possible so that all possible resources can be focused
on the next great thing, I am not going to change my opinion, unless there is a
major change in Inprise management.

So, I personally will not be working on the Inprise tree, although, (when I get
down to a 30 hour workday) I will probably work on the Firebird tree.

I will be supporting users, as a thank you to all those who helped me when I was
getting started.
I will be continuing my IB Designer project (now that my servers are back up and
the firewalls are working again)

I hope I have explained my position without muddying the waters too much.

best regards

Dalton


Doug Chamberlin wrote:

>
> Interesting ramble from Rob. Got me going on a number of fronts. Hope I
> don't add to the confusion with my comments...
>
> At 9/6/2000 08:17 PM (Wednesday), Rob wrote:
> >Maybe everyone thinks that screaming at Borland for transgressions that it may
> >or may not have committed is bringing the community together, I do not!
> >[more about what has been unproductive to community building]
>
> I agree with what you are saying here. However, the community needs a way
> to vent frustration and we do it online. If that drives people away then so
> be it.
>
> We have a fledgling open source community here which is still organizing
> itself. Anyone who comes to visit should understand that and make
> allowances. We will get better at this as we go along.
>
> One thing we definitely need is one or more mature voices from those who
> have the big picture and long view in mind. When others jump up screaming
> death, destruction, and desperation that is the time for those voices to be
> heard to calm things down a bit, re-establish perspective, and keep
> everyone focused. We have seen some of that but hopefully we will see more.
>
> >I seem to keep inferring from the messages about the test control system/suite
> >that if Ann had got a hold of InterBase then she would have released the
> >entire test suite, which as I have been trying to point out is not correct.
>
> The continuing confusion about the test suite mostly stems from the lack of
> clear messages about what was intended (on both Inprise and ISC's parts).
> When everyone heard a test suite existed they correctly assumed this was an
> important piece of the puzzle. The also naturally assumed the test suite
> should come along with the source code. Not unreasonable assumptions but
> not accurate either.
>
> The confusion has been exacerbated by Inprise's overall limited
> communications with the community. Inprise has a history of not
> communicating well with the developer community online, leaving most of
> that communication up to Team B. Only in the last year or two has that
> changed. The corporate level, official communications continue to be sparse
> and usually PR fluff. Ted Shelton's online contributions were wonderful
> when they started at the beginning of the Summer. Since they stopped
> everyone if largely left to wondering once again what is going on.
>
> >With InterBase OpenSourced, there are only three things of value left.
> >
> >1) The InterBase Name
> >2) The InterBase Web Site
> >3) The full test control system
>
> I would add
> 4) Knowledge of the product internals
> 5) Knowledge of the recent history of development both in how changes were
> implemented and why
>
> I also think the Interbase name has some but not all that much value. It
> just is not well known enough to be all that valuable. IMHO, an open source
> DBMS named Firebird which looked, acted, and smelled like Interbase would
> probably do as well.
>
> >It appears to me that both Ann and Borland expected that the new InterBase
> >Company would happen and both were caught off guard by the outcome. I suspect
> >Ann would have made different decisions (fiscal amongst others) and Borland
> >would have had a management team and plans in place to handle InterBase if
> >they all new that the New ISC wasn't going to happen. But that is water under
> >the bridge and everyone is scrambling to pick up their respective pieces.
>
> I heartily agree with this. Looks exactly that way from my perspective, also.
>
> >The community needs to make a decision as to whether they want to cut Borland
> >some slack and see what they plan or continue to bash. Large companies move
> >slowly and bashing drives existing and potential customers away. I hope the
> >community chooses carefully and regulates their decision.
>
> I think we are trying. It will take time. I'll bet each of us has cringed
> with dismay at more than one post made by someone else in the community
> over the past few months. It happens.
>
> As a self-regulating group I think we are actually doing quite well. We are
> all feeling our way along here but the community is maturing before our eyes.
>
> >The community also has to decide how they are going to handle the InterBase
> >R&D people when the show up on this list. You can continue to "jump" them when
> >the surface on this list and drive them away or welcome them to the community
> >and use their guidance. After all, the most knowledgable person on the current
> >releases of InterBase isn't Ann Harrison nor Jim Starkey, it is Charlie Cairo
> >and he is with Borland/InterBase R&D.
> >
> >The community also had to decide how they are going to handle InterBase Tech
> >Support when they surface on this list, and they will surface here. I hope it
> >is with a warm welcome not a "where is my test suite".
>
> Me, too!
>
> >[... stuff about the archives and build procedures and test certifications]
>
> I wish the R&D people would share more of their experience with how to make
> changes judiciously. This is the sort of thing we need them to contribute.
>
> I respect what you say about the value of the Inprise CVS tree vs. the
> others. However, having seen many of the fixes that have been made to the
> Firebird tree I must say I'd sure like to see some of them added to the
> Inprise tree. A bunch of those are fixes to simple typos in the code which
> I cannot think would do anything but help.
>