[fpc-pascal] OFFTOPIC: Money Model, for FPC

[Osvaldo Filho]

Is Firebird really free?

If you’re expecting some sensation, I’ll not make you happy. Shortly, yes,
Firebird is free, completely. You can use it wherever you want and you don’t
have to pay anything nor release sources of your application nor …

On the other hand, the whole truth, considering all the edge cases and
consequences, is different. To keep high quality of final product, keep
adding new features, provide bug fixes – simply moving forward – the creator
needs some resources. If these resources will not be available, it will be
effectively dead. The resources I’m here talking about, in case of Firebird,
are people doing full time or regular development. These people have
families, houses, hobbies, … And for all of these items you need money (in
our society [image: :)] ). They’re not doing it for fun (only), but also for
living as well.

So Firebird actually needs some money to keep moving. It doesn’t have
licenses to buy or something like that. We’re simply relying on the fact,
that people using it, similar to people working on it, do love it. And are
educated enough to realize all this and provide, even small, support. Thus
next time you’ll be deploying your application with Firebird, think about
sending $10 or even $1. I bet it’s nothing for you (compared to price of the
application or money you’re paying for toilet paper in your office). And ten
thousand people (not much) donating $10 makes a huge difference. It’s not
only about few donating $10000.

And by the way, Firebird is not “just” engine, but tools around too: .NET
driver [image: ;)] , Java driver, documentation, QA, …, you name it.
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