--- In Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Beach" wrote:

> Since IBPhoenix is a UK Ltd company - it has a right to issue shares
> to potential investors in the company, I have been contemplating
> this for quite a while, and wondered if there would be any interest
> out there for Firebird users, companies etc that would like to
> become shareholders in IBPhoenix? There are a number of reasons for
> thinking about this..
> 1. Is we (IBPhoenix) are constrained in what we do, in that we can
> only think about taking on new resources to help with what we
> do, both for our (direct customers) and the project as and when
> we have enough money both now and in the future to be able to
> afford it.
> 2. Unlike a charity - we would be able to pay dividends should the
> situation warrent it.
> 3. It would be a novel approach to rasing money to allow us
> (IBPhoenix) to continue to contribute to the Firebird project in
> various ways.
> 4. Should anybody at any time wish to buy out IBPhoenix (although
> for the life of me I can't think why), then the usual
> formalities apply.
>
> Comments anyone?

Oops... this is an interesting, but complex scenario. One thing that I
think is a given, is that the average shareholder will be more
interested in IBPhoenix earning money than contributing to Firebird.
Even though a happy Firebird is very positive for IBPhoenix in my
eyes, I don't know whether shareholders will agree.

In the past, I think some companies have been reluctant to accept
Firebird due to it being an unknown, open-source database with no
'real' company behind it. Maybe it will be easier to convince a few
execs if they learnt that IBPhoenix had shares - though maybe you have
to go to the stock exchange to convince them, and that's probably not
what you are considering just yet?

One thing does worry me, what if a database company bought IBPhoenix?
Jim Starkey going to MySQL AB was one thing, I fear that it will be a
far bigger loss if every employee of IBPhoenix should suddenly be
taken away from the Firebird project.

I'm not in a financial position to become a shareholder of IBPhoenix,
but if I were, I would like to know the estimated total value of the
company, how much each share costs, the minimum number of shares that
can be bought and if the company rules limits how much power one
shareholder can have (e.g. if one shareholder can have more than 50%
of the votes at general meetings).

I guess you've already taken a look at the other database companies to
learn from their possible successes and failures with similar adventures.

Good luck, regardless of your decision,
Set