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Interbase 6.0 OpenSource poll Following the announcement of the first non-beta release of IB 6.0 Open Source, our company had planned on offering free media for Interbase upon request on this OSInet site. After discussions with various interested parties, and to ensure we were doing the right thing, we chose to take the pulse of these developers interested in IB 6.0 by means of a poll regarding such media distribution by a third party without any direct links to the original developer of the newly-born OpenSource version, and the correct ethical standpoint to be adopted regarding the possibility of such distribution. The poll lasted one full week after the release of IB 6.0 by its original developer. This process is now over, and we can reflect on its results. Unforeseen and interesting issues were raised, and are collected here. We welcome any comment about them, and will publish them if applicable: Positive: A common view holds that such distribution is indeed expected for an OpenSource product. No respondent elected to explain why it is so, but possible reasons could include: giving a token of good faith to the OpenSource community, by showing the product was as free as it could be made, is essential to a company's standing in the OpenSource world, the natural strength of the "free" adjective makes any free offer valid to some. Positive: some respondents explained they liked waiting for a CD in the mail for a couple of days more than waiting online for over an hour on a 33.6kb/s modem to get the full suite of downloadable from the original developer's site. Although download rates were acceptable from the onset for users with high-bandwidth connections, even fine after the first few hours, it appears some professional developers still use dialup lines and non-optimal modems like V.34+ for downloads, and software size is a significant issue for them.. Negative: an elaborate negative point of view has been articulated, revolving around two main issues : As has already been discovered by first hour users, this very first version included defects, workarounds for which are being discovered and posted on forums like those of the NZN network or the original developer's ones.  Due to these defects, releasing "hard", tangible material like a CD for such initial releases means the people receiving the CD may keep a non-optimal product, and get an unjustifiably poor opinion about it, in spite of the enhancements and problem solutions published almost daily to rise it to production level quality, whereas they would rather download a new, better, version if they did not have such hard material at hand. Negative: such distribution could be seen as possibly violating the intellectual property rights of the owner of the brands involved, because previous versions of the product are not OpenSource, and the ownership of the brand represents equity value for the original developer. The participation count is not high enough to allow full disclosure of the results without revealing personal information, so here are the summary answers.  Note that numbers are not audited, and it could be conceived that some users had voted several times. Entries were checked manually for duplicates, but this possibility can not be totally excluded, because no digital persona identification were used, for privacy reasons. Respondent geographical repartition 84% of respondents expressed themselves from France 8% expressed themselves from Eastern European countries 8% expressed themselves from Africa 84% of all answers came from people describing themselves as professional developers (these are not the same 84%). All of the respondents taking the poll chose the full release path, but some poll readers elected to take direct contact to express their own views on these issues, instead of taking the poll.   As was announced during the poll, all collected individual data have been destroyed to preserve the responders' privacy. Interbase, Borland, Inprise are trademarks or registered trademarks of Inprise Corporation or Interbase Corporation. This poll was in no way commissioned, requested or even approved by Inprise Corp. or Interbase Corp. or their subsidiaries, which remain sole owner of all rights attached to the trademarks. OSI is an independent french software reseller and distributor specializing in networking products and developer tools around the Borland line of products, and is in no way affiliated with Inprise Corp. or its subsidiaries. OSInet is a norwegian server maintained by OSI.  Official corporate information about the companies mentioned can be found at the following links. Inprise Corp. | Inprise France | Interbase Corp. | OSI It should be noted that both Inprise Corp and the newly-recreated Interbase Corp also have non-OpenSource database offerings, both of production quality for enterprise developers. These are the Pure Java JDataStore for Borland, and other versions of Interbase for Interbase Corp.. OSI can provide advice, pricing, products and services for both these lines of products. Feel free to contact us for technical and commercial details.