Jason,

> > > 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".

I was actually commenting more about your "I highly doubt the people working
on Firebird care much about IBX", not so much about the Borland tools
stuff...

> 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.

Agreed, afterall Borland has to 'invest' some effort into IBX/dbExpress for
Interbase, otherwise, they would very likely be accused for neglecting their
own product/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.

I'm not sure what you mean.

> If Firebird wants to garner a permanent place in the industry it needs to
> build its own "home-court advantage".

This is happening, we have an ODBC driver, a native Type-4 JCA/JDBC driver
(no InterClient/InterServer required), other data access tools also support
Firebird.

Are you suggesting that we should invest in developing a competitor to IBX?

Wouldn't we then be competing with you/IBO?

> > 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?

We are doing as much as we can, right now, and the next release should
address the existing compatibility issues.

Should we be thinking beyond, the current situation? We are.

Are actively working on it right now? No, we are trying to get the v1.0
release out the door, it has been over 14 month since we started, after
all...

> > 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,

Obviously, you did see some of the exchanges between myself and Craig
Stuntz/Jeff Overcash about 4-6 weeks ago... ;-)

Seriously, you're right Firebird is not specifically hostile to 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.

Jason, it's kind of hard to lobby an organization which doesn't answer email
or phone calls on the subject!

> 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?

I didn't think I was.

> 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...

Again, don't quite follow "reciprocated"?

> Afterall, I do feel I played a significant role in making
> the Firebird opportunity come forward to begin with.

I did not mean to imply that your role in this effort wasn't significant.


Sean