Good move.

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@t...>
wrote:

> Yaffil Merges Source Code with Firebird
> =====================================================
> Moscow, St Petersburg and The World, 2 December 2003
>
> The Firebird Project and the principals of the Yaffil project are

very

> pleased to announce the merging of the Yaffil project with

Firebird. Former

> Yaffil chief developer Oleg Ivanov is welcomed as the newest member

of the

> Firebird core developer team.
>
> Yaffil, a Russian, Windows-only version of the Firebird database

engine,

> was built
> originally from the open source Firebird code with a number of

additional

> features. It began life as a private project, before becoming

available as

> a commercial distribution from iBase.ru, of Moscow. Separate Yaffil
> development has since ceased, product sales have been stopped and

all the

> sources have been released for merging into the Firebird 2.0 code

base by

> the Firebird development team.
>
> For Firebird, the homecoming of the little red bird is welcome

news. First,

> it allows the two closely-related codebases to be united in a

single tree.

> Both will gain strength by moving forward in a single direction.

Secondly,

> it brings into the design scheme a number of significant

enhancements,

> optimizations, architectural improvements and character

sets/collations.

>
> For Yaffil users *, the proprietor of iBase.ru, Dmitri Kouzmenko,

says

> migrating to Firebird 2.0 will benefit them by enabling them to
> * work with the cross-platform database server
> * use the new features
> * have access to full project source code.
> He also notes that, as Firebird is being developed by a big team of
> developers, partly financed by the FirebirdSQL Foundation, the

combined

> project will continue to develop and progress.
>
> Coordinated efforts between the Firebird core developers and Oleg

Ivanov

> will ensure that Yaffil users will be able to migrate easily to

Firebird 2

> with only minor changes to their applications and databases. To

Dmitri,

> this means that users will have Yaffil's advantages of better

performance

> and lower CPU load along with the benefits of the cross-platform

server, an

> open source product and a number of unique features. He considers

that,

> rather than having two teams spending energy on implementing

conflicting

> features, it would be more productive for them to work together on

new

> features and bugfixes.
>
> The FirebirdSQL Foundation is discussing a proposal to grant some

funds to

> assist with an early merger of Yaffil's most useful special

features into

> the codebase for a forthcoming post-version 1.5 sub-release of

Firebird.

>
> From the Firebird Admin team and Dmitri Kouzmenko
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------

> * Bug fixes for current Yaffil products and technical support for

existing

> customers will be continued by iBase.ru.-- D. Kouzmenko