On Sat, 28 Apr 2001 14:21:36 +0100, Paul Beach wrote:

>Its amazing how time distorts facts.... and although I am reading this
>exchange with interest, I wish to add a couple of corrections.
>
>> > December 99: Bill Karwin, former product manager of IB on
>> > Borprise (Helen, correct me
>> > if I made a mistake here) and flames and hoaxes and all type of
>> > speculation about the
>> > death of Interbase Relational Database Server came and flow like
>> > lava rivers. This epoch
>> > is related, by the ones that were on NGs and message lists on
>> > that moment, as being
>> > the "Black December". Pressure at Borland CEO gets to the sky.
>>
>> IB people resigned on Dec-14. The issue was known almost by accident on
>> Dec-17 and published immediately in Mers-list by Greg Deatz (author of the
>> freeUdfLib).
>
>Bill was at the time that he resigned was the acting R&D Director for
>InterBase at Inprise/Borland, as I had asked him to take over that position,
>from his previous position as product manager, because our previous R&D
>Director (Madhukar Thakar) had left.
>
>On the 14th three people resigned initially - 1. Paul Beach, General Manager
>of InterBase, 2. Bill Karwin acting Director of R&D and 3. Wayne Ostiguy
>Services and Support Manager. This was then followed by others, in a sort of
>tidal wave.

It's true. I apologize. I don't have the mail messages anymore, so I wrote
from memory and asked to get corrected.

>>
>>
>> > Jan 2000: Borland ( called Inprise on that moment) announce the
>> > open of source code
>> > of Interbase RDBMS and Ann Harrison(original co-author of the
>> > software) initiates nego-
>> > tiations related to the expurge of Interbase line of products
>> > from Borland to a new compa-
>> > ny, commanded by her and Paul Reeves (initially)
>
>Paul Reeves would be thrilled by this, but although Paul is part of
>IBPhoenix now, he wasn't asked by Dale to set up the Open Source spin off.
>Intially it was Ann and I, and we were then introduced to Matt Larsen who
>would handle operations.

I confused the Pauls!! :-))))

>
>> Jim started because ISC and EasySoft couldn't agree on the development
>> price. The gory details of the failed agreement are not clear as to
>comment
>> on them. Later, Easysoft continued developing their driver.
>
>Jim did the ODBC driver, because he offered to do it cheaper and faster than
>Easysoft, he also had a better architecture.
>He also agreed to Open Source it - once he got paid for the work.

Ok.


[]s Fabricio
Systems Developer