Helen,

> At 01:29 PM 26/05/2005 +0000, you wrote:
> >I was as some trade show this past day and a vendor there told me that
> >Firebird has been horrible for reliability for his clients and that
> >Interbase is much more stable. Can anyone spell out the differences
> >between the modern Interbase vs Firebird? I thought they were
> >basically the same.
>
> "Basically...were", yes, five years ago. But Firebird has been developing
> totally independent from Borland's staff or products for five
> years. During that time, Borland has had full access to Firebird's source
> code. The reverse, of course, is not the case.
>
> The big difference -- the one you encountered -- is that InterBase has
> vendors, that is, people whose income depends on people BUYING what they
> VEND. Vendors talk market-speak.
>
> People don't buy Firebird, they take it and use it for free. Firebird
> releases take a long time to gestate. There are no vendors or

shareholders

> screaming at us to "release and be damned!" There are no quarterly sales
> figures to fudge. If Firebird really was unstable, it would be
> well-known: you can't keep secrets in open source.
>
> Did this vendor tell you that "modern" InterBase 7 was so unstable that it
> couldn't be used safely with any database? Did he tell you that the
> supposed bug-fix release, 7.1, that followed it, corrupted databases? Did
> he tell you that the 7.2 patch to fix *that* problem was unannounced and
> was distributed only on request? Or that Borland itself withheld the
> bug-fixes from its direct customers unless they paid in full for the
> distribution that had broken their databases? Or that customers are
> required to purchase an "upgrade" to the (reputedly) stable version 7.5?
> Probably not...

As far as I know, 7.5 is a free upgrade for 7 users.

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL, Oracle & MS SQL
Server
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com