Hey, Claudio! It was a very nice and precise description of the pass. Let's
work it out into the future. That's why I think that sometime, somewhere, we
must split out IB/FB. Maybe the little help of Borland could bring the
people that are using IB now to move to Firebird, and give the project the
money it needs.

We all know that Borland have done a good job to kill it's own product, but
Firebird can use it to grow. So, here we go:

> Try to act as the IT manager's advocate, for a few seconds. Do you select

IB

> if you know that:
>
> - The product never was marketed appropriately in the past so it appeared

as

> if the company owning it was a bit ashamed of it?

- Firebird is a new product, the 'big brother' of IB. It is supported not by
a big company, it's open source. Let's clarify the beneficts of open source.

> - The owning company was accused of killing the product at the end of

1999?
- Yes, that's what happen to a good product that his owned by a company with
other good products: they choose to split out there efforts to other areas.

> - The product's open sourcing story was plenty of shakes and

recriminations among several parties?
But the future is un-writen. Who cares about a company that takes more than
an year to implement some features and kill some bugs that are already done
by the open source community?

> - Only the commercial version is actively backed by a company the size of

Borland?
Backup? Actively? Are you shure?

> - There're still no clear plans nor clear route for the future WRT the IB

OE

> flavor? How does it fit in the lanscape? Does it receive only bug fixes?

How

> often? Does it receive features but in a delayed way? Will it exist

always?

> Will it become frozen at some time in the future so it turns irrelevant?

Who cares?

> - There's a free version named Firebird, done by a bunch of crazy people

and

> backed by a tiny company named IBPhoenix?

Ops. What's this? I like crazy people. Tiny company? Yes! I like small
companies that we can talk to. Let's forget about IB and explore this.

> - The product wasn't born as open source, but it became open source as a
> result of some decisions the owning company seems to regret today? (As

Bill

> Todd himself wrote, "nobody knows exactly why top management decided to

open

> source IB initially".)

S... happens. I'm glad.
I don't want to start again a figth against IB. Let's 'learn with our
fathers, kick the door, and get an house/live of our own. Let's fly away.
Let's get married. Let's have a family of our own.'

> - The owning company doesn't publish list of bugs for either the paid of

fre

> e versions and the main fork doesn't have a guaranteed critical mass of
> developers because nobody pays them?

Nobody pays them because of a marketing fault. That's what we need in this
open source project: someone that it's devoted to marketing the product:
'Beat the drums tonigth Alphonso - Spread the news all over the world. Don't
be alone now Sammy...' (I love this Clash song).

> - We've been reading the forums and there appears to be quite a bunch of
> bugs. How opportunely are they acknowledged and fixed? Where are the
> reliable contacts we can address in case of those problems, that doesn't
> entail purchasing a support ticked immediately?

We've been reading the Firebird pages and the bugs are well documented, as
well the open features. The RC1 & RC2 experience prove that a bug is often
found after 2 to 3 days after the version release date. That's good: small
companies could live with the bugs if they are documented, big companies
could pay someone to kill the bugs. They are well documented.

> - It seems that Borland's revenues come exclusively from selling their
> closed version following the old good commercial model and IBPhoenix'
> revenues come from optimizing applications and repairing databases. Is

this

> model profitable so that those companies won't drop the product? BTW, by
> reading the forums we came to the conclusion that IB databases become
> corrupt often and it's not uncommon that they cannot be restored, too.

Ops, IB databases become corrupt often? Let's be Mr. Gates and forget about
this in this marketing experience....

> - Instead of trying to push a common project, those IB/FB people work each
> one for their respective projects and there's no cross-pollination nor
> cooperation. More often than seldom we see guerrillas. How weak will the
> original engine became in terms of market share if more forks continue
> appearing and its small market fragments even more among the different
> forks? There are already 4 known flavors!

Yeap. Let's choose one: FireBird.

> - We would like to take a risk if we know another company of some

importance

> that has decided on IB. Where are those companies listed? It seems that

some

> customers like Boeing and a processor manufacturer are history only.

Yes. But perhaps they have old applications running waiting for a decision
to re-code them in Oracle/MS. Perhaps if they start listening about a good
RDBMS they will take a look, and find out that they don't have to recode
nothing to use FireBird.

> - In comparison with other open source and closed, commercial projects, IB
> has developed few notable improvements in the last years. It seems the
> project lost momentum. Most of its features advertised as unique in the

past

> can now be found on PostGres or MsSql. We are not impressed with a lame

XML

> support or a lame ANSI substring support.

That's why I think that Firebird will never grow up if it is attached to
Borland marketing.

> - Borland has worldwide presence but only a few partners handle IB
> adequately. IBPhoenix has points of contacts in a few strategic zones

only.

> Who's our local and proficient support company? How many ISP's risk
> installing IB for their users or offer IB-based services?

It's enough for now. I know that are people all over the world that could
give this services.

> There's no need to bite the neighbors. (...) PostGres has a long open

source tradition.

> To be true, we are the newcomers here. (...) Pretending to behave in an
> arrogant and aggressive way to capture users is going to backfire. And
> there's SAPdb, too.
> Our hope is to replace MsSql where it makes sense to replace it. I mean
> where you have mostly OLAP requirements to crunch hundreds of GBs, IB
> doesn't make sense because you will starve sitting in front of your desk
> before getting an answer from IB (and furthermore, the sorting will be

wrong

> <g>).
> We can replace Oracle where it's a waste or resources of all kinds to run

a

> 800 pounds gorilla to have only a few big queries and the rest is
> interactive editing (...)>
> We can replace DB/2 where people are tired of low level tweaks typical of
> IBM, (...)
> We can replace other engines by working ad-hoc, namely, by paying

attention

> to the scenario and being sincere if the engine is able to undertake the
> task. Otherwise, the attempt only backfires. Don't promise what you can't
> do.

Yes! That's the big approach! Someone recently say 'MySQL is a Jeep,
Firebird is a Tank. Sometimes you need a Jeep, sometimes you need a tank.'.
And yes, I'm with you in this Claudio: I think the marketing strategie
should be something like this. For that, we need a list of lots of
applications developed using FireBird. You have a small list in your site,
let's put some other in.
Let's create a place in the web that it's exclusively devoted to marketing
FB.

> > I
> > believe that FB will have the critical mass of user acceptance and media
> > support to drive it towards the ultimate target.

We all do.

> What's interesting to observe is if IB+FB take market share. But open

source

> advocates will want to count only IB-OE, Firebird and Yaffil.

I really don't know about FireBird market share. Do you know how many
applications here in Portugal use FireBird, for example? We really don't
have any info about this.

> I would be interested in learning how to vanish and reappear from the

ether.

> Is there any doco available? Maybe a paper written by a magician?

This Doc could be very usefull to help marketing FB. :)

Again my 0.02 cents :)

(and sorry again for my bad english)
Artur