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.”
The next story on Firebird News has the background to this deal:
http://www.firebirdnews.org/?p=129
I think it is great that MySQL and Firebird are aligning their interests this way.
Edited 2006-02-20 14:03
Firebird DB integrating all goodies of MyISAM tables (Fulltext, Spatial, GUI tools) with reliable cluster support and FB’s ongoing work on SMP support is what I call Killer DB. It will drag big names (DB2, Oracle, SQL Server) to niche markets (OLAP).
“I think it is great that MySQL and Firebird are aligning their interests this way.”
This is not a wonderful alignment of interests between MySQL and Firebird. MySQL has bought the services of Starkey, the original author of Interbase/Firebird. Most likely Starkey will no longer be contributing to Firebird. Which is a loss to Firebird, another really good OSS database.
They mention translating from “wolf” to English. What’s “wolf” mean there?
wolf means arhitecture high level language that must be
translated to mortal humans
Some examples are his posts in Firebird architect list
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Firebird-Architect/
or in Vulcan architecture
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=vul_development