Subject The sore state of our lists
Author Claudio Valderrama C.
At this time, I'm isolated from ib-support because the NG is unreachable as
warned by Sean. I'm sending a CC to ib-support but please reply to IBDI if
you have something to say. I've adjusted the reply-to pointing to IBDI list
in trying to be proactive. I've been doing a painful search in yahoo by hand
(isn't that any fool there can build a decent search engine for the groups?)
and found the following groups:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB-Priorities/
284 members, 2 messages in Jan 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB-Architect/
521 members, 59 messages in this year.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB-Marketing/
85 members, one message in Jun-2001, another in Aug-2001 and a third one in
Oct-2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB-Italy/
11 members, 3 msgs in May-2001, 1 msg in Jun-2001 and 2 msg in Jul-2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB-Conversions/
246 members, 25 messages in 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB-PT/
6 members, 1 msg in 2000, no msg in 2001 and one msg in 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB_DESIGNER/
151 members, 311 msgs in 2000, 5 msgs in 2001, no msgs in 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB-LinuxTools/
45 members, 47 messages in 2000, 7 msgs in Mar-2001, 2 msgs Jul-2001, 1 msg
Aug-2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ib-germany/
ONE member! Never a message.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IB-Java/
294 members, 160 msgs in 2000, 532 msgs in 2001, 202 msgs in 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ib-support/
863 members, 171 msgs in 2000, 6907 msgs in 2001, 2058 msgs in 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FBIBOTR/
13 members, 49 msgs in 2001, 79 msgs in 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iblogmanager/
29 members, 11 msgs in 2000, 38 msgs in 2001, 2 msgs in Jan-2002.

I think this group has nothing to do with us. :-)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndecentBehavior/ => IB

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FBproject/
But it doesn't use IB or FB, only MsSql and MySql. :-(

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interbase_brasil/
123 members, 582 msgs in 2000, 350 msgs in 2001, 45 msgs in 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interbase/
6 members, no messages, but I'm not sure about this:
Post message: interbase@...
The IB list at emporia is rather old and probably there's some form of
linking, but what's the idea if nothing is visible at Yahoo?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/id-interbase/
10 members, 21 msgs in 2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interbase-de/
70 members, 7 msgs in Dec-2000, 1 msg in Jan-2001, 8 msgs in Feb-2001 and
one msg in Jun-2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exib/
40 members, 60 msgs in 2001, 18 msgs in 2002.
This list in intriguing, by reading the charter: «A discussion group for
ex-InterBase staff members, mostly people who worked there in the 1990s
(some still continue to be there)».
Hmm, can all those dinousaurs whose names we read in the sources be found
there?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBO-Announcements/
812 members, internal to IBO.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/replicadorIB/
18 members, 197 msgs in 2001, 99 msgs in Jan-2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jediedit/
131 members, 22 msgs in 2000, 5 msgs in 2001, 6 msgs in 2002. Supposedly,
the effort supports many SQL databases.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBDI/
761 members, 8 msgs in Jan-1999, 1983 msgs in 2000, 1470 msgs in 2001, 96
msgs in 2002. Actually I think there's a bug in Yahoo's list management SW,
the 8 msgs should be in December-1999.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBObjects/
1051 members, 1380 msgs in 2000, 12680 msgs in 2001, 1874 msgs in 2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBList/
17 members, 1 msg in Feb-2000!!!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flashfiler/
6 members, 1 msg in Jun-2001!!!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/XCase/
35 members, 17 msgs in 2000, 17 msgs in 2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBDH-Translators/
68 members, 106 msgs in 2000, 32 msgs in 2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interbaseworkbench/
389 members, 5 msgs in 1999, 124 msgs in 2000, 267 msgs in 2001, 25 msgs in
2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SqlConstructor/
276 members, 4 msgs in 2001, 4 msgs in Jan-2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBDH-Translators-ge/
11 members, 61 msgs in 2000, 2 msgs in Sep-2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grantmanager/
105 members, 28 msgs in 2000, 4 msgs in 2001, 2 msgs in Jan-2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aolserver/
34 members, 24 msgs in Aug-2000, 5 msgs in May-2001, 1 msg in Dec-2001 and 1
msg in Jan-2001 (those two being SPAM). It seems the official page is
http://listserv.aol.com/archives/aolserver.html
Sadly, I had to quick the supporter site from the WebRing because it
disappeared and it seems that the web hosting provider itself vanished, too.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interbaseclub/
2 members, 2 msgs in Sep-2000 and that's all!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/replicadorbr/
11 members, 231 msgs in Jan-2002, 88 msgs in Feb-2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fbfetd/
(FB Front End Tool Discussion)
29 members, 72 msgs in Jan-2002, 3 msgs in Feb-2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/acoelho/
2 members, 1 msg in Jun-2001. (I never understand some people.)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBO-Workshop/
24 users, 48 msgs in 2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBFiller/
4 members, no messages.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ibaccess/
13 members, 2 msgs in May-2001, 4 msgs in Jul-2001.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ibaliasmanager/
30 members, 83 msgs in 2001, 1 msg in Jan-2002, 6 msgs in Feb-2002.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firebird/
10 members, 7 msgs in May-2001.
Founded: Jul 31, 1998??? Is Yahoo nuts or what???
Otherwise, it's a big coincidence and has nothing to do with this FB.

Anybody interested in the Pontiac Firebird, BTW.
:-)

As you can see, different people start ideas alike but abandon them
afterwards. And regarding that "FB Front End Tool", maybe it would be better
to cooperate with an effort already running like IBAccess than to start
another tool from scratch. We have the lesson learned from IB_Designer... it
started like a young horse but became dead in the race. Or maybe you could
consider providing a patch for IBConsole so it produces non-ambiguous SQL to
query metadata. (As an anecdote, I knew about a developer that changed
IBConsole to IBO in his spare time while he was learning IBO basics, for
example.)

The idea is that the more we want to tackle, the thinner we became and
that's not good. Let's concentrate resources better. We can end up with 300
lists with two people, all of these lists being abandoned as time passes.

REPLIES TO THE IBDI LIST, PLEASE!

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