At 03:45 AM 03-01-01 +0000, you wrote:

>I guess a newbie book would be helpful for people who do not like
>reading the manuals. I found the IB manuals to be outdated but very
>effective. If you ever decide to write more of a hardcore IB users
>handbook (even if it's a PDF file), please let me know.

Oh, I assumed most ppl knew about
http://www.interbase2000.org/ib_handbook.htm. It's a 600,000-word full
treatment (when it happens).

>I cannot seem
>to find one anywhere. Just click on the Book Store icon at
>InterBase2000.com, not a single book geared towards InterBase.

True - hence my five-year dream to write That Book. :)

>To be totally honest with you, it also took me a while to figure out
>what Firebird was. The first place a newbie stumbles onto is the news
>groups and you really do not see much mention of it there.

The Borland and mers NGs are moderated so those are unlikely places to find
news of Firebird filtering through. Now that Borland has moved the old
interbase.com links on their InterBase pages, at least the links to the
IBDI site will find you at Firebird fairly quickly. FB also shows up on
many net searches but I guess that's not everyone's prime method.

>Once you
>do hear about Firebird, you begin to wonder if you should stick with
>the trusted Borland name or go with someone you never heard of. The
>IB veterans like yourself, already know who the key players are in
>the IB community and Firebird is a natural choice. However, to a
>newbie, this appears to be a risky decision. The whole problem with
>Firebird is that newbies do not know the backgrounds of the people
>involved, or the fact that these same people know more about
>InterBase then Borland does. If you want to get the word out to
>newbies and even not so newbies, post an occasional spam to the
>newsgroups at mers.

Where possible, that happens. But the mers NGs are subject to moderation
now so we're pretty dependent on the independent IB lists at egroups to get
the word around. To a substantial degree, it's "preaching to the
converted" there, anyway.

The notable exception is the ib-build list at mers. Rob Schieck of mers
set up a one-way mirror to pick up all the chit-chat from the
firebird-developers list. He seems to have forgotten to "vet" this stuff,
so you can pick up all the fb-devel chit-chat from the mers InterBase archive.

> > The year 2000 was one of forked paths and crushing disappointments,
>but (New Year blues aside) I haven't reneged yet...I'm still looking
>for ways to achieve it.
>
>Publishers are driven by dollar signs and once IB gathers more of a
>following, they would be foolish not to call you begging for a book.
>The fact that IBO sales are picking up and Jason is ready to hire a
>staff, tells me that this should not be to far down the road.

I think so, too.

[snip]
conversion waiting list. A C/S version of this app would keep us way

>ahead of the compition for long time to come.

Yes: it does seem to be the way the transition is working. Many public
institutions that have depended on free or cheap desktop back-ends are
attracted naturally to a commoditized C/S option. I like to think that
IB's qualities will let it blow its own trumpet as public awareness of its
open sourceness spreads. It has some serious flaws still, that are being
enthusiastically addressed in Firebird - rightly and properly in the open
arena of public development, not behind a firewall of commercial
secrecy. At present, FB is in a "catch and fix" phase, to put right things
which are wrong because of bad design decisions and budgetary limits in the
past 10 years; after that, f-I-re-B-ird breaks out and people will see
their wish-lists coming true.

As proponents of Open Source, we out here in the community have to be
seriously interested in the *future* of InterBase - even if we do have a
measurable degree of interest (read "concern") in InterBase's "Borland
commercial arm" in the era of the present, until we wean our existing
customers off the commercial versions that they have paid licensing fees
for in the past. I can't see why our customers would be interested in
Borland's commercial distros (if they ever happen) since it will cost them
money and the source code and bug lists are hidden from public
scrutiny. Given the low ebb to which Borland's InterBase R & D and tech
support have sunken, future_of_interbase@... looks pretty bleak by
comparison with the high voltage activity on Firebird, the support
infrastructure in the IB community outside Borland, and the developments
that have sprung forth from that wellspring over the past 6 months.

The community is doing OK, I think.

H.


All for Open and Open for All
InterBase Developer Initiative · http://www.interbase2000.org
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