Paul,

In the same line as Set (I am not in a position to buy shares :-) ), but
I will share my thoughts on the subject.

The first thing I think is if one buys share from IBPhoenix it could
have two objectives
1.) Invest some money to earn it back and a plus for the investiment
2.) Invest some money to help FB development

For the first case one should know what are the potential market for
IBPhoenix, how the money he puts on it will help IBPhoenix to increase
it's revenue, what is the current state of services/support contracts
IBPhoenix have and so on. The kind of thing I think IBPhoenix doesn't
want to make public, so without more details about the perspectives of
the risk and the return of the investment it will not attract small
investors, and the big one's who knows the market, the potential for the
products and services offered by IBPhoenix will approach and make a
proposal for investment even if you doesn't make the numbers public.

For the second case, if one invest on IBPhoenix looking for benefit FB,
I will ask why it won't offer money direct to FF, I'd like to make
explicit that I know and appreciate the IBPhoenix supports and resources
devoted to FB, the point I am raising is the money that is on FF could
be spent/granted to any developer or other activities (advertsiment,
documentation, conferences, etc.) or even to IBPhoenix to compensate the
already done efforts or to sponsor other activities like releasing
internal documentation/tools and so on.

I am not sure if I make my point clear, but I think that only option 1
will attract investments.

I was always curious about how the commercial support services market
are going/needed in the current state of FB usage. As I see the majority
of people around the lists use FB in his projects and help on support
lists as a kind of return to the community and the product he gets,
apart from IBPhoenix who has support on FB as the main goal of his
business around the world ?

I think FB has a really brilliant community doing support at different
places of the world (in Brazil we have two strong FB communities) but I
saw very few questions on the list about commercial support services. My
costumers for example, they don't care about the DBMS deployed, they
know they have a ERP system, and if for some case the db engine stops,
they will call me to fix it (but as Firebird is a dam good product it
never happened). The guys who will buy the support services will be the
systems developers I will say for what I saw (mainly in brazilian
lists), the vast majority are really small shops (and a bunch of them a
one man shop). I think the money on support services are on medium or
big software-houses or governamental agencies, and unfortunately I don't
see a lot of them deploying FB nowadays, FB are every day incresing his
importance on the market, but I see it used by small shops. Maybe the
reality is different on other countries.

Just a side note, there is some governamental agencies using and
deploying FB databases. this could be a good niche to look for prospects.

see you !

--
Alexandre Benson Smith
Development
THOR Software e Comercial Ltda
Santo Andre - Sao Paulo - Brazil
www.thorsoftware.com.br