> -----Original Message-----
> From: markus.soell@... [mailto:markus.soell@...]
> Sent: Miércoles 25 de Abril de 2001 10:27
>
> Exactly. However, for the sake of clear terminology, I wouldn't say
> Firebird involves people in the IBDI and InterBase communities.

I still see in the list of firebird members at least one IB VAR and a
Borland certified trainer, for example. We don't exclude IB people. IBDI
created IB-architect list were originally both sides converged. If Borland
engineers stopped posting there that's their decision. The list served its
sync purposes when an agreement was reached to close the 125+ generators bug
that was in the engine from prehistoric times.

> An OSS community, as I understand it, is identified by a common
> source code repository. If somebody forks the code that's also a
> split in the community. Therefore we have formally two communities,
> Firebird and Interbase (in reality the latter doesn't seem to exist).
> IBDI isn't a community, it's an organization.

I'm not sure if you want to discuss semantics, politics or dictate what the
people should have done and didn't or what people should do in the future.
The IBDI list doesn't kick people that prefer the IB distro. I expect that
developers eventually will use either FB or IB, depending on requirements
(mostly money v/s that marketing artifact called certification) so IBDI is
the place to discuss anything non-technical regarding the future of the
product that was known as IB for several years, regardless of current names.
Or are we wasting bandwith in eternal useless rhetorics? We use the engine
because it serves our needs. Ideally, there would be only one version.
Borland moved as quickly as a frozen snail after offering the sources for
download and didn't allow foreign people in their tree, so this caused FB to
be created. It wasn't a conspiration planned months ahead. But it doesn't
mean IBDI or FB members are going to slaughter people that are in the IBDI
list and prefer or have to use IB. FB people visit Borland NGs, IB users
visit IBDI lists (IB-Support, for example), etc. You can't cut with a knife
two portions and claim you splitted totally IB and FB community. I don't see
the point, too. If you want to raise only politics and nitpicking, go to
Borland newsgroups and TeamB people will be delighted to answer you in
several tones, depending on each member's personality.

> I think a contributor doesn't work at the same time with Borland and
> Firebird. Either he submits his code to Borland or to the Firebird
> tree. The one who writes documentation will entitle it either
> Firebird... Manual or InterBase... Manual and, by that choice of
> title, express his sens of belonging to one community rather than to
> the other. It's therefore a flaw in your terminology if you say that
> Firebird involves people from InterBase.

False. Some people have gone to submit in FB same bug report that they
posted in Borland newsgroup. Some gentleman offered Borland a piece of code
for dynamic execution of statements and now he's working on a more accurate
code to include it in Firebird. The IBDI Handbook will be useful for both
Borland's IB® and Firebird. If you download IB beta docos from Borland, you
can apply them to FB. Tools developers are interested to be present in both
products. With the low market share of the whole IB/FB, missing one distro
would be a pity for commercial entities.

> Oh, I know what you mean. For example the one who makes an ODBC
> driver that can be used for both InterBase and Firebird. Does he
> belong to the Firebird community even if he calls his driver
> InterBase something? Strictly speaking no. Choosing to call his piece
> of software InterBase, he belongs to Borland, the oposite camp.

So do you want to force people to take one side and both groups to be
isolated as it was with the Berlin Wall? While you don't make sincere
efforts to understand how we have come to the current scenario since IB5 or
at least since December 1999, I suggest that you lower your arrogance in
trying to tell long-time engine users how to think. Posting your newbie
concerns is welcome, posting suggestions and doubts is welcome, posting
criticisms is welcome (unless they are a troll) but trying to dictate the
future seems exaggerate. There are long-time users that think Borland did
the best they could, there are long-time users that do not have a strong
aversion or preference for any field and there are long-time users that
think Borland screwed expectations and themselves. Trying to create three
armies with them is childish.
Instead of characterizing you as a mole, I want to believe in good faith
that you're confused by the current state of things but it's difficult to
condense the story of the engine in 10 paragraphs. Maybe your
over-enthusiasm leads you to want to change everything in a day. That's not
how the community that you downplay has grown. It grew over time, over
years, not over months. It grew on the newsgroups and not too much fostered
by Borland since this is maybe the first time when they try to give IB the
attention it needs. And the community mostly grew in forums not managed by
Borland. I can have a harsh meeting with a person that favors the opposite
opinion than me regarding Borland, but it doesn't mean that person is my
enemy or that I should deny him/her access to my site or the FB newsgroups.
Shooting in all directions at a time only creates confussion. We can't fix
anything in a week... but we can improve in a few areas.
Your question on why creating a commercial venture for FB is not so easy
leads me to see that you either don't have experience with financial
investment to create such companies or that you need to be explained all the
efforts that were done to get funding, investors, sponsors, etc. Or you need
to be explained that the value of open source companies went to a rational
levels by mid 2000 instead of the hype in 1999 and that fact (together with
other facts) forced Borland's change of plans. This explanation would need
to be done in a long posting. Before July 2000, great expectation existed.
Now ask those investors and sponsors why they ran away after July 2000. Ask
Embarcadero why we never knew about their initial offering to update their
ER/Studio product to work with IB6. Ask the possible sponsors on the IBDI
Handbook why they disappeared after July 2000. Ask some third party vendors
why they vanished and didn't include support for IB6. Instead of posting my
ideas about Borland, I would only say that those third parties lost faith in
the efforts and since the intended company didn't happen, they lost that
natural contact, since revamped plans at Borland would take several months
and agreements would need to be pursued from start. Only one example of what
a delay in IB6 appearance meant: some IB6 users couldn't ship their promised
products to their customers because they were facing a beta product (that
was considered dead between December 1999 and mid February 2000) whereas
Synectics couldn't sell their IBReplicator because they were tied to sell it
with IB6 as it was the original agreement, so that company waited with great
patience until July (they reached a deal with the impending ISC that failed
to be) just to be surprised that Borland retained all rights on the product
so they had to renegotiate again to be able to sell IBReplicator for
themselves.

> Yes, thanks for pointing this out, I know IBPhoenix has given a lot
> and agree they should receive something in return.

If there are 10 more "companies" like IBPhoenix and all of them succeed and
all of them have something to contribute to retrofit the development of the
engine, that's brilliant. We don't exclude participation from other
commercial entities.

C.