[DUG] Budget/Turbo editions of Delphi

[David Brennan]

Holy Great Wall of Text Batman! ;-)

Very interesting suggestion tho and one which makes perfect sense to me. The
boat has likely shipped in terms of gaining widespread entry into western
academic institutions but there are other countries (the deal with Russia
being one example) and even in the western world it would undoubtedly lead
to a few enthusiastic new users.

The downside is the effort they would need to put into producing these
versions... but if they are serious about rebuilding Delphi then it seems a
reasonable use of resources.

David.

-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of Jolyon Smith
Sent: Tuesday, 22 September 2009 1:32 p.m.
To: 'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'
Subject: Re: [DUG] Budget/Turbo editions of Delphi

I posted on exactly this issue on my blog last night:

www.deltics.co.nz/blog

My idea is to cut down the number of 3rd party components (anything that can
be obtained/bought separately should be taken out.  That's DUnit, IntraWeb,
Indy etc).

I'd also take out "Professional" features such as refactorings and modeling
support.  The focus would be on a hobbyist user, not a "Free" version of a
professional tool, so take these higher end/more advanced features out.

Then incorporate digital "watermarking" of executables and design-time
packages.

With executables a splash screen could be inserted, possibly customizable to
an extent, but unavoidable, identifying it as a "Community Edition"
generated app.  The splash screen would be suppressable when running an app
inside the IDE (for debugging etc).

For design-time packages a protocol would be devised between the IDE and the
package.  Any package compiled with the Community Edition could only be
installed into the IDE instance used to compile it.  So a developer could
still share their work with the community but if sharing IDE components they
would *have* to provide source.

To be clear, a Community Edition IDE will accept components compiled with a
Professional Edition IDE (or higher, obviously) but components compiled with
a Community Edition IDE will only install into the IDE used to compile them.
So people could still buy and install additional 3rd party components that
they may need.

This would be the free Community Edition.

The license would permit commercial use, but the digital watermarking would
provide an incentive for anyone wishing to convey a more professional image
to upgrade to a non-Community Edition IDE.


So, then I would create a "Standard Edition" which re-instates some of the
functionality removed from the Community Edition.  Perhaps returns *some* of
the refactorings and components maybe, but more crucially removes the
digital watermarking.  i.e. splash screen etc.

This would be priced at almost exactly half the price of Professional.  $499
in US terms.  updates from one Standard Edition to the next (Delphi 2010 SE
-> Delphi 2011 SE) would be $199 (US).

(Some may recognize this as the price point of the old Turbo Professional,
which of course was superceded by the equivalent functionality, single
personality Studio products at > twice the price).

Upgrades from Standard Edition to Professional (or other) Edition would be
simply the difference in cost between the SE and the higher Edition.  So in
the case of Professional:  Delphi 2010 SE -> Delphi 2010 Professional =
($899 - $499) = $400 (US).

For someone currently on a Professional license, this means that a Standard
Edition will cost about the same as a Professional Upgrade, but once they
have a Standard Edition, *staying* current would be a lot cheaper, and for a
hobbyist a Standard Edition is likely to be far more relevant to their needs
than Professional.


Ooops, I seem to have repeated a lot of my blog post.  Oh well, go read it
any way.

:)




-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of John Bird
Sent: Tuesday, 22 September 2009 1:02 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: [DUG] Budget/Turbo editions of Delphi

If Turbo versions of Delphi are not available, it is a great idea to have 
them as PR to get students getting free versions to learn on.  Without 
Embarcadero losing money on commercial sales.

Interested to hear others ideas how such editions could work.

My ideas:

-Preventing installation of components as in the past is simple - but some 
large scale commercial programs could still be made, so I think it needs 
more.

-Either disabling printing if included (Rave reports) or all printing 
carries a water mark "Student Edition - not for commercial use".

-All program windows contains some signature eg "Student edition" in the 
title bar

-some smart restrictions on what can be produced.......eg cheap or free DB 
licences limit to often only 5 connections.   Maybe limit units to 4000 
lines of code, or forms to 30 components total, and listviews and grids to 
200 lines,

-Programs might only run for 1 hour maximum and exit with a reminder screen,

or will not run at all after say 1-2 years.

-Alternatively charge strictly on a usage basis - eg start with $20 free 
credit.  Every compile takes 10cents of credit, every debugger run takes 20 
cents off, editing takes off 1 cent per hour.  When credit is used up IDE 
stops working, and you have to uninstall and reinstall.   (Transaction based

charging like this is a favourite of mine, incorporated into some of my 
programs).

-Expiry date on IDE, have to uninstall and reinstall to get more.

-Student edition could cost say $25 or be free, depending on how restricted.

A combination of more than one of these would mean commercial developers 
would still get the real versions, and be not too mean on students.

Choose what is good to limit, and let them otherwise have a fully functional

version - in reality they won't be writing very large programs, so that is 
what to limit.

Personally I would favour the combination of
-Watermarks on printing
-limits on grid size and number of components on a form
-programs run for 1 hour maximum.

John 


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