Tim Ledgerwood wrote:

> You mean, they should do exactly as they have done? Announce that the
> feature will be available, and what timescale?

Its a good start.

> What more would you have liked them to do?

Make it far more obvious that they timescales can be changed it
with an influx of money :-)

> And it's not being SOLD. The developers etc., make no profit from the sale
> of Firebird.

Money != profit.

Selling yourself does not always mean profit either. Sometimes it
requires just a second re-read of a support email to consider how
your email is going to look and how it could be misinterpreted by
a third party.

> The warm fuzzy feeling they get is from developing and distributing a damn
> good product. FREE. (As in Beer this time) :-)

Dev+test "costs" (IMHO design is something that should always remain a
team effort)- Jim et.al need to pay bills and if they are paid by
someone who needs the feature - hooray!

I (like many others here?) develop software (well provide solutions to
customers by "adding value") to pay the bills. If I had a client who
needed something I did not have the expertise or time to implement
and he had two choices;

1) pay some third party to configure/extend a closed source system

2) pay a well known author of open source to do the same thing
to thier own software (releasing the changes back to the
community)

I know which I would prefer (at a personal level) :-)

OTOH I have seen at first hand companies fund things
to destroy them, even goings as far as buys sales rights
for a commercial system for seven figures just to ensure
no sales ever take place.

In conclusion, money and profit is a dirty messy business but
we have to believe in the integrity of folks running the show
(Jim and co) - in open source "the product === the people".

Jacqui