> -----Original Message-----
> From: Geoff Worboys [mailto:geoff@...]
> Sent: Sábado 29 de Diciembre de 2001 20:12
> To: doidodoscornos
>
> If we attempt to exclude IB users we will only discourage such people
> from getting involved - and as you point out we need all the help we
> can get. If we follow Borlands example of attempting to be exclusive
> then we will only lose people to alternative systems.

Better said than my prior letter, Geoff. We don't compete directly for
profit with Borland, so there's no reason to kick IB users from these
forums. Borland has a strong reason to discourage FB postings in their NGs
that's preservation of sales; we don't. That a FB dev gets private requests
for paid tech support or that someone decides to chip in money to push some
enhancement to FB, for example, wouldn't be a problem for me.

> IMO the best way forward is to continue to welcome IB users. We need
> to encourage all users to post the IB/FB version information with
> their questions, so that appropriate answers may be given.

Furthermore, having people to post IB tech issues is a good way to:
- Test if the same bug is in FB. If it was in the base code, we'll discover
that we (FB) suffer from it, too.
- Learn indirectly about new features or mechanisms that Borland implements
in the commercial version.

I don't have much hope that cooperation will happen in good extent between
IB and FB, but at least Borland committed two weeks ago a change to their
open source version that's a copy 99% verbatim of an enhancement I put in
FB's isql... something's better than nothing.
;-)
There were two additional small changes that solve same problems than we
closed 4 or more months ago, but in a different way. Duplicate efforts.
:-(

C.