I just wanted to express my feelings about these events that have occured
recently.
I was (I say was because I have just been terminated from my duties in this
company, with 30 days notice) the head of development for Financial and
Accounting applications for this company. The company that I work for had
always been using Oracle and MS SQL as database backends, and both of these
manufacturers had a very big influence in the products that our company
used.
My responsibility was to develop a new Accounting application for the Latin
American market, for midsize to small companies with a client/server
database. When I started working here I had to fight and scream to get my
point accross and that got me a lot of enemies. Keep in mind that the
company that I work for sells over 60 Million dollars a year in Latin
America, with quite a bit of that money going to Interbase's competitors.
I brought Delphi and Builder into the enviroment. I got 12 new programmer's
and many sleepless nights fighting to get authorization to use Interbase as
the database product, and Interbase almost didn't make it into the
application. My reasons were simple, ease of use, almost no administration,
stable and a great Database for what we wanted to do.
The people against me argued that, our sister company as a MS Solutions
Partner, could get better pricing on MS SQL Server and clients up to the
point that it was actually competitive against Interbase. But my reasons
were loyalty and years of experience with Interbase/Borland and many obvious
reasons that those who have used Interbase present and past know.
This did not make me a very popular person in the company, as the Microsoft
fanatics here did not get their way. But hey, I got what I wanted. After 1
1/2 years of work we were almost at the position of releasing the
application, based initially on 5.5 then quickly changed to 5.6 after bug
fixes were announced and serious problems we were having with database
corruptions. I took our company to Borland and became an Interbase Var. The
contracts were signed and a substantial purchase of the initial licenses
were purchased from Borland, Inprise at that time, end of 1999. Well two
months later the Interbase 6.0 announcement was made, and OpenSource it is.
The top level management here screamed and yelled and almost killed me, in
words, and my case was taken to the board of directors.
What are we going to now, is all they said. I argued my points emotionally
and diligently, OpenSource will only help us, it will make the database
known in Latin America, where Interbase is not widely known, it is in our
best interest, etc. Well I was not fired at that time, but was ordered to
stop development and migrate the application to 6.0 asap. The company will
take the loss on the licenses it purchased. Prepared a lower pricing
structure, Interbase licenses no longer needed, and invested yet more money
on Borland products. D5, etc.
We were never told, or were never made aware that Borland would sell
Interbase again. We were aware and were told that Interbase would make money
from the Support contracts, etc. it would sell.
This was a very tough few months for me and my co-workers here.
Well a few days ago Borland makes this announcement, about Certifying
versions and selling them once again. Well guess what, that was the last
drop that made the glass spill. That day things here got very tense,
arguments started, screaming and yelling, and me caught in the middle of all
of this. I was the one that got Interbase and Borland in the front door.
Finally all of this came to an end today, when I was told that I had 30 days
noticed, and must leave by that time.
I will finish some things I have left to do, and I will leave before then. I
am not angry at Borland, although I am upset at what has happened to me.
Borland did what It felt was in its best Interest, I probably would do the
same if I were a company the size of Borland.
Did they do the right thing. I personally think that they should have made
their position very clear from the beginning and kept the channels of
communication opened all the way and let people know what was happening. I
think that if they were planning to continue selling Interbase they never
should have embraced the open source model and should have been very clear
that they were planning to do so, as this is very confusing to customers
that will ask why pay when its free. It makes it harder on companies who are
trying to sell a product against a free version. Maybe then our company
would have taken a different position at that time. Our company now wants to
bundle our products with the Certified version, and continue purchasing
licenses, just to say that the Interbase we include is Certified, and has an
ODBC driver, etc. Where does it leave me? Out of a job.
Support in Latin America?, I really don't think that there are many
companies that are going to say, well let's use the certified version
because we get support from Borland. How? At the end it was our company
that would give support, like most companies that sold Interbase to
small/medium size customers.
The market down here is bigger than anybody thinks, except for Microsoft and
Oracle they really have recognized this and both of them have offices here
and in most countries that I have gone to. They work closely with their
allies and are very clear about their positions in most cases, not all.
To summarize this very long post, I was a devoted Borland Fan and Customer
since I was a kid, in the Early years of TurboPascal, I started programming
when I was a Kid in my first RadioShack TRS-80 computer, I was 7, and when I
got to Junior High and saw TurboPascal, wow!!!!, the things that we can do
:) I ate and dreamt Borland for many years as a youth. My christmas wish
list always included the latest products from Borland, sometimes I got them
and sometimes I didn't. It all depended on how the family financials were at
that time. I have taken Borland with me into all of the companies that I
have worked for, and have evangelized many programmers on the virtues of
Borland and gotten them away from the Dark Side into Borland's side.
So Borland, you have not lost a loyal programmer or a fan, but yes you have
dissapointed a very loyal person. I truly believe that you have contributed
enourmously to the development of Windows applications, perhaps more than
any other company, and many things today would not be what they are if it
wasn't for your programmers and their dedication.
But I truly believe that if you continue with this politics and behavior you
will loose a lot of us, and we are after all the reason for your existence.
Remeber you don't sell the product to a company, you sell it to the IT
Department and its programmers. If they are not happy with you, your
products don't come in the door. They are the ones that sell it to the
company on your behalf.
Sorry for such a long post. I have just gotten my frustration off my chest.
Thanks for reading,
Pedro
