On 18 Jul 2002 at 7:17, R. Tulloch wrote:

> Hi:
>
> Why hasn't Borland, or better yet a "class" of folks sued M$ over
> this issue?

It would be hard to prove that including .gdb was done for malicious purposes,
because M$ could state that they planned on using .gdb and reserved the extension
for that reason. There are roughly

This is why, in a system like Firebird we should simply add a line to ibconfig:

#SYSTEM_DATABASE_PATH=C:\PROGRAM FILES\FIREBIRD\ISC4.GDB

We should then add an api function that returns the value in
SYSTEM_DATABASE_PATH for applications that *really* need it.

Now you could pick any extension you like, and move the file somewhere else, say
the same path as other databases so it could get backed up for example.
Personally I think there are a number of other extensions we can use, say FBDB,
IBDB, FDB, IDB, DB, DAT, DATA and a new tradition can be established. There
are only ~17,576 options if you use a 3 letter extension, I would guess more then
half of those are commonly in use. However if you go to a 4 letter extension there
are ~456,976 options of which maybe 2 dozen are commonly in use. I vote for
FBDB, as it can be easily understood as FireBird DataBase.

> It is a good reason why gates should be brought to the dock, found
> guilty and hanged!

Found guilty of what, being in the right place at the right time, and getting the right
people to run his company? He has simply given us a reason to make our database
more flexable, and more configurable, we need to thank him, not hang him.














Paul Schmidt, President
Tricat Technologies
paul@...
www.tricattechnologies.com