Kyle Green wrote:

> A true fork would allow firebird to grow freely. I would have more
> confidence in its future than if it is tied to, or dependent on Borland in
> anyway.

I agree that this effort should never be dependant upon Borland again. That
is a major point that I hoped was clear. Borland needs to come our way or it
isn't going to happen. Somewhat of a compromise needs to occur but nothing
that would place this endeavor into dependence upon them.

If Borland couldn't make InterBase successful as a closed source commercial
product prior to going Open Source there is no way they will survive
financially with it under a commercial model again. They have chosen to take
it open source and the only way it will end up being a positive for Borland
is to play the open source game the way it needs to be played. I think it
would be ludicrous for them to attempt to do anything else.

Where Borland should come into play is to allow their engineers to pitch in
their expertise as any other community member would. They can also use all
of the hardware that exists for running the test suites and certification. I
know that much of this can be quickly duplicated by the massive outreach of
community efforts but if Borland were united it would surely help a lot.

The biggest benefit this would provide is that there wouldn't be so much
confusion surrounding this whole ordeal and we could start getting a lot
more recognition in general for the whole movement. I think we would already
be on a lot of major LINUX distributions if there was a clear consensus
surrounding InterBase.

I guess in plain English what I am calling for is requesting that Borland
back Firebird in the true open source endeavor and harness it to their
advantage for positive mindshare. If there is one good and solid base of
code to work from then the rest can duke it out over who gets the support
contracts from the user base.

> Just my opinion.

Certainly a worthy one. Thanks for frankly sharing it.

Regards,
Jason Wharton