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The Firebird Project

The developers, designers and testers who gave you Firebird and several of the drivers are members of the Firebird open source project at Google Groups, SourceForge and GitHub.The Firebird SourceForge address is https://sourceforge.net/projects/firebird/.The sources and issue tracker are hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/firebird.At that site are the source code tree, the download packages and a number of technical files related to the development and testing of the code bases.

The Firebird Project developers and testers use an email list forum — firebird-devel Google Group — as their “virtual laboratory” for communicating with one another about their work on enhancements, bug-fixing and producing new versions of Firebird.

Anyone who is interested in watching their progress can join this forum.However, user support questions are a distraction which they do not welcome.Please do not try to post your user support questions there! These belong in the firebird-support Google Group.

Happy Firebirding!

Document History

The exact file history is recorded in the firebird-documentation git repository; see https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/firebird-documentation

Revision History

0.3

2 Apr 2024

MR

Protocol names are lowercase (#205)

0.2

08 Nov 2023

MR

Remove mention that ServerMode is per-database configurable (it’s not)

0.1

07 Nov 2023

MR

  • Copied Firebird 3 Quick Start Guide as the starting point for Firebird 5 Quick Start Guide

  • Restarted the version numbering and cleared the document history, for older revision history, see Firebird 3 Quick Start Guide

  • Replaced references to Firebird 3 with Firebird 5 where applicable

  • Replaced qsg3 section prefix with qsg5

  • Removed UDF directory from disk locations

  • Removed references to WNET/NetBEUI protocol

  • Added security database upgrade instructions from Firebird 3 and higher

  • Updated SQL user management statement syntax to be more complete

  • Merged URL-style and TCP/IP protocol description

  • Added replacement images for Installer and Services on Windows

  • Installer no longer offers option to enable legacy authentication

  • Various copy-editing and textual tweaks

License notice

The contents of this Documentation are subject to the Public Documentation License Version 1.0 (the “License”); you may only use this Documentation if you comply with the terms of this License.Copies of the License are available at https://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/pdl.pdf (PDF) and https://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/pdl.html (HTML).

The Original Documentation is titled Firebird 5 Quick Start Guide.This Documentation was derived from Firebird 3 Quick Start Guide.

The Initial Writer of the Original Documentation is: IBPhoenix Editors.

Copyright © 2002-2004.All Rights Reserved.Initial Writer contact: hborrie at ibphoenix dot com.

Contributors: Paul Vinkenoog, Mark Rotteveel.

Portions created by Paul Vinkenoog are Copyright © 2004-2016.All Rights Reserved.Contributor contact: paul at vinkenoog dot nl.

Portions created by Mark Rotteveel are Copyright © 2020-2024.All Rights Reserved.Contributor contact: mrotteveel at users dot sourceforge dot net.

The Firebird licenses

Firebird is a free, open-source database management system, but “free” does not mean that everything is permitted.The use of Firebird is governed by two licenses: the IPL (InterBase Public License) and the IDPL (Initial Developer’s Public License).The first one covers the parts of the source code that were inherited from InterBase;the second applies to the additions and improvements made by the Firebird Project.Both licenses offer similar rights and restrictions.In short:

  • Use of the software is free, even for commercial purposes.You may also redistribute the software, separately or with a product of your own, but you may not claim ownership or credit for it.Any license notices included with Firebird must remain intact.

  • You may modify and recompile the Firebird source code or parts of it.You may distribute such modified versions, but if you do so, you must document your modifications and make them publicly available, at no cost, under the same license as the original code.

  • You may include Firebird source code (modified or not) in a larger work and distribute that larger work, in source and/or compiled form, under a license of your own choosing.You need not publicize the source code for the entire larger work, but you must fulfill the license conditions for the parts that were taken from Firebird, whether they were modified or not.

Please notice that the above is a simplified overview.Only the original license texts are legally binding.You can find them here: