The project team announces that kits of Firebird 2.5.0 release candidate 1 are now available for all the supported main-line platforms . Please test it with your loads and report back to firebird-devel. Note, this is the first of two RC releases.

Please join Philippe Makowski, President of Firebird Foundation, and Dmitry Yemanov, lead Firebird developer, at the Launch Webinar devoted to the 5th major release of Firebird. It will take place at October 4, 2010, at 13-00 GMT.

As Firebird approaches the final 2.5 release, a new campaign is born to help increase Firebird’s visibility and awareness.

The second issue of Firebird SQL Project newsletter was delivered to all subscribers. This issue includes announcements of official Firebird channels at YouTube and SlideShare, the full list of materials from Firebird Conference 2011, and also digest of recent community news.
You can read the second issue online.

Firebird is trully *open* (in all aspects). Nobody owns Firebird, nobody can buy it, nobody can close its sources, nobody can charge for it! So, if you are using Firebird, you don’t need to have such worries.

Firebird 2.1.3 is a patch release addressing several bugs that have surfaced since the original v.2.1 and the v.2.1.2 sub-release some months ago.

This patch release includes no new functionality but the following issues should be noted

As you may know, in July 2000, Borland Software Corp. (formerly known as Inprise) released the beta version of InterBase 6.0 as open source. The community of waiting developers and users preferred to establish itself as an independent, self-regulating team rather than submit to the risks, conditions and restrictions that the company proposed for community participation in open source development.

I’d like to clarify some facts about Firebird and Firebird Foundation. I think right now is a correct time to remind how all these things are organized, because some messages about "crisis, firebird's death, low finances" and so on being spreaded around.

Firebird 2.1 creates databases with an ODS of 11.1. It can read databases of lower ODS but most of its new features will be unavailable to such databases. Firebird 2.1 is a full version release that builds on the architectural changes introduced in the V.2.0 series.