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Borland's Interbase Open-Sourced
A slew of people have written in with confirmation that the beta version of Borland's Interbase will be Open Source. This comes on the heels of rampant speculation that this move would be forthcoming. Their press release states they expect to release in the first quarter of 2000. One interesting point is that they are not just opening the code for Linux - the Solaris and WinNT versions will be open as well. However, no mention of what license they plan on using, so I'm sure we'll be revisiting this story.
the lithp guy must be dead. i will have my revenge ya big pile of crap.
mick rules
i am the first post mastah!!
first
I guess this is the first large, fully open source database for Linux... definatley a Good Thing (tm)! This could encourage many users to switch to Linux, becuase most of the current database apps are pretty limited (MySQL as an example).
sounds cool
"Inprise Corporation (Nasdaq: INPR) today announced that it is jumping to the forefront of the Linux database market by open-sourcing the beta version of InterBase 6, the new version of its SQL database. InterBase will be released in open-source form for multiple platforms, including Linux, Windows NT, and Solaris."
The press release appears to only refer to the beta version of the software. If the license is written in a particular way (ie. not open-source in the sense of the GPL or other similar license), this could exclude the use of code from the InterBase beta in other software. Although InterBase does sound very promising, I can't help but wonder if Inprise is releasing the beta for some other motive; perhaps to improve their software for free and captialize on the current craze with anything that has the word "Linux" in it (aka buzzword compliance). We'll just have to wait and see the precise terms under which Inprise is doing the "open-source" release.
Seriously, I hope Borland go for either the GPL or the BSD licence. We -really- don't need Yet Another Licence, there are enough out there to cover most people's needs.
I also hope they release the source to some of their earlier products. They've had the binaries for things like Turbo Pascal around for a while, for free download, but it'd give a bit more impetus to whatever Pascallian groups there are amongst the Linux Folk, if the source was made available. It's not like TP 3.0 has much commercial value, now, so it wouldn't cut Borland too deep to do that.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
That being the case, what are they doing? And is Microsoft beind it? If not, I can't see them being too happy.
Speculation back then seemed to say that Inprise/Borland would be hesitant to support/port apps to Linux, when in fact the opposite is showing true. What's going on here?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
yet another fucking /. call for open sourcing something while refusing to release the latest slashdot source
RMS has checked in. Thanks Dick.
LOL... a "leadership role in the Open-Source movement"? Do they even know what that means, I wonder... :-)
Anyway, jokes aside... I think this is a Very Good Thing. I'd say that Linux needs a lot of database offerings like this. Especially open source offerings that we can work on and improve. Although the Linux version of Oracle is good, its closed-sourced, and AFAIK targeted only for RedHat. (I've had major headaches to make it work for Debian.) An open-source DB would alleviate this headache by allowing easy re-config for a particular distro. But even more importantly, it gives us industrial-quality code to play with. IIRC Interbase used to be quite popular, so there must be some good stuff in there.
While MySQL is nice, it doesn't quite give enough features (though the speed is... amazing). I've not used postgre before, so I can't judge. But regardless, having a lot of DB options in Linux is a very good thing. Especially in convincing upper management to switch to Linux: a lot of ppl probably know about Interbase and at least non-techies can take comfort in the fact that Interbase is a "commercial-quality" product (though for techies that probably means zit).
Just my $0.02.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
I think that would be a different license altogether.
Interbase will round out all the features that are missing from every other open-source database. Interbase has: GREAT stored procedures and triggers, fully ANSI 92 compliant, excellent JAVA support, etc, etc.
Hello Interbase 6.
One of its most interesting features is that the InterBase server scales all the way down to running on a Windows 95 machine. This is perfect for those who don't have neither the money for Windows NT nor the guts for Unix/Linux. Also, as I recall, the military was big into InterBase before the product was bought by Borland. So there are a lot of legacy
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
It's no longer a huge surprise : lately everyone seems to jump (or step at least) in the Linux boat. The question is : will Microsoft release the code for, say, SQL Server ? This would be really cute. Watch out, Bill may pull such an ace from his sleeve (yeah, right !)
As far as I know this is the first SQL92 compliant Open Source DATABASE; as MySql and PostgreSQL are not SQL92 (yet) and probably never for MySQL. This is really huge news in my opinion. Although I didn't try Interbase myslef, according to what I have read about it here and there, and particularily in newsgroups, it seems to be a very nice piece of software.
Now I can deploy my web sites using a professional-quality database with transaction support. I will seriously look at Inprise's enterprise tools as well in light of this goodwill gesture! Thanks Inprise!
What have you been smoking? They already have a Linux version, and have for some time.
---
Oper on the Nightstar
Man, maybe this Inprise company has finally got it after all.
It's not so surprising that the Solaris and NT versions are going to be opened up, too -- it's likely that all of the versions have a common codebase with a thin layer of platform-specific code on top.
If they use a truly open license and just released 'the Linux version,' it would open the door for third parties to fork the code to create their OWN free/open Solaris and Win32 (and Irix and Hurd and MacOS and BeOS) versions of it, competing with the Inprise 'non-open' versions on other platforms.
Of course, if their license isn't correctly open/free, this is academic, but since they ARE apparently releasing their multi-platform code, it might be reasonable inferred that they plan to use a properly free license and don't want to compete with that.
We'll see.
--
C'mon guys, seeing some of you get so excited about this stuff makes me embarrassed for you. InterBase is such a dead product, it's not even funny. In fact, just last Tuesday, Inprise confirmed that Bill Karwin, InterBase product manager, Paul Beach, director of business development, and Wayne Ostiguy, manager of technical support, have left the company.
Yeah, sounds real promising all right...
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Before Inprise became commies and opensourced Interbase, I used this software for keeping track of communists/linux zealots (same thing). Hell, I even used to generate hitlists from my commie/linux zealot database on my non-commie NT server.
While there are those who will look at the negative aspects of Inprise's action to release Interbase 6 as open source, I am not one.
Having been an avid IB user since the introduction of Delphi with various versions running on my hardware (IB 5.6 on Windows, 4.02G on Linux) I can hardly wait for 6.0. Delphi and IB for Linux make an awesome team with transactions, isolation, and a rich stored procedure language.
Interbase 6.0 was demonstrated at the Borland/Inprise conference this year. During one of the sessions, a fellow developer asked the pointed question of releasing Local Interbase for free or the creation of a run-time only engine to aid in the deployment of applications developed using Interbase. He cited M$ and Sybase's moves to do such things. They said they would look into it but didn't thing such a move was feasible. IB 6.0 never made it out the door (but it did look slick with that nice GUI admin tool).
But, we also heard Dale Fuller stating that the Interbase team had about six months to turn the corner and that Borland was fully dedicated to Linux. Looks to me like they are positioning themselves quite nicesly.
I just hope that the source will compile with egcs (or at least decent RPMs will be available).
RD
Give your tired rant a rest Zico. Only you could turn around good news like the open source release of a commercial-grade database into some sort of bad news. The Linux and *BSD communities certainly welcome this news. Some employees may have left Inprise to better their own careers - and why not - it's a free country. However, their source code remains - and that's all that the open source community really cares about.
... the rest of us take over their product and continue to enhance and improve it in true OpenSource fashion.
Maybe they left coz they didn't like the idea of the old paradigm of computer software development being replaced by a new one that allows for a greater product and better tools for everyone?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I wonder what is more important: the 'Open Source' aspect of the database or the actual PORT of the database to linux? OpenSource means also 'it's for free!!', but for an organisation who wants to have a huge reliable database system, it's not important if costs $5000,- or $0.0. So, why are people ALL OF A SUDDEN interested in a good product when it comes Open Source AND/OR free? Sure, what's free is nice to have, but what's GOOD and SOLID is also nice to have, allthough it might cost a little money. Not very much people did that, according to the financial figures of Inprise. And that's a shame.
For Inprise I can understand they open up the source because they get the attention of the people who just want to use free software and/or software that is open sourced and other people who just watch every move of a company on the path of 'Open Source' or 'Linux'. It doesn't bring them any money, which is badly needed over there due to their bad financial situation. I truely hope it will give insight in how a complex system as Interbase works, but I doubt the actual advantage of the release of the sourcecode.
Call me a sceptic, IMHO it's not allways right to open up the sourcecode, especially if you are near the edge of death as inprise is
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Whatever you do Borland, don't release it under the GPL.
Have a look at
http://community.borland.com/article/1,1410,201
for the best summary of information about Kylix so far.
Inprise/Borland are getting strong into Linux - see
http://www.borland.com/linux/
So that's what they are doing.
If I missed the announcement, please tell me.
Actually, MySQL is one of the best databases out there; and remember, this is old database code. On a similar note, MySQL is not actually open source, it's a very-close-but-not-quite-with-an-old-version-GPLd database. Check out PostgresQL, under a BSD-ish license.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
Is it just me, or do you get the feeling that Lignux has become the favorite charity for software hand-me-downs? What are we, the Salvation Army of Software?
Kindly wipe that Stallmanesque `g' from the name of Mr. Torvald's kernel. It's insulting.
One more thing: open sourcing something does not mean `giving it to Linux'. It means giving it to the whole wide world! Try not to see everything through Linux-colored glasses. I know it's hard, but please, for everyone's sake, do please try.
MySQL is great for a large class of problems, but it is no so great for another large class of problems: those which benefit from major, important database features that it does not have: transactions, stored procs, triggers, etc.
They've stated that they didn't really set out to do this open source. They got forced into it by their own ineptitude.
Their own public statements are that the whole development management team for Interbase quit last month, that they no longer have the resources to support the product, that they don't feel that this is part of their core business, that they no longer have the technical knowledge of hte product to support it, and therefore they're going to release it Open Source.
So what the community gets is about 15 years of corporate (read: poor quality) code, with no commitment by Inprise to support it at all. And their statements indicate that they don't plan to, as they don't feel that it's part of their core business. Heck, the rumors that I've heard is that there are sections that nobody currently understands, and that are written in K&R style C. This doesn't bode well for the product.
I'm all in favor of open source applications, but considering that this seems like a desperation dump (and I wasn't planning on bringing up Mozilla, but.....), and that there seems to be no thought put into how they're going to actually manage it, I'd rather not have this multi-million line-of-code dump clouding the community's mind.
Kirk
If your company said that they didn't care about your product anymore, you'd probably quit too.
Kirk
http://www.borland.com/about/press/2000/ib.html looks like a revised press release on their website. Doesn't mention beta anywhere. Yahoo! Now what will the license be?
In my view SUBJ is the question now.
Really - you should have quite some skills (and commitment) to make *good* contribution to the case. Because, you know, developing DB engine is quite different to multiplying WMs or even writing drivers for some hardware. You have to be really tough to take on that. Are *YOU* ready for this? I'm definitely not.
But all for all it's good new (better than they could be). I hope it'll become standard - "if it's dead - let it be - at least publish it".
------------
PS: Now I just gonna wait for Kylix.
I may be a Borland fan, but why must you classify that as zealotry? There are those who prefer certain tools such as egcs or VC++ or Borland tools. Why is it that just because a "for profit" company decided to enter a market makes it so bad or "smells like stanated and rotted sh&t to me"?
Is it because a corporate venture will promote competition for the less powerful databases (or overpriced) databases that already exist?
Does it scare you that something else may replace the tool you are so comfortable with? Why should it? Did you know that IB was designed originally with Unix in mind? Windows came second.
Interbase, unlike mySQL (which I do like, BTW), offers several things that mySQL does not.
First, it offers true transaction support.
Second, it offers stored procedures.
Thirdly, it is pretty robust and self-maintaining.
And, like mySQL, it is available for a multitude of platforms.
Where it lacks is in raw speed. Yet, with the proper settings, IB can be very fast. It's autocommitting after every update, delete or insert that slows things down. Do it all in a transaction and watch things fly.
They other disadvantage (hopefully soon to be rectified), is the concurrent user licensing arrangement for IB. We'll have to see just what Open Sourcing will do for that.
Surely, IB could benefit from the features that exist within other databases such as mySQL. But, IMHO, even the lowly IB 4.0 is already a serious contenter to mySQL.
RD
I mean - I can grab a copy of Interbase 5.6 (used to be a commercial product) from 'Net and use it for my devices. Now that Borland has let IB go, will it be legal?
;-)
I mean - can I install a server and, say, 100 clients for free with existing versions of IB (that were commercial)?
If yes, then it's great news indeed
Geez, whatever...
Sadly, the term "open source" has become so overused that I think it is pretty much meaningless. Even the official open source definition is not sufficiently specific to be useful to me.
So, until we see the specific license, do you really care whether something is "open source"? I don't.
I am gonna show my ignorance here, but is K&R style C a bad thing? Why? Not OO or what?
I just got the K&R book for Xmas, I thought it was THE C book to have. Please enlighten (but not flame please) a programming newbie.
But the point that I was trying to make, perhaps not as eloquently as I might have done, is that corporate code usually suffers from some very similar problems: it relies on idioms and dependencies which are not well defined and specified. This is largely as a result of it not having been open to peer review outside the company before. Thus the only people who submit comments are the same people who write it in the first place, and people who know all those underlying, understood dependencies.
Open-source code, when written from scratch, tends to have fewer of those dependencies and understood-but-not-specified details. When a large enough pool of people works on something, and different people all the time, you have to have these things spelled out or else it will be too difficult to maintain.
My concern is that Inprise will be dumping code on the world which hasn't been peer reviewed, hasn't been clarified, and hasn't been sufficiently documented. Not that it doesn't do its job well, but that it will be difficult for the open source community to add to.
Kirk
Since when does corporate code does not equate with high quality? If anything they are forced to document their code - because they are paid to do so - the same is not true for most open source projects. It is very tough to get volunteer developers to document their source (since they don't HAVE TO). Also, just because the code is not OO does not mean it's bad - take Oracle for instance - it is 100% C code as well! If anyone can understand the GCC compiler code or Linux kernel code - then the InterBase code will be a walk in the park.
Get them in the door with a special, and follow up with support and product tie-ins. If the product wasn't selling - why not use it for good publicity? It certainly can't hurt. And another thing - what do you care what their MOTIVES are so long as you can use it (and improve on it) FOR FREE?
Clearly, Borland/Inprise is about to die. People leave, and the products become open source. They will soon sell the building. There is not much left. :-( Delphi R&D Engineer, '97-'99
One of the more notable examples of this is Turbo Prolog, which is effectively still being sold by its original producers. Take a look on Google for "Visual Prolog."
I certainly agree with your comments about "No New License, Please!"
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Projects have a way of living on far past the expectations of its creators.
It's one thing to say that a product runs well while being written in pure C code. It's entirely another to say that it's good source code, as a mixture of C++, ANSI C and K&R C.
As for the statement that corporate programmers always write good comments because they are paid to, I'm pretty sure that isn't a given. For example, a friend who worked at HP told me that his bonus at one time was based in no small part on non-comment-lines-of-code. This indicates to me that comments aren't important to them (and he was working on HP-UX).
But the thing about the examples that you've indicated, Linux and GCC, is that those were developed by open source developers in public: they weren't released at some mature point in their life. If you take something like the Mozilla source code, when it was released there were significant quality problems that had to be worked through before the project could go forward. That all hinders understanding and forward progress.
Besides, have you ever read something like Query Optimizer code? Take a look at the postgres code for this section. It's very dense code, very difficult to grok, and almost like black magic. That's the sort of code that database servers are riddled with, and if they're truly legacy sections, it could be very very difficult to understand them and move forward.
Kirk
That could ultimately be the case, but the assertion that they can thus "take a leadership role" is pretty funny. In the free software community, you can't take anything; you can only be a leader by giving away more than anybody else. I suspect they'd find that a mite challenging; it seems to me that IBM's AlphaWorks program is a stronger contender for the status...
The thing that is particularly exciting about InterBase, setting it apart from any of the already-libre options for Linux, is the fact that InterBase was designed as an embedded RDBMS. In the "open source" context, the opening of the code ought to allow the system to be deconstructed into a set of libraries to separate data store from SQL interpreter (to name the most obvious bits) as well as, hopefully, lock manager and transaction manager and probably some other "useful bits." That is very important in that:
- Not requiring much, if any DBA work.
- Putting the database in a few files that should be user-controllable
... Which should make it easier for naive users to install and backup their data ...
It takes some doing to get DBMSes up and running and configured to be usable; InterBase should "lower the bar" on this, which is a very good thing.This is a pretty major issue at present with other DBMSes like MySQL and PostgreSQL.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Everybody's got friends in every company that say one thing or another. They say some truthful things, sometimes they say false things out of spite. I hear from some such "friends" that Oracle code is not a textbook case of good coding style, for example. Unlike Sybase where they have just one code base for their SQL products (Adaptive Server and SQL Anywhere) - Oracle HAS A DIFFERENT PARSER for each of Oracle 8, PRO*C/C++ and SQLPLUS!!! Each one of these parsers may reject or run code that runs correctly on another one of them - I know this for a fact - I must work around these bugs every day. Just because some code may seem obtuse to you does not mean another ambitious open source developer can't pick it up and run with it. How can you dismiss code YOU'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN? I for one will wait to see for myself before I pass judgement using a third-hand uninformed opinion.
I think I speak for everyone when I say that no matter what license they use, they should not make up their own, incompatible license. We've had enough of this already.
Are you listening, Borland?
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Second place isn't even worth mentioning.
If Borland/Inprise/Whatitsnametoday wanted to make serious sheckels, it would have web-enabled DbaseIII and sold it for a C Note. Even the Perl monkeys have CGI.
There are more than 50 million users of it still out there, even though we are now deep into Y2K baloney. Talk about instant customer base, and they own the code.
Interbase is loved by CS majors, but the apps are thoroughly hated by end users. You are a programmer, so I don't expect you to understand this statement.
Great. More BSD propaganda gets moderated up. Slashdot is a GNU/Linux site, not a BSD site. You're lucky if you get any crumbs.
Stangely, there isn't any pointer to the actual source from that page! If it is really open source, no string attached, why can't developer download a snapshot of the source from them right then and now? Why the wait till some time in "the first part of 2000..." I think I can smell some fish here.
Have to give them a small credit in at least trying this though. We just have to wait an see the rest of the story when the source is released.
- Etam
After reading all the stuff here I went to the Inprise newsgroup borland.public.delphi.non-technical and read some comments there. This is the main newsgroup for anything concerning Inprise so don't worry about the Delphi name.
What I found is most of the posters don't have a clue what Open Source is and think that by open sourcing Interbase Inprise has dropped it completely. It's sad that some people are clueless. They don't understand any ideas concerning Open Source. Most believe that Inprise had a dead product and let it go into the graveyard of Open Source.
The Oracle code base is completely fragmented and screwed up. They haven't done a rewrite in years, and the product shows. They just add sections to what they need to modify, and leave the rest. I've worked at Oracle and seen quite a bit of the server code. I know that there are huge sections in there that aren't touched specifically because nobody there knows what they do.
Closed source projects tend to accumulate stuff like this over time, because there isn't the necessity of understanding it or the intellectual challenge and ability for enterprising "others" of doing it. The more that cruft accumulates, the more difficult it is for additional features and components to be added.
I've never heard K&R referred to as "old-skool" C, but that's as good a phrase as I've ever heard. Technically there's not too much different from ANSI C; ANSI just has a few syntactical improvements... but it's been around for at least a decade now.
Saying that something is written in K&R C is like saying it's written in Olde English - not necessarily a bad thing; just if there isn't a more recent "translation" it doesn't bode well for the maintainance of the code.
ISO C is even closer to ANSI than ANSI is to K&R - basically, well-written ANSI C is ISO C.
I agree that knowing C++ helps you write better C... but I wouldn't learn C++ if you don't already know C or Java - it's too big a bite to take at once.
I've been thinking we need more database options for Linux to be widely used in the commercial world. Good stuff.
Both implement databases via one or a very few files.
I seriously doubt that the formats of the files are simple; the intent surely sounds the same.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Yea.. they care about open source:-=) http://www.href.com/interbase
...that the post you responded to might have been a bit of sarcasm?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Looking at the rampant negative comments from those who are a) clearly ignorant of the Interbase product, and b) seem to think they have a God-given right to endless free software, it amazes me why any publisher would want to jump into this miasma.
Since the most vocal of you have made it clear, again and again, that you will never buy software, your comments have little relevance to any commercial operation.
What amazes me even more, however, is the ignorance of K&R. Is there no one here but me who is over the age of 25? Code written to K&R standards will be a) relatively straightforward, and b) free from the abominable practices prevalent in C++. Would you feel better if it were written to VC++ practice? Then it would truly be non-portable, inscrutable, and buggy.
Let your brains engage before your keyboards, people. And stop crapping on newcomers to the Open Source "movement." Without new victims, there can be no movement.
no growth = death
--- Bill
That's a pretty typical response from a disgruntled ex-employee... Always a reliable objective source of info and opinon... sheesh...
If the product is commercially dead the source would be usefull even if poor quality source. If the product is alive and the code is high quality one. Great!.
In one of link at Interbase web site, there's a page about a "Patented support of data". How will this affect the open sourcing?
What if slashdot, like so many other projects, opened up a CVS server with the source, and opened it up for read-only access?
;-)
I thought that the whole reason the andover.net takeover was a good thing, was that such nifty new things would be possible.
But, no! We get the beanie awards, instead!
The opening of Mozilla.org was a pretty desperate measure, and look at how well that turned out?
Who says Interbase can't see improvements once opened?
what do you miss? dBase syntax? dBase IV had already a built-in castrated implementation of SQL. There was no nested queries, as in MySQL. As a matter of fact, MySQL' features, design and restrictions are very close do dBase/FoxPro.
So, you have all you want.
Nice picture of the Slashdot booth at COMDEX at that link, BTW... read all the way down.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
All one has to do is substitute the words "Release Open Source...as long as it's not MY open source!" and the two situations become remarkably similar.
This is what I've just seen posted to the interbase.public.non-technical newsgroup at nnrp:forums.inprise.com:
======== bobitt ===========
Subject: Re: Interbase Opensource Details?
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2000 09:13:47 -0800
From: "Steve Peters (Inprise/Borland)"
Organization: Borland
Newsgroups: interbase.public.non-technical
References: 1
Hi Robert,
My responses are below...
Robert Love wrote:
> 1. Is InterBase 5.6 the last version that InterBase will support with there
> techincal support group or will you be putting out "Certified builds" of
> the future open source version and supporting thoose as well? --I
> understand that the support cost must cover the enginners instead of sales.
I doubt that the "certified builds" thing will happen. 5.6 will most
likely continue to be sold and supported as a certified Interbase
version but I don't think anything past 5.6 will.
> 2. What type of licencing will be used for the source?
Don't know that yet.
> 3. Is the product being Open Source... Where the source is sold with the
> product or
> is the source going to be publically available?
I would guess that the software would be publicly available. I think
they will work out the details of this open sourcing while we wait for
6.0 to be finished.
> 4. Besides support will there be any work on the InterBase front in the
> future. And if so what should we expect.
Doubtful that any work will happen (beyond support of 5.6) after
6.0 is released.
--
Kind Regards,
Steve Peters
Inprise/Borland Developer Support
=========== bobitt =============
...is how to shove his head up his ass
-- The very reason you and I are unsure as to Borland's future is the reason they will continue to have declining market share. Uncertainty is not what you want in a RDMBS vendor's product. You can't commit all your precious data to a RDBMS that may stop being supported in the future. Seems to me that there is a vicious cycle for all but the best RDBMS vendors.
Oracle or MS can squeeze out RDBMS vendors until the smaller players go bust by simply dropping their prices for SQL Server / Oracle 7.3 / 8 / 8i. Oracle have already dropped their average licence price by 30-35% recently to squeeze MS's SQL Server. P.S. we are being told that SQL Server 7 is going to be updated to SQL Server 2000 (gee I'm glad my RDBMS vendor (Oracle) is not the marketing-obsessed MS)
-- so this is less of a problem. Incidentally, Oracle have been making to largest leaps forward in their support of JAVA recently.
--- you can't change a Leopard's spots. How can a Commercial organisation have the history / corporate psychology / instinct to even understand the concept of open sourcing? MS had to put some of their most articulate people together to work on the Halloween Documents just so they could start to get a handle on the issue. Do you think Inprise have even done as much as this?
-- and apart from bit rot or alpha particles neither do binaries. However this does not mean that no one is going to work with your code or buy your binaries
How many PHBS (bosses) do you think would trust their spotty geeks to recompile their (mission critical) databases. None. So Inprise can only succeed if their new DB is only used for non mission critical work. But noone pays lots of money for non-mission critical databases (e.g. MS has to flog SQL Server 7 dirt cheap compared to its supposed capabilities). So by a logical process of deduction Inprise's database is dead however you look at it.
Here is a letter I wrote to encourage the GPL/LGPL of InterBase:
l ). I think it is wonderful
- freedom.html.
To: kberkland@inprise.com, customer-service@inprise.com
Subject: Please release InterBase as free software under the GPL or LGPL
To Whom It May Concern at Inprise/Borland:
I read with excitement your announcement yesterday which indicated you would
be "releasing InterBase 6 under an open-source license"
(http://www.borland.com/about/press/2000/ib.htm
when existing proprietary software companies move in this direction.
However, as this issue develops, I would like to encourage you to consider a
few points.
First of all, I noticed you are vague about which license you will use. I
would encourage you to use the GNU General Public License (often just called
the GPL). The GPL has many advantages for a business like yours. The
greatest advantage is that if your competitors use your software, make
changes, and sell that software, the source code must be made available.
This means that you will benefit from your competitors improvements of your
code if they ship versions of InterBase to their customers. Many other
so-called "open source" licenses do not have this important feature. Note,
too, that the GPL is both an "open source" and a "free software" license.
(I write more about this issue later in the letter.) You can read the GPL
at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
If you find that the GPL does not work for you, I would then encourage you
to use the GNU Lesser General Public License (often called the LGPL). This
license is very similar to the GPL, but is different in that you, and all
your customers using InterBase, would be permitted to link InterBase with
proprietary software of their your choosing. This distinction is helpful if
you want to encourage adoption of InterBase by other proprietary software
vendors. Like the GPL, the LGPL is both an "open-source" and "free
software" license. You can read the LGPL at
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html.
If you find that neither the GPL nor the LGPL fits your needs, I would
encourage you to avoid writing a new license that is different from licenses
already in use in the free software community. Many companies have done
this, and it causes a great deal of confusion for users and programmers.
New licenses need to be analyzed over and over from a legal standpoint so
the community can determine if they are truly free software licenses, and
if they are compatible with other free software licenses. This takes up
valuable resources from the community that could be spent improving various
free software programs, including InterBase (once it is free software)!
However, whatever license you choose, it would help the community most if
you choose a license that is compatible with the GPL (meaning that one can
legally link the InterBase code with some code under the GPL). This is of
the utmost importance, because a lot of great free software is under the
GPL, and InterBase can be improved most rapidly if programmers can add
existing useful GPL code with it. Often, if the license isn't GPL
compatible, programmers in the community avoid the software.
As a general resource on this licensing issue, you should definitely look
at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html. This outlines the
various licenses in use, and explains why they are good or bad choices. If
you need help choosing or developing a license that is compatible with the
GPL, please contact gnu@gnu.org as that page suggests.
Finally, you may have noted that I have preferred the term "free software"
over "open source" in this message. It is worth noting that these two terms
denote different (although overlapping) communities. (In the realm of
licenses, all free software licenses are open-source licenses, but not all
open-source licenses are free software licenses.) We would gladly welcome
you as members to the free software community if you choose a free software
license for InterBase. If you do choose such a license, we would further
encourage you to mention the term "free software" in reference to InterBase,
as well as the term "open source". To read more about the differences in
these terms, please take a look at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for
Thank you for you time, and I hope that InterBase is made free software so
that we can welcome your company into this exciting community.
Sincerely,
Bradley M. Kuhn