Arno Brinkman
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 12:46 PM

>Why should "DevCo" be interested in Firebird?

IMO, the question is why would DevCo be interested in KEEPING IB as a part of their business?

Their product line:

* A Windows / Windows dot net based, Pascal/C++/C# IDE, with a loyal but aging code base;

* A (mostly Windows) Java IDE that's considered "the best" except that "almost as good (and in some ways better)" products exist
that are free;

* Oh yeah- and a cross platform DBMS that competes with a highly compatible, free version of ITSELF, which is judged by at least
some of its probably biased, FORMER InterBase users, to be BETTER than IB.

And they're being spun off because the parent company decided it was too difficult to focus on both developer tools and
lifecycle & infrastructure products. Doesn't that also apply to DevCo? What's their focus going to be - Programming tools, or
database engines?

What I don't understand is why Interbase is even on the DevCo product list, when AppServer & VisiBroker are considered
"Infrastructure". I think Borland threw it in because they don't want it- and see no long term potential for it.

DevCo's biggest concern will be convincing people that they're not a cast-off ember of the former Borland fire that's going to
grow dim and turn into an ash within a few years. I know that's OUR biggest concern- we have a big investment in Delphi source
code. Do we keep using Delphi, or do we need to start looking at Chrome, or C#? If it looks like Delphi won't be around 10
years from now, we'll need to switch. We're not going to be able to give them a lot of time to prove their credibility.

If they KEEP IB as a product, they'll be unable to maintain their prices because the "Corporate backing" that makes it worth
buying at all (rather than using FB) is now 1/5 the size. If they continue to develop it, they'll be diverting resources they
need to be spending on the programming tools, to prove their credibility to companies like mine. I won't look at that as a
positive sign.

But if they announce that IB will be contributed to FB, and that in the spirit of being "like Red Hat", they'll happily continue
to support it for existing customers- and meanwhile, they'll put say, $200K a year of programmer and QA time into FB, then that
will demonstrate:

A) that they're focused on what they need to focus on;
B) that they care about their customers.

To me, that means dumping IB is a win-win for both DevCo and Firebird.