At 11:35 AM 1/08/2005 -0300, you wrote:

>Firebird is for free. Based on
>this, I thought it would can exist a tool for convert for free.

Nothing is "free beer". You are lucky that you don't have to pay to use
Firebird. You get that luck because skilled developers are working for
nothing, or *other* people are donating their own money to help skilled
developers to work on Firebird for pay, or employers are allowing their
chaps to work on Firebird in company time -- a combination of these.

Free software is software that anyone can develop if s/he wishes, within a
set of rules, without being limited by copyright and patent
restrictions. Free beer is beer that somebody pays for and then gives away.

There are many third-party tools around the fringe of Firebird. Some are
free. Many cost a little. Some cost a lot. Again, you are lucky -
privileged - if you can pick up a free tool to do your particular job.
Behind every bottle of free beer you get, there is somebody who paid for
you to have it.

I have been watching some postings in firebird-architect from a guy called
Tim Haynes, who thinks everything he wants should be available NOW and
FREE. He won't like Firebird until he can have free documentation, free
tools, free this, free that.

Even more, he thinks Firebird has its priorities wrong because he can't -
here, now, today - download a Windows server that has all of these goodies
right there in the installer kit. He rubbishes the Firebird developers for
not putting their efforts into for-Dummies things like a fancy Windows
console instead of the "irrelevant" (sic) things they ARE doing, like
modernising the architecture, strengthening security and optimising
performance. The pretty books, the beer and the lunch should rightly fall
out of the sky, landing (preferably) on a part of the anatomy that can take
the G's.

./heLen