--- In IBDI@y..., "Ann W. Harrison" <aharrison@i...> wrote:

> At 01:53 PM 5/5/2001 +0000, you wrote:
> >Which part? That Firebird is more active or that Borland retakes
> >improvements from Firebird?
>
> Actually, it's very hard to know what Borland are doing,
> how active they are, what they take from Firebird, if
> anything.

Certainly. My statement was based on what I could read in this recent
Borland chat transcript. Someone asked if Borland will integrate
Firebird "innovations" into the InterBase source, and the reply was
that basically yes: Not all Firebird changes would make it into
InterBase though, since, so they say, they have to verify each
modification and will only take the "useful" ones.

Their source forge tree is a shadow - perhaps

> more correctly a projection - of their internal tree.
> We have no idea what goes on in the internal tree.

Yep. Helen is certainly right Firebird will adopt useful changes made
by Borland, only that same chat transcript gives a somewhat
pesimistic prospect of how Borland wants to handle its public source
tree. They say the objective is to have application compatibility
between OSS and commercial InterBase, but that other enhancements to
commercial InterBase may not be reflected in the OSS tree. That means
Firebird will have less oportunities to "replicate" changes made by
Borland.

Robert is certainly right that Firebird owes gratitude to Borland for
releasing the sources of InterBase and so Firebird shall remain a
loyal partner of Borland and especially of the existing InterBase
users. Unfortunately with the aforementioned position of Borland
there is no solid basis for a real partnership, yet. Hopefully this
will change in the future. For now the best Firebird can do is to
concentrate on its first release. Maybe in the future there will be a
way to win Borland for a closer partnership...

[... ]

>
> Regards,
>
> Ann

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