Ops, what a newbie I am: I didn't know about the existence of this
newsgroup! But I take a look at the last posts, and I'm really
familiar with the persons...

So, Helen, let's continue this thread here. I really think that this
is really important, and easy to implement ;)

> Artur and others,
> The issue of the lists and newsgroup names does surface from time
> to time - you and Sean Leyne both seem to think it's important.

I'm new to FB, and I will speak as a newbie. But I'm a newbie that
owns a small software house, and put all his efforts to use FireBird.
So, I'm talking about something that will be feeding my family.

> The "ib-" prefix on our lists predates Borland's decision to fork

off a commercial InterBase 6.
(...)

> Well, July 2000 changed that. Other things changed too, as time

went by, amongst them the freedom of the old InterBase hands to post
support responses to the (now defunct) list hosted by Robert Schieck
on mers.com. Several of us moved our efforts to ib-support.
Recently, when the Mers list was suddenly killed without notice,
there was a mass migration of people who needed more than the
borland.public.interbase newsgroups had to offer.

This is important: FB it's open source, and we will need some money
to put it working. IB is not. It's a Borland product. In my opinion,
we are wasting efforts helping Borland. That will not bring money to
the project.

My personal decision to change all development in my company to use
FB was based mainly in the kind of support that I get from the
newsgroups. This is what matter in a good product: quality of
support. And FireBird as an open source project must live from
support.

Borland break out with the open source project. What are we waiting
for? We are free to fly away, let's not wasting our time. Let's put
the credits where they belong! In the FireBird Team!

> It's probable that the majority of folk who use the ib-support list

for help are Firebird users. But it's also true that we have a
number InterBase(R) users needing and using the list, including a
fairly steady stream of new subscribers.

>

I think this is a Borland problem, don't you? They bougth a product
from Borland, they use the Interbase name in their products, ...
Let's put all this people upgrading to FireBird, and let's put all
that customers of them bringing money to the FireBird Team.

> Yes, I watch the subscription notices and the postings that follow,

and I can tell that we are far from being exclusively a "Firebird
list". People who buy Borland products get "free" developer licences
for InterBase(R) in their software packages; and there are still
folk who download those buggy old binaries from the Borland site.

>

Yeap, time to change that. "You want to be in this list getting
support? Great! But we don't use Interbase here, we use FireBird.
Sorry, this is a FireBird ng." or something like "Your client is
using IB 5.5? Time to upgrade! We will help everyone who is upgrading
from Borland IB here." (the word upgrading should be in bold).

We must grow! I need my clients to know about FireBird. We all need.

At this time, and things keeping this way, IT'S MORE EASY TO SELL AN
IB 6.5 LICENCE TO OUR CLIENTS THAT TO SELL THEM THE IDEA TO USE
FIREBIRD!

> At times Sean Leyne has proposed starting up a "Firebird support"

list on Sourceforge. I've opposed that because I see more
disadvantage than benefit, viz.

Hey, I have to invite Sean to a beer one of these days. It seems to
be a wonderful person... (You are invited also, Helen).

> -- it means that those of us who are able to help with questions

have to split time and effort across multiple lists. The load is
already heavy enough.

Yes. But it's an option to choose in wich lists are we going to give
support. We must do a start.
You redirect me to this list, don't you?

> -- it places an undesirable "ring" around Firebird users that

somehow excludes users of InterBase(R). Where can they go, other
than the b.p.i. newsgroups?

That's my point: WE MUST HAVE A LIST WHERE WE CAN EXCLUDE IB USERS!
What does Borland do if you ask them some support to FireBird?

In my point of view, FB should be competition to Borland. FB should
be better than IB. Should be faster. People who spend their time
building an testing FB should have more profits that Borland gets
with IB. Let's make this project feed our familys. Let's buy a
Ferrari. Or are we here just for fun?

> Other proposals have come forward regarding the hosting of "fb-ib"

lists and newsgroups, particularly as fallback if yahoogroups should
collapse.

> In principle I'm not opposed to changing the names of our lists, if

we can find succinct names that properly reflect their non-partisan
character. In practical terms, it's a nightmare. We can't *change"
a list name on yahoogroups. We have to move the subscribers to a new
list, a process that takes several days since subscribers have to be
moved in blocks of 50 per 24-hour period. In the process, we lose
our archives. (We do have a few months of archives on the atkin news
server, so our worst loss would be the ib-architect history which
goes right back to early in 2000).

>

Ops. Let's find another way. Let's discuss this. Let's find a way.
Maybe one start should be let the user decide to do the change -
create a new one, and let this old ones die. The same way we want our
customers to do: let IB die and use FB...

> Anyway, if any of you have any strong feelings about it, let's air

it in IBDI.

I have strong feelings in it. I have a small company (just 5 people),
so I can not help with money at this point. But I'm shure that I will
do it as soon as I get some beneficts from FB. But now I can help
with other things, such as my time, my people time. And I can help
with other resources: I have a dedicated connection to the internet
in a cable system, I can for example put that resources available to
FireBird Team. Just ask, I will try to find a solution. I'm commited
in this project and I want to help. It must be a FireBird Project,
helping FB to get popularity and growing by it's own.

Open Source projects have just a way to grow up: selling know-how. We
are giving that for free to Borland.

I think that everyone is afraid of something here...

Am I missing something?

(Sorry for my poor english!)
Artur Anjos