> -----Original Message-----
> From: markus.soell@... [mailto:markus.soell@...]
> Sent: Jueves 26 de Abril de 2001 4:38
>
> 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.

Maybe identity (name), but since the products continue being largely
compatible, they are like the same car sold by several companies under
different model numbers/names or like some computer hardware device that
share the same IC in them but are used in assembled products by different
card manufacturers.

> 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.

The interbase API is compatible with the firebird API. They are
inter-operable. So, a "fork" will happen when some group sees that some
feature is a must and the other group is not interested in it. It will lead
to expansions or enhancements, but the core API will remain the same. So,
listing the FB API separately even though it's the same IB API is of no
practical use today.
Whether Borland will release a totally revamped and revised version of
their PDF documentation is another issue, of course. I have a beta langref
that I cannot release because I worked on it together with Bill Karwin and
Carolyn Stallard before July 2000. It still needs improvements, but compared
to the known one, it's has many fixes. Since Borland didn't acknowledge the
offering from IBPhoenix to give up rights on the modifications if some
guides were released with the changes merged, we can only hope that either
the community produces an open source set of docos (Joseph Alba and Andy
Canfield at Firebird, if I'm right) or that Borland releases a really
revised documentation set. Did they do that with the certified IB?

C.
---------
Claudio Valderrama C.
Ingeniero en Informática - Consultor independiente
http://www.cvalde.com