Firebird related news
Developers from turboCASH are asking for Lazarus programers (people that program using Lazarus IDE) to set up a small test application to prove that Lazarus can be IDE of choice to port turboCASH to Linux.
Andrew Hudson has a review of open source database companies over on OSNews. "IBPhoenix employs 6 people, grossed $50k its first year, and has nearly doubled revenue each year since. Beach formed InterBase Software to commercialize the existing and mature code base that Borland had taken open source after several years of closed source development. Borland continues to sell InterBase as a closed source product. InterBase is a relatively small company but it is profitable, it has a solid international presence, and it is growing rapidly."
Read more here
Neil McAllister has an insightful article on the relative position of proprietary and closed source databases. He argues that "free to develop, pay to deploy" is becoming the norm in both worlds.
Read more here
Business Week Online writes: "Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives."
Read more here
Here is a recent interview I did with Ann, by email. I hope this can clarify a bit more the recent moves regarding Ann, Jim, Firebird and MySQL.
FBNews: In Jim’s recent announcementmessage, he says that you will be working for MySQL AB too. Are you officially employed at MySQL AB? If so, what is your currently role there?
Ann: Yes, I’m working half time for MySQL as a senior architect. In other words, I critique designs and try to make the system fit together smoothly.
FBNews: As you are one of IBPhoenix owners, how do you plan to handle working for two databases that are, in some way, competitors? Are you considering leaving IBPhoenix?
The invoicing of the year 2005 was of 1,68 billion dollars, growth of 10% compared to the previous year. Of this sum, 46% had come of the Americas region, where Brazil is inserted. In Brazil, the growth was of 22%. Read more here (in portuguese).
As you should know, SAS is the company who sponsored VULCAN development. They use a customized engine of Firebird in their products.
Forrester Research Inc.'s analyst Noel Yuhanna projects that mission-critical deployments of open source databases will increase by 20% this year. It is that growth that Yuhanna believes will drive the OSS database market from $300 million now to the $1 billion mark by 2008.
Read more here
“I’m almost certain that you wont see any integration of firebird into mysql (and I don’t think the firebird community would really want that anyway), but it’s probably worth keeping an eye on as this sure looks like mysql’s play to get out from under the shadow of the recent oracle maneuvers, and so will have an effect on how the mainstream tech market looks at all open source db’s.”
Robert Treat wrote in his blog
That will be interesting: Marten Mikos is on record as being against software patents and MySQL AB is a big sponsor of the European “no software patents” movement.
Jim Starkey on the other hand is on record defending software patents and has applied for patents on several of his creations. Presumably, Marten acquired those patents as well.
It will be interesting to see how MySQL will license out those patents, considering their earlier opposition to the very concept of software patents.
Read more here
I’ve recently written two articles on this topic for Database Journal, the earlier, written after the InnoDB purchase, entitled Oracle’s purchase of InnoDB, their release of Oracle Express, and the effect on MySQL, and the most recent, just after the Sleepycat purchase, entitled Pressure on MySQL increases as Oracle purchases Sleepycat, with more to come.
Since I only do a monthly column for Database Journal, and things change quite quickly, I thought I’d post a few more thoughts on the topic.
