Sean,

> As a member of the Firebird Admin group, I must respond to the comment you
> have made:
>
> > I highly doubt the
> > people working on Firebird care much about IBX. A lot of them don't even
> use
> > Borland dev tools, let alone IBX.
>
> Nothing could be further from the truth.

Especially if you tweak things a little to change the spin.
There "are a lot who don't" which doesn't imply anything about those who
"do".

My point being, Firebird has a much more broad spectrum of usage to solicit.
As a result, IBX is bound to be less of a priority, in general, to Firebird
than it will be to InterBase.

> There are a lot of Firebird project members/followers which use Borland
> tools. The reality is that most Firebird users, only know about it

through

> their use of Interbase and the Borland tools. Accordingly, support for
> Firebird by those tools is very important to us.

Granted, but this will change over time I predict.
If it doesn't then I predict there really isn't much of a need for Firebird
afterall.
If Firebird wants to garner a permanent place in the industry it needs to
build its own "home-court advantage".

> At the moment, there are only minor issues of IBX support for Firebird --

in

> the Admin components. So, the status quo is 'acceptable'. The

IBX/Firebird

> situation will change in the future, as both Firebird and IBX
> updates/changes. When that time comes, obviously their will be much
> discussion about the direction to take.

My point is, why not avoid the problem that we all know is eventually going
to happen?

> By the same token, we would welcome anyone who would like to port and
> maintain any Borland data-access component to support Firebird.

I know that Firebird is not hostile towards IBX, but what I do know is that
there isn't anyone within Firebird lobbying for Borland to keep IBX friendly
towards Firebird, nor is there a fork of IBX to accomplish the same. Someone
out there somewhere is going to have to do that. That is all I am saying.
That isn't a foundation I would want to invest my IS infrastructure upon.

Why don't people seem to think about these things ahead of time?
Why are you promoting such a lame attitude towards software development
practices?
We as developers need to clean up our act or before long we are going to be
forced into subjection the same way just about every other engineer on earth
is subjected to rigid plan approvals, inspections, permits, certifications,
exams, and so on, ad nausea. In fact, it probably should happen, from what I
witness as the "status quo". It's a disgrace, really.

It makes me wonder how many people are going forward with supporting and
using Firebird because early on I made a committed stand to support and back
it with IBO? I'd like you to assure the commitment and focus will be
reciprocated... Afterall, I do feel I played a significant role in making
the Firebird opportunity come forward to begin with.

Regards,
Jason Wharton
CPS - Mesa AZ
http://www.ibobjects.com