At 11:01 AM 8/12/2005 +0000, you wrote:

>Gives a general overview of why OSS DBs are becoming very important in
>the market, highlighting the recent MySQL vs Oracle InnoDB mess as an
>example. FB gets a mention in the round-up.
>
>http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28201

But just don't let the facts get in the way!

>[quote]
>*Firebird* - fact

>Date established: 1984 - fiction. Date established was 2000.

>Number of employees: 15 - fiction. Firebird has no employees.

Eight people currently get regular grants from the Foundation, but they are
not employees. Quite a few others do substantial work on and around the
code. They're not employees, either.

>Latest release: Firebird 1.5.3, released in July - fiction.

Latest release is 1.5.2. Fb 1.5.3 is still in beta (about to release RC3,
hopefully it will become the full release this month)

>Strong points: A very mature database requiring minimal administration,
>full-featured SQL ACID-compliant database engine that implements most of
>the SQL-99 standard. Compiere module runs Oracle PL/SQL code, highly
>portable, available in three sizes: classic, superserver and embedded,
>supports databases that can span multiple files with a theoretical limit
>of 64 terrabytes for a single-file database.

Makes it sound as though these are all features of the Compiere module.

Classic/Superserver/embedded are not distinctions of size, unless something
radical happened to the architecture in the past day.

>Weak points: Needs better public relations

No kidding.

>Executive quote: Ann Harrison, CTO,

Firebird has no CTO. The nearest to one is Dmitry Yemanov, the core
development coordinator of the Firebird Project.

Ann Harrison is CTO of IBPhoenix. In the Firebird Project context, Ann is
a member of the Admin group.

Firebird is not owned or controlled by IBPhoenix, which is a company
specialising in support for developers and users of Firebird (and
InterBase, as well as some of its own software products).

No company owns or controls Firebird. Its legal and financial interests
are overseen by the Firebird Foundation, a legally constituted non-profit
association that manages sponsorships and other financial contributions
from many companies, as well as individuals.

>"Our current focus is targeting application developers creating
>applications for resale. We think this is an area not well served by MySQL
>because of their GPL, and not well served by postgres because it is not
>designed to be installed transparently"

It is?

>Recent news: Very successful conference in Prague, prepping the V2.0 Beta

Hands up all those conference presenters whose talks "prepped the V.2.0
beta". Now....come on guys, get those hands up....

Who was it said "Bad publicity is better than no publicity"?

Helen