Why so few developers are using Firebird SQL?

But there’s something about Firebird that always bothered me: why so few developers actually know and use Firebird? Basically (at least here in Brazil) I only see it being used among Delphi developers. Why isn’t it as popular as MySQL or PostgreSQL? Given its features (listed below), can we say that the project lives an unfair situation?

Firebird have several features which makes it a great choice:

• Really free:: contraty to MySQL, you can use Firebird in your commercial applications without any fee or legal problem. (BTW: I know that PostgreSQL have this advantage too)
• All the basic features of large RDBMS:: stored procedures, triggers, A.C.I.D. compliance, online backup, generators, referential integrity, etc…
• Small footprint: had you seen its embeddable version? Just amazing: in less then 1 Mb you have all the features of the default one without cutting anything!
• Low hardware requirements: basically, if something computes, it can run Firebird.
• Available in all the major OS platforms: Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Solaris and others
• Reasonable performance: Firebird performance remains between MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• Really active project: despite its low popularity, it’s a quite active project. In april/2009, for example, was announced the 2.5 beta version of the project.
• Databases with unlimited size: the database size limit is determined by the filesystem in which the database is stored. But, if your database exceed its limit its always possible to split it in several files.
  (the largest database known have 960 Gb link)
• 100% SQL 92 compability
• Connectivity: basically you can access a Firebird SQL through any programming language

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