Related – what is the official relationship between Interbase (Embarcadero et
al) and the Firebird community?
I get the impression they reluctantly tolerate each other – but I think
Borland/Codegear/Embarcadero regret ever open sourcing Firebird (the Firefox
people certainly do – they wanted the name for their browser).
and what is the official relationship between Embarcadero (Delphi) and the
Lazarus/Free Pascal community?
I get the impression this is sort of cooperative – are some of the cross
compiler stuff and other tools in XE2 born in part out of the Lazarus community
(such as parts of Firemonkey and the MacOS compiler)?
see http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=14086.0
Aside – the Google name for Java is Dalvik – I spelled it wrong before.
On the Oracle/Java and Google/Android law suit - On the face of it I would
think that the design of a programming language cannot be copyrighted and you
cannot stop someone making their own compiler especially if they did a “clean
room” version. Its like the Unix copyright wars (SCO vs Novell) all over
again about who owns the original copyright of something that was intended as
much as possible (by Sun, not Oracle) to be in the public domain. The
SCO-Novell war was what started linux having its ascendancy over Unix, although
some Unix versions do still thrive, simply because linux had a clear and
unambiguous open source licence (Of course MS disputes this too – see below).
This may seem irrelevant to Delphi, but if the top programming language (Java -
by almost all measures eg TIOBE) comes under a copyright and royalty fight it
might have a sudden impact on the relevance of Delphi and Pascal which is now
also poking into the cross platform arena. I hope the Embarcadero people
don’t ever get themselves into such a stoush...
I am reckoning that the best programming future is a mix of Windows, Web,
MacOS, iOS and Android. If XE2 does do a decent job of getting to these I am
delighted that the wish I expressed some years back has also been taken up by
others.
These patent wars are clearly more about money and commercial advantage rather
than protecting authors of original innovation – for instance Microsoft is
getting more licence fees from some Android handset manufacturers (in return
for promising to not sue them for unspecified patent infringements) than
Google gets (it gets nothing).
This is off the original topic – but I would be interested in any knowledgeable
comments about the above Interbase/Firebird and Delphi/Lazarus connections.
John Bird
From: Stefan Mueller
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 8:07 PM
To: 'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'
Subject: Re: [DUG] Suitable Database for XE2 Pro
>>Now that Oracle owns MySQL I heard some muttering that the best real open
>>source DB out there is now Firebird – not sure how well Oracle is >>treating
>>MySQL but going by how they are treating Dalbek (The version of Java Google
>>uses to develop for Android) I would be worried (ie Oracle is >>trying to sue
>>the pants off Google to get licence fees for Android.
I am in the camp that thinks that Oracle owning MySQL is good. There is
actually quite a bit of knowhow coming from Oracle and flowing into MySQL
(improvements to multicore processing/inno storage
engine/parallelism/enterprise features for backup/replication/etc). So, after
Oracle took over MySQL things have actually worked out pretty good so far.
I do however agree with you that Oracle is famous and known for squeezing all
the money they can from their products and customers. But at least it’s nice to
know that if you ever outgrow the community edition of MySQL that there is at
least something that has a bit more enterprise features&support if you need it.
Still all 10 times cheaper than MSSQL/Oracle.
Kind Regards,
Stefan Mueller
_______________________
R&D Manager
ORCL Toolbox LLP, Japan
http://www.orcl-toolbox.com
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Vowles
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 6:38 AM
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] Suitable Database for XE2 Pro
On 16 January 2012 22:01, John Bird <[email protected]> wrote:
Now that Oracle owns MySQL I heard some muttering that the best real open
source DB out there is now Firebird – not sure how well Oracle is treating
MySQL but going by how they are treating Dalbek (The version of Java Google
uses to develop for Android) I would be worried (ie Oracle is trying to sue the
pants off Google to get licence fees for Android. Would be like Embarcadero
suing the Free Pascal organisation (same language, different compiler)
I think the Postgres crowd would disagree with you there :-) Remember MySQL
being GPL means you can't ship it with your app - unless you open source your
app or pay for MySQL. Both Firebird and Postgres are the only two "main" fully
open source databases.
--
---
Richard Vowles, Technical Advisor
Developers Inc Ltd
web. http://www.developers-inc.co.nz
mob. +64-275-467747
twitter. developersinc
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