-----Original Message-----
From: Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of rogervellacott
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 01:12 PM

>In my original posting I was trying to explore the position of 99%
>of Firebird users, like myself, who use the product but make no
>contribution.

I think you're merging two points and not seeing the distinction. I, and others, came down on you (I hope not TOO offensively-
I was trying to make a point, not to "attack" you personally), because you said that you had a BUSINESS that was DEPENDENT on
Firebird, and yet thought of the idea of contributing to its development as "Charity" rather than COGS. You're not just "USING"
Firebird. You make money SELLING a product with a component part that, had it not been open source, would have cost you hundreds
to thousands of dollars to license. Many of us who do the same thing consider it a rational business decision to assist the
ongoing development of this critical component by sponsoring (not providing charity to) the Firebird foundation.

In my view, if you use Firebird in a project (personally, in your company, whatever), that's fine. If you SELL Firebird as part
of a Product, and make more money because you're using FB rather than Oracle or SQL Server (or even MySQL, which would cost you
$500 per site if you use IT), then maybe you should consider contributing a small share of that extra profit to assuring that
the product you rely on continues to be developed, adapted to new Windows and Linux versions, have bugs fixed, etc.