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Firebird is a RDBMS based on open Borland InterBase 6.0 sources. In 2000 when the InterBase future was disputable and uncertain, Borland decided to open sources. It was the beginning of Firebird (July 31, 2000). Since then the project is developing dynamically. Firebird developers have fixed many old InterBase errors and also have added new features.

The current official Firebird release supports Linux i386, Windows (Win32), Solaris Sparc and i386, FreeBSD, MacOS X and HP-UX. It is compatible with SQL'92 standard, does not require permanent administration. This is an easy-to-deploy and easy-to-support product and finally it is free and available in the full sources.

Now Firebird 1.5 is available. This is a prior version of planned version 2.0 that should be a major step forward in comparison with Firebird 1.0.

Firebird Foundation

As it was mentioned above Firebird is an open and free of charge product for its users. This could be a barrier in the competition with commercial products. To be sure in the further Firebird development and to have an opportunity to influence on the development, it has been created a non-commercial association called Firebird Foundation. The association supports and advances the development of the open source Firebird relational database engine, provides the non-commercial infrastructure and mechanisms required to accept and manage funds raised; and disburses such funds to promote and advance the development effort, encourages cooperation and affiliation with individuals, other non-profit organisations and commercial companies involved in, or planning to become involved in the development, support and promotion of Firebird software projects and associated products and activities.

Firebird Site

If you have not found some necessary information on our site you can try to find it on official Firebird site http://www.firebirdsql.org. Download and install Firebird archives and installation packages for different platforms from SourceForge site.