Re: [HACKERS] Most Advanced

> On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> > Is Interbase any good?  I never heard of them much.  Sounds like it is a
> > PC database like dbase, right?  They don't scale very well.
> 
> "InterBase is an enterprise-level database system used by firms and
> agencies like Nokia, MCI, Northern Telecom, NASA, the US Army, and Boeing.
> Despite its speed and capabilities, it has been a well-kept secret and
> holds an insignificant share of the relational database market. Growth of
> that market has slowed, reducing chance for InterBase to increase its
> share as a proprietary product."
> 
> Although they do stand in the tradition of dBase and Paradox, they do
> appear to be a serious product. This URL might give you an idea what kind
> of SQL (and beyond) they support.
> 
> <http://www.interbase.com/products/dsqlsyntax.html>
> 
> Also, they seem to have an edge (against us) in the areas of logging
> (journaling) and distributed stuff. Their client languages seem to
> concentrate around Delphi, C++, and Java.
> 
> I am just wondering how/whether they will be able to enlist any outside
> developers in significant masses. (see also Mozilla)

Yes, that is a key question.  I know Solaris got criticized about over
their new "Solaris" open-source license, and I heard the
Monzilla/Netscape code was so ugly that the open source effort is going
very slowly.

Honestly, a big part of success is atmosphere and code structure. 
Without both of those, it is pretty slow going.  It is hard to imagine
how anyone would _new_ would start working on Interbase rather than
PostgreSQL because of our good reputation.

Also, Corel bough Inprise/Borland, so there is no way of knowing what
will happen with Interbase now.  I just heard that the new WordPerfect
Office will run under WINE(yuck) rather than native Linux/Unix.  That is
quite bad and a clear failure for Corel IMHO.  Corel doesn't seem to be
very good at enlisting assistance in open source projects.  The
developed their _own_ version of WINE to get Word Perfect Office out the
door, and they say they will merge their changes in "later" to main WINE
distribution.  Their WINE source is accessible, though.

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
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