Firebird News

Saturday, February 18, 2006

the wolf is gone to mysql - Jim Starkey joined MySQL AB

Jim Starkey, the original creator
of InterBase which became Firebird, just made it publicly known that he
now works for MySQL AB.


My company, Netfrastructure, Inc., has been acquired by MySQL, AB. As

part of the agreement, I will be working full time for MySQL. I expect

to lurk on the architecture list from time to time and may contribute

the occasional wolf-o-gram, but I will not be taking an active part in

Firebird development. Although Ann will work for MySQL, part time,

translating from wolf to English, she will continue to be active in the


Firebird project.


My decision to join MySQL has almost nothing to do with Firebird and

everything to do with Netfrastructure. The Netfrastructure platform

represents what I feel about contemporary computing hardware and future

application requirements, and has been the center of my technical heart

and soul for six year. Some aspects of Netfrastructure technology have

already been contributed to the Vulcan project, but Firebird and

Netfrastructure are architecturally incompatible. An attempt to

integrate the technologies would be unlikely to meet the goals of either


project.


MySQL and Firebird have never seen each other as competitors and I doubt

this will change in the future. The projects have different open source

philosophies, different technologies, different customer bases, and

different sweet spots. The ideas behind the two projects are, happily,

public and available to all. If MySQL and Firebird compete, it is only

competition in offering the best possible support to their respective

customers.


I am pleased to have had the opportunity to finish the Vulcan project.


The combination of Vulcan SMP and architecture combined the rich feature

set of Firebird 2 will make a solid release and a superb platform for

future development.


I wish the Firebird project all the best in years to come. And if you

need an opinion, please feel free to call.




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