From
e-Week article by Timothy Dyck (Timothy who?)

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1159805,00.asp

"Firebird (based on Borland's InterBase 6.0) and SAP AG's SAP are both new
entrants in the open-source world, although both have established
commercial histories.

These are sophisticated products offering complete SQL support,
transactions, stored procedures and triggers. However, they haven't
established open-source developer or user communities, and online support
resources are limited.

After releasing InterBase 6.0 code, Borland backed away from its
open-source plans. The current InterBase, Version 6.5, is not an
open-source product, so Firebird and InterBase are now diverging products.

All these products are primarily focused on delivering core SQL database
features and are not competitive with the big commercial players in several
important areas: online analytical processing, data warehousing, data
mining, clustering for performance, XML storage and query, Enterprise
JavaBean support, plug-ins for a wide variety of specialty data types,
distributed transactions, and external data gateways.

Graphical administration tools are available but simple in scope and not
competitive with the comprehensive configuration, control, monitoring and
tuning features found in the large commercial offerings. Management costs
are higher among these database products as a result."

--- Timothy Dyck