--- In IBDI@y..., reed mideke <rfm@c...> wrote:
[... ]
> > You don't think the name
> > Firebird is of any importance for the community and you are
> > indifferent to the question whether this brand will be widely
known
> > or not.
> Right. It is the product that is important to the community.

Sure. All I want is that there be a name to designate this community.
Every project has a name. If "Firebird" is used for this one, that's
all I want. But if Firebird should be used for things from Borland
too, the community wouldn't have its own name, which would be a
pitty. Therefore I insist on proper brand usage.
>
> > You don't want Firebird to work with money from sponsors,
> > because money might become more important than peer contacts.

> I'm not averse to sponsorship. Some care would have to be taken
> implementing it. What I am averse to is an organization that
> puts brand, market share and marketing in a position of more
> importance than doing the right thing for the product and the
> user community.

Somehow the word "brand" has a marketing touch. But all I want is
that this community adopts _one_ name for itself. All the other OSS
projects have also one name. In the present case it's very particular
historical reasons which made that there's several names (IBDI,
IBPhoenix, Firebird). If we correct this and get back to one single
name, we don't do more marketing than any other OSS project. But for
sure the presentation is much better (just as good as that of other
OSS projects), which is what I want.

> That seems to be your attitude, if not your stated position. This
> is what I was referring to when I said it seemed like your were
> trying to make firebird a organization that is like a company
> that doesn't make money. A (commercial) company is driven by market
> share and units sold.
>
> >You
> > don't see why it would be of any use to have an "official"
Firebird
> > because, according to you, Firebird shall have no center and no
> > cohesion, no objective for Firebird to achieve a good position
> > (market share) in the database market,... Short, you don't care
about
> > anything and want others to do the same.
> >
> LOL. I care about lots of things...
>

Sure, didn't mean it like that actually ;)

[... ]
>
> This seems to be my fundamental argument with you... to me
> market share is incidental. To you, it >defines< success.
> That is the quintessence of commercial software, and, to me
> the antithesis of open source.

Well, this distinction isn't neat: Those who had incidental success
with their projects will today consider being successful. The
antithesis of OSS is proprietary software?

> (Even if he does joke about world domination now, when Linus
> wrote his first kernel, he was not trying to take over the PC
> unix market. When Larry Wall wrote perl, he wrote it to get a
> job done. When the Apache group started calling their set of
> patches to the NCSA web server Apache, they were just trying to
> get a better web server. These things have huge 'market share'
> now, not because they were marketed, or had coherent messages,
> but because they are the right tool for a large number of jobs.)

Sure. Because these projects were started out of a necessity, for the
personal needs of their authors. Once the product gets widely used,
it's already the second (success) phase. Since InterBase was a
commercial product released as open source, it jump-started in a
market with already quite a few users. So it will directly compete
against e.g. PostgreSQL and if I see it gain market share, I'd take
that as a sign of success.

>
> Regarding a cohesive goal, the firebird group (as defined by those
> who are members of the firebird sourceforge project) does not have
> a very well defined except to do the right thing with the code.
> That is neither good nor bad.
>
> > Ok, I agree, my position is pretty much the opposite: I would
prefer
> > a community which unites behind one name (Firebird) to give
itself an
> > identity, so it can be perceived in the market. I want a community
> > which aims for a high market share for its product and who gives
> > itself a professional look and presents itself in a coherent
manner
> > to acheive this.
> Why is market share a goal in itself ? Will the world be a better
> place if more people use firebird than MySQL ? To me, the community
> (meaning the USERS of firebird) use it because it fits their
particular
> needs, their skill set, or their particular philosophical bent. To
them,
> it is the right tool. The aim of the firebird group is to make it
an
> even better tool. It does not become a better tool by convincing
more
> people to use it, though more people may use it if it does become
> a better tool.

Sure. But the two are interdependent. More users means more people
interested in it, means more developers and ultimatively faster
development making it better.

>
> > I would welcome sponsoring to have financial support
> > for Firebird development and would therefore adopt a core
> > organization which makes this possible.
> >
> I would welcome sponsoring because if it could help firebird
> be more useful to it's user community.
>
> > Just note that I don't want anything more for Firebird than what
all
> > the other OSS projects have as well: an identity!
> >
> You believe that identity is the important part of OSS ?
> To each his own, I suppose.
> > Markus.
> [...]
>
> --
> Reed Mideke
> email: rfm(at)cruzers.com -If that fails: rfm(at)portalofevil.com

Maybe our positions are finally not all that distant?

Regards
Markus