Hello all,

Claudio
You fear that my position would polarize, that I was trying to
separate the Firebird from the InterBase people. But that's not the
objective:

All my remarks were about terminology, about how Firebird should use
its name in clear opposition to InterBase, in order to forge itself
an identity. That doesn't mean that people from Borland wouldn't be
welcome anymore, not at all. Indeed, as also Mark mentioned
somewhere, an individual can actually participate in the two camps,
there's no problem with this.

All it means is, that the words Firebird and InterBase must be used
in a way which makes clear that they are not one and the same. That
includes, in my opinion, that content on the Firebird site should be
grouped in order to make this distinction visible. Therefore the
component called "InterBase API" or something, would be listed
under "third partie components" or something. Is that really so evil?
I believe it's a consequent position necessary to give the word
Firebird the correct meaning. People would understand this and it
doesn't exclude anyone, I think.

Jason

About the Association, you say that would turn the whole movement
into a company which wouldn't be a free community anymore.

That's not the case, because there's no need to be an association
member in order to participate in the community. The only objective
of the association would be to organize funding. And since it can be
constructed as a "meritocracy", it's always the most active
contributors (and also the most ancient ones) who would control this
corporation, so it wouldn't separate things.

But I hope you see why it would be useful: It would greatly help to
find sponsors and it would allow the community to sell CDs for
example and the income from all this would have to be affected to the
project since this is the statutory objective of the corporation.

Please note that a corporation is indispensable for commercial
activities (sell CDs). Your current plans simply intend to let
IBPhoenix do that job. But there's a big difference: An association
would be non-profit and any income would be exclusively affected to
community projects. On the other hand IBPhoenix is the business of
Ann & Co. and the income is affected to what Ann wants to do with it
(buy a nice car for example).

So, actually you reject the association and at the same time approve
or accept that the distribution is done by something far "worse",
which gives no guarantee that the funds will be affected to the
project.

Firebird is a single product and in my opinion there's no point to
having several quasi-official distributions of it. But since there
should be one single official distribution, it appears only logical
to me, that the product is distributed by Firebird and not a Firebird
member, even if this member (Ann) has much merit.

There are several possible business models. Which ever you choose,
please present it as what it is and give it the appropriate
organization so it can make the best out of Firebird for the final
benefit of all.

The currently active developers seem to understand that even people
who works on an OSS project needs to make a living, somehow. They
need to earn some money. So they try (with I don't know how much
effort) to find sponsors and complain a lot that there aren't any. My
reply to them is: Why don't you found a non-profit organization which
by all evidence fascilitates the search for sponsors a lot???

Ok, there are those, like Pavel, who simply say "oh - financing -
that's not what Firebird is all about, it's only about coding,
marketing and all rest we don't care". So I guess he doesn't complain
that there's no money for Firebird. But there must be others, who are
conscient that sustained growth isn't possible without cash, even in
an OSS project. So my question: Where do you think you will get that
money?

Obviously you don't want to search sponsors yourself, if you did, you
would not hesitate to create an Association for that purpose. The
argument that it had been examined but was too difficoult is simply
ridiculous.

If the source of revenue shall be a commercial venture (e.g. selling
CDs), I seriously ask you what is the advantage of a profit oriented
corporation (IBPhoenix) over a non-profit one (Firebird Association)
which would assure that the income is affected to Firebird
development?


Please tell me.


Markus