Re: PostgreSQL/FireBird

["Brandon Aiken" <BAiken@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Borland simply chose a modified MPL to release their InterBase 6 under.  They have since release InterBase 6 under a commercial license, and have also released InterBase 7 under a commercial license.  MPL is a fairly common license.  Sun’s CDDL is a modified MPL, for example.  The MPL is somewhere between a BSD license and the GPL in terms of what you can do with it.  Unlike BSD, all code changes must stay under the MPL.  Unlike the GPL, MPL code can be combined with proprietary files.  MySQL’s license is a lot more complicated than the MPL.

 

The FSF says the MPL is not compatible with the GPL, but, well, the FSF generally finds *all* non-GPL licenses incompatible with the GPL (BSD, MPL, Apache, etc.).  The only truly GPL-compatible license I know of is LGPL (and there have been arguments about that).  That’s the problem with the GPL.  You’re not agreeing to open source your code as much as you’re agreeing to abide by the FSF’s political beliefs.  Political lock-in for developers in lieu of vendor lock-in for end-users.

 

Compared to SQLite, Firebird has many more features.  Firebird *can* function as a network server and runs as a separate process instead of a C library that gets compiled in your binary.  If you want multiple apps to access the same data or you want to use ODBC, Firebird can do that without the kitchen sink approach of PostgreSQL.

 

Compared to JetSQL – which I assume is what Access and Exchange use – Firebird is cross-platform.  I’ve never used it, but I’ve also never been impressed with the performance of anything that has used JetSQL (Exchange especially).

 

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Brandon Aiken

CS/IT Systems Engineer

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From: Justin Dearing [mailto:zippy1981@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 6:29 PM
To: Brandon Aiken
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL/FireBird

 

 

On 2/5/07, Brandon Aiken <BAiken@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

FireBird is a direct descendant of Borland InterBase 6.  Consequently,
much like Postgres inherited a lot of Ingres's weirdness (most of which
has since been weeded out or superceeded with standard SQL compliance),
FireBird is still very much InterBase dialect-compliant.  This is also
why it still uses a modified Mozilla Public License.  I know they've
achieved ANSI SQL-92 compliance, but I don't know how fully compliant
beyond that they are.  PostgreSQL is mostly working on SQL-03 compliance
AFAICT.  Both use MVCC.

What does the MPL have to do with Borland InterBase descendance? Borland could have chosen any license they wished. Quite frankly I'm quite ignorant about the MPLs terms so please enlighten me.

 

Interbase was also primarily used for single instance and embedded
applications, so it's not intended to scale the same way PostgreSQL is.

 So I guess one should ask how it scales to SQLite and JetSQL, on the appropiate lists of course.

 

Firebird's design foci are very small memory footprint, ANSI SQL-92
complaince, multiple dialects that support aging systems, and very low
administrative requirements.  It lack features and scalability compares
to PG, but does what it does very well.

 

Bottom line:  PostgreSQL is more mature because it's several years
older.  Firebird is intended for different applications.

 

If FireBird is descended from Ingres, aren't they both the same age?

 

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