Marco Tech Blog

December 28, 2007

Firebird: Project of the Month on SourceForge

The Firebird database, the open source databases most commonly used by Delphi developers, is the December 2007 project of the month on SourceForge.

posted by marcocantu @ 3:53PM | 7 Comments [0 Pending]

Firebird Project of the Month on SourceForge 

I totally agree with your comments, Marco. In a recent
Brazilian BorCon, it was told that Borland/CG will
finally release a dbExpress driver for Firebird (see
http://www.firebirdnews.org/?p=1357), but
unfortunatelly no more information was given. My guess
is that it is not in the top priorities tasks for CG
right now, but it should be.

Comment by Carlos H. Cantu [http://www.firebirdnews.org] on December 28, 19:52

Firebird Project of the Month on SourceForge 

CodeGear or Borland is a coward and arrogant as well!
If they would cooperate with other open source
projects like Firebird and FreePascal, they possibly
would be better than now. Both Firebird and FreePascal
are never considered CG/BOR as competitor or enemy and
would like to cooperate since both project are
actually started because lack of innovation and/or
interest from CG/BOR. But on the other side, the
CG/BOR's side, they threat FB and FPC as competitor,
even as enemy! What a silly and over reaction from
CG/BOR! :P

Comment by bee [http://beeography.wordpress.com] on December 30, 08:57

Firebird Project of the Month on SourceForge 

Before complaining why Codegear does not cooperate 
with FB and FP, people should read this lines from 
the FB team interview: "To date, however, the 
overwhelming majority of Firebird users, including 
commercial companies with huge deployments, don’t 
contribute anything", aka *money*.

Although I agree that Borland/Codegear didn't 
innovate too much in the past years (something looks 
changing, anyway), I'd really like to know how 
cooperating with competitors delivering free products 
would help them.
Oh yes, it would help all those guys looking for a 
free full copy of Delphi without going to wharez, and 
allow them to charge $$$ for their software built 
without spending a penny (see above...), but - 
please - explain me in what ways it would help 
Codegear to raise money to "contribute", or even 
survive????

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on December 31, 01:16

Firebird Project of the Month on SourceForge 

 Yes, it will be VERY nice if IBX will support Firebird !

Comment by Hugues Van Landeghem [http://www.hvsoft.eu] on January 1, 16:35

Firebird Project of the Month on SourceForge 

@Luigi:

> Oh yes, it would help all those guys looking for a 
free full copy of Delphi without going to wharez, and 
allow them to charge $$$ for their software built 
without spending a penny

So, you think all users off FPC are illegal users of
Delphi?! You need to read and learn more about FLOSS.
:P FYI, I HAVE a legal copy of Delphi 7. Fortunately,
I didn't upgrade to newer Delphi releases.  

> explain me in what ways it would help 
Codegear to raise money to "contribute", or even 
survive?

If you follow CG's list
(borland.public.delphi.non-technical), this topic had
been discussed more than once. You need to read and
learn more about software business if you can't see
profits on Linux/FLOSS world. Because lots of
companies can survive very well in this area. ;)

Comment by bee [http://beeography.wordpress.com] on January 1, 17:53

Firebird Project of the Month on SourceForge 

"So, you think all users off FPC are illegal users of
Delphi?!"

Never said that. Many are genuine users. However I 
see a lot of people who want a free full Delphi, and 
tons of free compontents. And many do not release 
free software at all - they are just trying to 
maximize their return. *Some* of them probably use 
illegal copies of Delphi already, but as long as 
licensing code becomes more difficult to bypass, they 
want the right to use Delphi for free anyway.

And I can't see any reason why CodeGear should help 
improving a competitor like FPC, especially one that 
have a so large price advantage! Supporting FB could 
be different - if it could boost Delphi sales without 
impacting Interbase revenues.

"Fortunately, I didn't upgrade to newer Delphi 
releases."  

Exactly. You're looking for a cheap alternative to 
the latest Delphi releases. I do not blame you, you 
may have your good reasons. But CodeGear needs money 
to improve and innovate Delphi and other products. 
Noone there works for free. Tell me, who would pay 
for new features in Delphi if you can get them for 
free in FPC?

"You need to read and learn more about software 
business if you can't see profits on Linux/FLOSS 
world. Because lots of companies can survive very 
well in this area"

I know very well the open source market. And I know 
very well that CodeGear won't survive open sourcing 
its products, or helping os competitors. Look at 
successful OS products: they are either sideline or 
basic products of companies that have a different 
core business (Eclipse, Apache, Linux, Subversion, 
and others) with others piggibacking on them (i.e. 
RedHat), or use a dual license (i.e. MySQL).
Probably if CodeGear had a couple of products, say a 
database, an application server or an office suite 
generating enough revenues could be in the position 
to release Delphi as open source.
But Delphi *is* its core business and has to be 
written entirely by CodeGear, if it does not generate 
revenues CodeGear won't go far - and Bauer and 
colleagues won't go to work for FPC... probably they 
would start to work for Visual Studio or the like!

And don't tell me people would pay for it anyway, we 
know a paltry percentage would - see what happens 
with FB. Show me a real business case where CodeGear 
could survive following your advices.

And tell me, why FB and FPC need so much help from 
CodeGear, if OS companies can survive very well? Why 
they don't attract money and programmers?

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on January 2, 13:19

Firebird Project of the Month on SourceForge 

@Luigi:

In your opinion, money seems to be the biggest
motivation for Delphi users, doesn't it? ;)

> *Some* of them probably use illegal copies of Delphi
already, but as long as licensing code becomes more
difficult to bypass, they want the right to use Delphi
for free anyway.

What I'd found is quite contradiction with your
assumption. Those who use illegal copies of Delphi
won't bother themselves using FPC/Lazarus since
'visually' Delphi looks better.

> You're looking for a cheap alternative to the latest
Delphi releases.

Wrong. I never said that either. It's because Delphi
releases after 7 don't worth the price. :P Why should
I spend thousand of dollars for a buggy IDE and
compiler which depends on buggy virtual environment
and would lock myself on a single proprietary
platform? Obviously Delphi 7 and Kylix is still much
better and give me some options and opportunities to
go somewhere else without loosing my code. I love
Delphi, but I love Pascal more. Pascal is bigger than
Delphi. I don't mind to spend my money for Delphi and
CodeGear, *if* they do their jobs right! :P

> in the position to release Delphi as open source

Never said that nor request for that. I pretty much
understand CodeGear and the business. Re-read my
previous comment, I requested for *cooperation*.

> why FB and FPC need so much help from CodeGear

Did I say that? :P Both FB and FPC don't need any help
from CodeGear. I believe both will survive even if
CodeGear is dead! In fact, both would help CodeGear
alive. C'mon Luigi, be fair and objective. Both are
voluntary-based projects and started with no money,
but see what they can achieve so far. On some
particular field, they are better than CodeGear's
Delphi and Interbase. :P For example: FPC had
supported 64 bit and generic since years ago. Using
FPC, we could make our Delphi code goes cross
platform. :P In just a few years, both FPC and FB is
able to compete with CodeGear which is a relative
medium-size company having not-small amount of
capital. Shame on CodeGear! :P

Comment by bee [http://beeography.wordpress.com] on January 3, 18:54