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Programming IT Technology

Interbase Fork Imminent? 44

Posted by Hemos from the good-times-bad-times-you-know-i've-had-my-share dept.
A reader wrote to us saying: "Technocrat.net has this story about how Inprise is pissing off the developers and users of Interbase, who were creating a vibrant community around the open source RDBMS. As a result, It looks as like the project is about to fork, and the independent branch will be called Firebird."
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Interbase Fork Imminent? More

Interbase Fork Imminent?

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  • I realized that it was a joke. I was playing the 'straight-man'.

    Sigh. No one appreciates deadpan humor anymore...
    --
  • Although Inprise has lost the support of the community, the codebase has not.

    The developers are rallying, have set up a separate CVS repository on Sourceforge, and have an extensive set of mailing lists as well.

    The group now known as NewCo has been getting a lot of VC interest, and more importantly, a lot of interest from current Interbase customers who want to drop Inprise as their support provider.

    There are also several commercial software vendors whose products are based on InterBase, who are also willing to throw their weight behind NewCo.

    In short, the codebase is not being abandoned by the only people who really matter, it's users and developers.
    --
  • But there's already a GPLed BBS package [firebird.org.tw] out there called Firebird.

    It's in active use around the Greater China area, and I'm using it to operate one [e-fever.org] myself.

  • Warning: Those with sarcasmaphobia should not read or moderate this post.

    Well, if you consider the httpd interface, which *is* the WWW not innovative, then I would have to agree. Of course, then there's NCSA, which begat Netscape...

    What about make, rcs, xmake, PERL, Python? I am sure you think some company created them, right?

    How about bind, (it translates IP addresses to domain names)? I am sure another came up with that one, too. Of course you realize everyone on the planet uses some form of Berkeley Bind, right? That must be from that Berkeley, Inc. I keep hearing about.

    Of course, don't think that new implementations of old ideas are not innovative, right? Like KDE or GNOME.

    My point: you don't seem to be aware that a lot of (IMHO) innovative software has been created and released under the GNU General Public License [gnu.org] (GPL). Some folks like to say 'Open Source' cause it's cute. Nevertheless, this software is innovative (technically) and your freedom to use and distribute it has not been impeded (it is, in fact, *protected* by the GPL). Wow! Seems pretty innovative to me.

    --

  • I want to use Interbase at home for my drinking games website (currently down, my apologies to all the drunkards out there on the 'net.) I want to do a load-balanced config (based on round-robin DNS, because I don't have to maintain state and I'm not going to set up a third box to loadbalance) with both OpenBSD and Win2k, with the db on Win2k, and development as both PHP and ASP.

    Now I have to wait for an ODBC driver to be developed by the open source community, which tends to despise Microsoft. This is going to hurt.

  • Re:The irony here is almost unbearable (Score:5)

    by David Greene ( 463 ) on Friday August 18, 2000 @05:33AM (#845950)
    Actually, forking can be extremely useful in some cases. Probably the best example is the gcc/egcs split that happened some years ago.

    At the time, the gcc maintainer was sitting on an enormous number of patches, mostly contributed by Cygnus. These patches fixed critical problems with g++. Things were so bad at one point that the Cygnus version of g++ was the only version of gcc that could compile my code.

    Several people brought this up on USENET. Some time later, the EGCS project was announced. The Cygnus compiler was quickly released more visibly (it had of course always been availble on their FTP site). Development was changed to a bazaar style and improvements quickly rolled in.

    About two years later, the FSF finally caught up and decided to roll in the EGCS changes, creating gcc 2.95. Both projects happily merged and all is well in compiler-land.

    Forking is probably the most powerful tool we have in the Free Software community. It's akin to booting our elected officials out of office. If handled in a civil manner, it is a useful tool to spur development on a stagnant project.

    --

  • At least now I can say: "Damn this forking Interbase!", and people will not look at me stupid.

    This sort of thing sounds a lot like the point [slashdot.org]I brought up in yesterday's AFS article. Many companies that previously released proprietary only code have been opening things up. This is good, but in many cases the licenses allow them to continue to exert a lot of influence over how things are used (how many IPLs are there now?) I also question the motives behind jumping into open source when a company jumps right back out because the short term prospect of Inprise recouping their investment wasn't too promising. For profit corporations are still tied to their shareholders and they aren't likely to be huge supporters of open source, there just isn't enough money in it right now.

    Soon I will be free of my present employer (I maintain several different RDBMSs) and I would like to spend some time working for one of the open source database projects. Things like this piss me off because I would hate to be in the position of the people who have been doing Interbase development (or at least planning to do some).

  • Namely, that you think it's up to someone outside the developers to decide how many projects is enough. "Do we really need..." implies a basic thought flaw. If someone wants to work on a project, or start a new competing project, it's nobody's business but their own. You may as well comment that your neighbor has bought a new stuffed toy for their kid.

    --
  • Excellent comment. I think the "Do we need..." phrase is heard far too often here. I fail to see why an end-user should dictate what projects are taken on by developers.

  • Re:It's about time... (Score:3)

    by Ronin Developer ( 67677 ) on Friday August 18, 2000 @06:17AM (#845954)
    As a serious Borland Delphi developer and staunch Inprise/Borland supporter since 1982, I was really looking forward to the open sourcing of InterBase and the spin off to ISC. My excitement was a direct result of having used InterBase in the past but was turned off to deploying products based on it because of the apparent lack of support by Inprise. Finally, they were taking InterBase seriously.

    But, when the deal to spin off InterBase to ISC failed to materialize at the developer's conference, I began questioning Inprise's motives in the whole affair. At the keynote speeches, we were assured the contract would be signed in a couple of weeks.

    Prior to the conference, I asked on the NGs what would become of the code being written by non-Inprise developers if Inprise renigged on the deal. Everyone said I was taking Dale Fuller's statements the wrong way and that Inprise/Borland was committed to the spin off. Even as late as the conference, we were told the delays were in the hinds of the lawyers. Even /. seemed to think the unveiling story wasn't worthy of their time.

    Well, as I feared, the deal fell through. Borland is rapidly losing its InterBase developers (well,according to the article). So, what will become of InterBase? Will it lose financial support and whither and die as was its original fate as of last December?

    Has Borland dealt itself a final blow in this last fiasco with Open Source developers as well? Did they lose the small footholds of trust they achieved whenever a commercial vendor enters into this arena and makes these promises and almost delivers?

    Okay, the source code has been released, but will people use or extend it under the provisions of the IPL?

    What impact will these actions have on their aim to become a cross-platform tool vendor and the acceptace of Kylix among Linux-based developers?

    I wish, for once, that companies would do what's right for the right reasons rather than what's for the immediate good of their stock holders. The long term effects would have made it all worth while. Now, we'll just have to wait and see what the final outcome will be. I'm betting it won't be good for Borland.

    RD
  • This is not quite what I'm trying to say. I do think that if someone wants to write a project, or start a fork that by all means they should. However, what I was trying to say is that in this particular instance, it may not be so good. Database development is some of the most challenging work out there. It takes special talent to be able to do it well, and this talent is evident in all of these products. However, it seems that we would possibly have a better product if all these gifted developers joined together and made one or two databases instead of four.
  • throw us a little dylan thomas, oscar wilde, lord byron, yeats, frost, akhmatova, t.s. eliot....this emily dickinson thing is cute, lets get some variety.
  • I wonder what would have happened with regards to this if the Corel/ Inprise merger had gone through. We all know that Corel pissed off several people by making a number of mistakes a little while ago but since then they (or their PR people at least) have been working very hard to clean up the situation. If the two companies had merged, I wonder if this would have not happened in the first place, or if it would have just been more fuel on the fire.

    PS. I may be lacking a few details--I couldn't read the article, as the link was broken.

  • I think whats key here are the open source communities that get behind particular projects or causes. Inprise had a lot anticipation and support from a developer community that really liked their product. But they dropped the ball consistently, by delivering late, and without key adapters. They basically had a goldmine in their potential dev. community and then threw it away by alienating them.

    Companies that release there products as open source can learn an important lesson here. Without fostering a community around your product your project will never be a success. For some products, the technical level of the product makes this hard (which can be mitigated by getting some documentation out) and regardless of the size of the community there will generally only be a few core community developers, but if the company doesn't actively foster this by having open mailing lists, core community developers on cvs, project web pages that foster group style dev, bug trackers, etc than the project will never take off and the company will never realize the benefits of making they're product open source. in fact just the opposite, they will incur only costs for the benefit of additional testing.

    An example of a company that does develop their community check out zope.org by digital creations. For another example of a company that doesn't check out arsdigita.com (no project site).

    my 2 cents... back to work...
  • I wish, for once, that companies would do what's right for the right reasons rather than what's for the immediate good of their stock holders.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, if the majority of a company's stockholders don't like what's going on, they can fire the people in charge and put in someone who will look out for the immediate (and long term) good of the stock holders. There isn't a lot of room for idealism and business to share the same area.

  • The most interesting quote from the article... (Score:3)

    by Samrobb ( 12731 ) on Friday August 18, 2000 @06:52AM (#845960) Journal

    ...in my mind, had nothing at all to do with the current Inprise/Firebird situation:

    Looked at this way, open source licensing is just a formal way of stating that the only asset that any company or project has is the people involved in it.
  • Something I think that has been lost in all this is the effect it will have on Kylix. By day, I'm paid to write windows code and I was really hoping to get in on the 2 for one offered by delphi/interbase on windows and kylix/interbase on linux. I had always considered the open sourcing of Interbase a brilliant move - people would adopt that and then they could pick up the cash selling the best tool to work with interbase. Now if I convince my customer that they don't need Oracle, and then I have to reverse myself becuase of somebody inside Borland doing a power jerk off, I'll be pissed.
  • Thanks! I appreciate the feedback.

    What did you think of the term I coined - 'reverse fork' to describe what Inprise is doing?
    --
  • In actuality, other than being angry with the dishonesty exhibited by Inprise, how does this materially affect the OSS community? I personally think this will be a huge win. Imagine the discussions that will ensue if the Firebird project outperforms the Inprise led effort, providing better code on a faster track. Once Inprise open sourced the DB, they let the Genie out of the bottle. If Inprise decides they made a mistake, too bad. The point I am trying to make is that collaboration doesn't necessarily need corporate sponsorship. If a project forks because corporate pomp is interfering with development efforts, then I argue that is the best thing that can happen. Inprise needs to remember that they are the newbies when it comes to *this* type of software license, and that they aren't the Grand Poobah of development in the OSS community.
  • As I mentioned in the article, Inprise can benefit as a 'free rider' for a while, but since contributor code is not under their copyright, the developers can re-license it. This means that as soon as the codebase is composed of contributor code, it could be relicensed under the GPL or some other license, thus removing Inprise's privileged position.
    --
  • FIAWOL [fiawol.com], because Fandom Is A Way Of Life.

    So, who owns www.fijagdh.com [fijagdh.com] then? If Bruce Perens is associated with FIAWOL, does that mean Brett Glass should own FIJAGDH.COM? ;-)
  • I'm not sure how much these two tools will overlap, but you might try checking out the IB Designer [egroups.com] mailing list. They're currently debating what license to use, leaning heavily toward an MPL variant.
    --
  • You couln't do serious enterprise-level work with ms-sql either. But face it for every serious enterprise-wide deployment out there there are thousands of not so serious small to medium size deployments.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • First, although Bruce hosts the site, he's not otherwise involved.

    Second, fijagdh.com has been registered since May 14th to a Martin Horvat of Stayton, OR.

    Third fijagdh.net and fijagdh.org seem to still be available.

    (FIJAGDH - Fandom is Just A G*d Damned Hobby, is an approach to Fandom that is antithetical to FIAWOL - Fandom Is A Way Of Life).
    --
  • Hey man, its what Open Source is all about. If you and enough of your fellow thinkers don't like something, feel free to do it yourself. More power to all the elbows involved. Its the whole benefit of truly open licenses.

  • Different tools for different jobs are certainly needed....
    RMySQl, PostgreSQL, (interbase|Firebird)

    They all do different jobs and different things better than others, CHOICE especially *free* choices are always good why do people constnatly discourage this.

    In Somethings (User interface) choice is not optimal, in others(RDBMS) Its good.

    Jeremy

  • It's about time... (Score:4)

    by Carnage4Life ( 106069 ) on Friday August 18, 2000 @04:06AM (#845971) Homepage Journal
    I investigated using Interbase for one of my projects and came away with the distinct impression that the project was in upheaval.

    Sign I:
    My application needed to access the DB using ODBC, it turned out that the person writing the ODBC drivers (the original inventor of Interbase) refused to finish because Inprise welched on releasing as much of Interbase as they said they would. Currently there is no time frame for when ODBC drivers will be written.

    Sign II:
    I nprise refused to spin off [deja.com] Interbase into a seperate company as they originally stated and this has troubled the Interbase community.

    Sign III:
    Inprise was not as forthcoming with GPLing stuff as was expected.
    The Queue Principle
  • Am I the only one who can get nothing more than the "technocrat" banner ?

    It's not just this story or today either. I used to go there every day but have not been able to connect for most of this week.

  • Apparently, you do not understand the value of many groups working on similar projects. For example:

    • competition - Like it or not, developers are highly competitive. They want their code to rule.
    • niches - Each of the databases has a different niche. The fact is that MySQL and PostgreSQL are not comparable on numerous features. This is a matter of design philosophy, not implementation. (As an example, check out the MySQL documentation about Foreign Key constraints).
    • innovation - A corollary to 'competition'. How many times have you used a piece of software that begged for some innovation? Want that missing feature? Then code it. This is why Free [gnu.org] software is so innovative - it gives you the freedom to innovate. If this means 'forking a project', then so be it.

    Finally, you seem to think that just because software is Free [gnu.org], that means people will cooperate. There are differences in design, implementation, technical leadership. Differences cannot always be overcome 'for the good of the community'. We still are human (thank God), so we differ in our opinions.

    --

  • A few months ago, a MySQL vs PostgreSQL flamewar would occur occasionally on these boards. Then Borland announced that they would be GPLing Interbase, and we had a MySQL vs PostgreSQL vs Interbase war. Now it appears that in the future we will be having MySQL vs PostgreSQL vs Interbase vs Firebird flamewars. I understand that MySQL is for speed and PostgreSQL is for features, but do we really need 4 opensourced databases? I think the community as a whole would benefit if these projects started working on combining their codebases so we had only two databases, one for speed the other for features. Just my $0.02
  • I'm sorry to see a development staff split like this. It sounds like Interbase needs a leader that is respected, and followed.

    Choice is good. I'm all for choices in software (hense why I dislike M$), but if development on something slows down, then it really strains the open-source model. The one thing that can't be afforded in the industry today is long development cycles, and splitting a staff probably won't speed UP development...

    Look what it's doing to Mozilla. Even in the last round of 'Mxx release' slashdot article comments, there were a lot of comments like 'it sucks, I'm tired of waiting, I use IE.

    Imagine what would happen if MS actually managed to release a robust, feature rich, reliable version of IE for Linux/Unix.... It could be the final nail for Mozilla/Netscape.

    Maybe the kernel is so successful because Linus ("we're not worth... we're not worthy") still holds the 'key' to the release of the versions. It's not a 'version' until Linus says so...

  • What will the suits see?

    Most likely, they won't see 'We alienated the developers, causing the fork.'

    They'll probably see 'They took the code and ran.'

    Could make companies think twice in the future . . .

  • The irony here is almost unbearable (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18, 2000 @04:24AM (#845977)
    This is one aspect of the open source credo that I've always found extremely frustrating, the "don't like it? do it yourself, but don't fork the code base" nonsense. You can't have it both ways. You can't say on one hand that one of the great benefits of open source is the ability to make and distribute custom mods to source, and then condemn people for forking the source code base.

    This is a situation the open sourcers will have to deal with more and more often as more and different viewpoints and agendas are brought to projects. To some extent this is a side effect of corporations getting involved (any bets on how we'll see GNOME change now that they're sleeping with half the companies in the industry?), but it's mostly caused by the simple expansion of open source and Linux--more users means more programmers, and that means more diversity and more reasons to customize code.

  • Theoretically weather ot not some corporation does or does not spin off some other corporation should have no effect on an open source project right? Well it just goes to show you that IB is not like the other open source projects you know about. ODBC driver was pulled because this spin off was mishandled by Inprise. Also the developer documents were pulled because ISC wants more money. Go the the interbase2000.org web site and read all about it.
    Like I said not like any other open source project I know. Usually a project starts up and then if the project is successful commercial entitites get formed to support it not in this case. Seems like they are trying to put the cart before the horse.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • A taste of the future (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's about time these corporate lawyers/accountants and sales pigs recognised the truth. For years coders/programmers and geeks in general have been treated like shit, even though the parasites' jobs depended on our labours.

    Now we see the real power in open source ... fuck us off with your corporate bullshit, and we take our efforts elsewhere. Play along and treat us right, and you get can rich and fat like the nasty little parasites you are.

  • Actually, I'd say its more like getting fed up with the government and splitting off a new country. The original government and any who choose to follow them are still there, so they haven't been booted out. Its just that you're a seperate entity now.

    And,yes, forking is quite powerful. But like anything that's powerful, it can cause troubles, and shouldn't be overused.


    -RickHunter
  • This Open Source thing is confusing. Today we have Inprise against the masses. Tommorow we'll have disagreements between the Developing folk of major products and this could lead to more forks. and fights. And more confusion for the meek programmer about which side to take.
    On the other hand, the choosy programmer will have a good time. You can take EXACTLY what you want, and fighting groups will work equally hard to beat the other with better programs.
    Dont know which way we're heading.

  • What is innovative about adding a missing feature? And I'm sorry, I'm not looking to pick a fight with you, but the Open Source community is probably the single least innovative entity in the entire software sector. Chasing tail-lights and trying to clone what's popular don't make for much innovation.

    I agree completely with your other points, though -- people who whine "But there's already too many X already!" are seriously annoying. Nobody's making you use it, so just shut up let those of us who like many choices have our fun.


    Cheers,

  • I totally agree with you. Within a few months I'm going to open up the sourcecode for DemoGL, which is win32 focussed. I truelly will FORK an eventually port to another platform. IMHO this is better for the quality of the code: platform specific (or philosophy specific) features can then evolve in a forked codebase and won't mess up other codebases with endless #ifdef crap.

    If a codebase is the BASIS for different systems, evolving along different philosophy lines (for example: (theoretically spoken) if interbase A will have it's focus more on distributed computing and if interbase B will be more focussed on central computing with large (real large!) databases than the fork between A and B FROM the basis codebase is a good one IMHO. No cluttered code in either of the codebases to exclude functionality from both philosophies.)

    IMHO more OSS projects should fork (or branch, whatever you want to call it) their codebase to clean up the code. The more #ifdef SPECIFIC_DEFINE there are included in a sourcefile, the more it gets unreadable and unmaintainable.
    --

  • whoa (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Almost an hour since this was posted, two stories posted after this, and only *seventeen*(17) comments?

    Man, this really must create a serious discrepancy in the pagehits-per-story-posted -calculations of the Andover overlords bean counters. ]8-) Anybody got stats as to whether this is the least active story in... a long while?

    (Yes this is OT but it's not like this subject is likely to yield vast numbers of in[sightful|formative|teresting] comments anyhow. :P)

  • Forking the code base is duplication of effort, the code bases inevitable drift and speciate, and the developer community polarizes into per-split factions. This is all a nuisance and very undesirable - except where it is necessary. Which includes a developer sitting on the code or trying to fluff a source release in lieu of being able to recall it.
  • First, although Bruce hosts the site, he's not otherwise involved.

    It was a joke. Brett Glass is an active member of the "BSD community", and a strong and outspoken opponent of the "GPL camp" of Open Source developers. Much like FIJAGDH and FIAWOL are antithetical, so are those two's stances on software licenses.

    Apparently, it wasn't nearly as funny as I hoped it was. :-(

  • Weak (Score:2)

    by jabbo ( 860 )
    Postgresql may not have outer joins, but at least its developers and copyright holders have respect for their hackers, users, and corporate partners.

    I was thinking of getting into Interbase. This certainly dampened my enthusiasm. I will continue to work on Oracle for high-end (really high-end) work, use PostgreSQL for development, and deploy MySQL for data marts. Watching Informix lay off something like 900 people recently, and Sybase clinging to life, I wasn't too surprised at Interbase getting to be a dead end (for now).

    Such a drag. The greedheads and day-trading degenerates seem to infect everything these days.
  • What is it with Inprise/Borland and corporate reversals? First Corel and now this. Obviously there is a lack of strong leadership in the company. Senior management must have absolutely no cajones at all. I feel a management shakeout coming. I wonder if my broker will be able to get me some shares that I can sell short on Monday...

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