Claudio:

(I will not show your big email again)

But I will resume it here:

> Target honestly the cases where the FB engine can shine or do at least a

job as good as the

> engine being replaced. But don't bite PostGres or MySQL, because they are
> peers in some way and their success help us indirectly.

That's what I think about it. That's why I reply to you.

What I was saying, and I will say it again, it's that someone must take care
of marketing FB, in a independent way of IB. For now, Firebird it's just the
Open Source version of IB.

I'm with you that we must not figth the other engines. I see Firebird (and
other engines) the same way I think about computer languages: you must use
the one that's better for the job. I'm a C programmer because C it's the
language I use most. But last year I was invited to a project that Delphi
offers the best approach (best tools available). I'm always open to new
ideas: I did it in Delphi. I had the necessary info to choose: Delphi
marketing is big, and I've got the necessary info to let me choose.

In Firebird Project we have developers working on it. Good ones. We have
lots of tech info in the web site. Also the Interbase Ring show us another
good web sites. What we need is a place in the web that people could use to
see Firebird as a choice when choosing a RDBMS. A place when people can see
what developers have been done just with a Release Candidate. A place that
will show everyone that the Firebird Team choose not to release a version 1
before some bugs have been killed (the same bugs that exists in released
versions from Borland).

Personnal note here:
When I choose FB for my project, the main reason I had to choose FB was the
quality of the developers in this newsgroup. Support is important for
developers. When I present FB to my clients, they ask me: why not Oracle?
(The Oracle main offices in Portugal are 200m from their offices...) And I
was able to present them the beneficts against oracle in their particular
case. Remember that FireBird it's free, but they had to pay me to learn FB
against my experience in Oracle.

They will not just see the price: they will see the features. (Remembering
again Paul from Tricats: there's no such thing as free software - the price
takes another form).

I could start myself a web site that promotes FB, but my experience with
other RDBMS is very limited (even with FireBird I'm a 8 months user). Also,
this web site should be in english, and I have some problems with the
language... However, I can start this job (and keep it online) if other ones
with more experience in other databases could help. And, of course, if it's
important to the comunity. One of the problems that I see here it's that we
discuss a lot about this marketing subject - lots of different ideas - and
the subject dies with no conclusion at all!

Also, this is out-of-topic in this newsgroup!

Should we go to IBDI and start again this discussion there (even with the
message from Jason and Helen)? Or should we stop here again and let this
discussion die? :)

Artur