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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.
"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
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 agree, a very Good Thing in the sense that there will be an Open Source DB will all the stuff a DB should have (transactions, lots of field times, triggers, SPs, online backup, replication, etc.), and it runs exactly the same (as far as I know) across platforms.
I wonder what the numerous companies that currently use embedded Interbase databases will do, though? Will it still be appealing? More appealing (less $), or less appealing (not commercial)?
One of its most interesting features is that the InterBase server scales all the way down to running on a Windows 95 machine. This is perfect for those who don't have neither the money for Windows NT nor the guts for Unix/Linux. Also, as I recall, the military was big into InterBase before the product was bought by Borland. So there are a lot of legacy
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
It's not so surprising that the Solaris and NT versions are going to be opened up, too -- it's likely that all of the versions have a common codebase with a thin layer of platform-specific code on top.
If they use a truly open license and just released 'the Linux version,' it would open the door for third parties to fork the code to create their OWN free/open Solaris and Win32 (and Irix and Hurd and MacOS and BeOS) versions of it, competing with the Inprise 'non-open' versions on other platforms.
Of course, if their license isn't correctly open/free, this is academic, but since they ARE apparently releasing their multi-platform code, it might be reasonable inferred that they plan to use a properly free license and don't want to compete with that.
We'll see.
--
While there are those who will look at the negative aspects of Inprise's action to release Interbase 6 as open source, I am not one.
Having been an avid IB user since the introduction of Delphi with various versions running on my hardware (IB 5.6 on Windows, 4.02G on Linux) I can hardly wait for 6.0. Delphi and IB for Linux make an awesome team with transactions, isolation, and a rich stored procedure language.
Interbase 6.0 was demonstrated at the Borland/Inprise conference this year. During one of the sessions, a fellow developer asked the pointed question of releasing Local Interbase for free or the creation of a run-time only engine to aid in the deployment of applications developed using Interbase. He cited M$ 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
... 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.
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.
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.
I doubt Interbase is obsolete. I bet it's just unsellable. The people probably left either because they refused to work with open source developers or were tired of their company being spun-off, folded-in, lather, rinse, repeat. Interbase as a product can't compete with MS SQL marketing or deployment.
It is a great value-add to Borland dev-tools. It makes sense to open-source it.
That's one of the key areas where open-source makes sense. Cool technology will not be killed simply because there is not enough financial incentive to maintain it.
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
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.
Well, I didn't mean that nobody uses it anymore, but more along the lines of there's no longer a market for it. Current users still had to support it in their own company environments, but there was basically no further penetration of the market. As far as the three higher-ups leaving, it was because they saw the product for which they were responsible being killed off.
After they left, there was a lot of talk in the community that the product would be opensourced, but there was also a lot of talk that it would just be orphaned. Now, for open source advocates, they think it's a wonderful thing, but a lot of people that I know who still actually have to support these environments believe that this is the beginning of the end for any real support from Inprise.
Like I said, it's embarrassing to see all the cheering over this here -- Inprise isn't making some bold move here, they're just giving away code that they were about to toss into the garbage. For InterBase users, it's like getting a consolation prize ("Well, at least they didn't kill it."), and for the rah rah crowd here, it's like celebrating being handed some refuse that was about to be thrown out (forgetting, of course, that there's a reason why InterBase was on its last legs in the first place, and it wasn't 'cause it was closed source). Yippee.
Bugger: Who is spreading FUD? Are you denying that those people quit? Are you telling me that InterBase was a thriving product? In the future, please quit tossing the word "FUD" around every time you get your panties in a bunch.
Jay Vaughan, who says that "the rest of us [will] take over their product and continue to enhance and improve it in true OpenSource fashion": What, you mean like Mozilla? What is it, almost two years late now? For a browser?? Besides, I recall that after the flop of Mozilla, ESR backpedaled and said that he never claimed that his cathedral utopia would work for closed source products being opened up (Which, of course, begs the question of why he goes around claiming credit for the opening of Mozilla, if his CatB fantasy didn't apply to them, but that's a discussion for another day). What is the difference in this case?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
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.
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.
Yes, open sourcing it is better than killing it. You have no argument from me there. My point is that all this celebration is misplaced. I'm curious if anyone in this discussion was even aware of the departures of those three very key guys before I brought it up.
I see this celebration as mainly being from open source fanboys who don't know the particulars of this situation, and for the most part don't have any intention of ever hacking on it or even using it. Sure, it's great if you love open source and you don't actually have to support any InterBase installations, but for the people who thought they would continue to be supported by Inprise, do you think they're celebrating? Maybe they will, but do you see why they would have their doubts due to the recent events? Do you think they're thrilled after having seen the most obvious example of closed source software being taken up by the open source community: Mozilla?
You have to remember that Netscape was a very popular app, especially among those people who couldn't use IE. This guaranteed that Mozilla would have at least some momentum behind it to help get it done, and it's still been a hellacious journey. InterBase, on the other hand, which has never been a popular product, could very well become dependent upon a community whose reaction to the product is less than spectacular. If InterBase is going to depend on a community that isn't in it for money, but rather "do I really feel like coding for this product?" then I think it's going to have some trouble down the road.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
It's really too early to tell anything at this point; we haven't seen the code to judge its quality, we don't know if Inprise is orphaning the product or planning to support it, and don't know what licence it'll be under. Mostly this thread is just speculation; we really have to wait for more information before making a final judgement. Still, I'll be looking forward to seeing it...
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.
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.