[DUG] Lazarus

[Paul A. Norman]

Really want to emphasise that your story Rohit underlines something I came to believe with my encounters with the last two(?) owners.

But first I want to say that the engineers and designers behind Delphi etc have been and are unbelievably top men.

Anders Hejlsberg, original author of Turbo Pascal and the chief architect of Delphi, went on to be the lead architect of C#.

Marco Cantu is still with them. 

Nothing needs to be added there, his name is synonymous with quality development, backend, and designer, and mentoring concepts.

I bought his books for Delphi 3, 4, 6 and utilised many of his other resources as a Delphi user right up to Delphi 2005 Professional (which was a disaster in my opinion), and have even used them again while using Lazarus.

And there are many other amazing figures still involved.

But the strategies adopted to make Delphi profitable—as it must be, have in my opinion, missed something out in understanding the nature of their market.

Some concepts in the business planning appear to have become frozen mantras.

It appears that there was some desire to avoid the thinking and policies behind the free introductory versions of Delphi of yesteryear — yet there was pressure from within to adopt something, and the Community License was promulgated – but possibly sadly reflecting an internal interdepartment company *compromise(?) And the program has suffered for it with pececuliar(?)  provisions.

Previously I had tutored people through from the free Delphi provided releases to even purchase Professional versions. — That can be a fruit of a vibrant software developer community ethos.

But now such people look at the Community License and the emails that have come out threatening people with severe prosecution if they put a foot wrong—and not being able to really understand or interpret the fiscal elements of the Community License – they run a mile! And don't even touch it.

Now I start them on Lazarus, and some might see no need to ever leave it!

The present changes in economies (as obvious as these coming developments have been for years) have not been figured for at all it seems in the overall structure for Delphi developers..

Certainly policies developed possibly useful for sections of mainland America (USA), have not worked well when rolled out over the globe, but the piecemeal regionalisation has in a sense then led directly to the confused state of affairs you even encountered recently Rohit.

The dilemma Delphi faces is that under Borland it was directly recognised that development is more than simple fiscal concerns, it requires a surprising amount of "community".

And good fiscal operators can trample the very foundations of that necessary undergirding human "heart" element, thinking sometimes that just a few "specials" can fertilise the ground, not realising that when the overall pricing and Licensing structure is out of kelter, such fertilizer can actually end up harming and depleting the soil longtern.

So we are left where we are.

If I were to go back it might be hard to adjust to overall having now invested time towards Lazarus, that otherwise would have built around Delphi in an ongoing way.

What if the programme, or incentive(s) used to draw us back were suddenly withdrawn? 

If you like — the fertiliser withdrawn, and we were just thrown back again on the scaffolding of an out of kilter structure of things, over demanding updates, License regime, and pricing wise?

Would you be better to stay in a slower developed IDE system, where you have to help make "sustainable compost" but have some more certainty than over-chemicalled soil?

— So I believe :-)
(Unless a better case can be made?)

>"Does anyone know how compatible Lazarus is with Delphi."

I'm afraid it is like the question/idiom: 
"how long is a piece of string?"

Considerable progress has been made in auto-conversion of Delphi projects to Lazarus and FreePascal.

You might have to just try something on it, it's so project dependant.

Some parts will just simply work out of the box, and some things would be a headache.

As you cast around, you might find recommendations to change your components in the original Delphi project, to being better convertible, where that is sensible and possible.

And some things would just need to be redone inside Lazarus.

The more "standard" and perhaps older series the "normal issue" components are, the better.

Many third-party components exist in/for Lazarus capable of handling many things already. 
And much might even be already quite familiar.

I'm just an ordinary user, but would suggest that if any one finds it useful—please contribute something towards its development, time, money, code, good Forum answers, whatever!

It is a different paradigm, a community based project :-)

Paul
-- 
https://PaulANorman.info

On 4 July 2022 3:08:30 pm NZST, Rohit Gupta <rohitguptanz at gmail.com> wrote:
>Does anyone know how compatible Lazarus is with Delphi.  Not that I
>have 
>retired, it is expensive.  Although I was going to pay for one more 
>subscription.  But I am dealing with a pack of clowns. The IDE was 
>saying that the sub was expiring.  I thought that I had pre-paid for 3 
>or 5 years.  So, I got Embarcadero to confirm it.  They said that it
>was 
>due for renewal.  They passed it to Code Partners.  That person 
>confirmed it was due and passed it to another.  She insists that it is 
>not due and was going to chase it up.  Weeks later she insists that I 
>was supposed to chase it up. Back to the first person at Code
>Partners.  
>She was going to sort it out, she hasnt come back.  Back to
>Embarcadero, 
>and no reply. So a month later, my subscription has expired.
>
>
>It's taken way too much time already.  I can't be bothered.
>
>Regards
>
>*Rohit Gupta*
>B.E. Elec., M.E., Mem IEEE, Member IET
>
>On 4/07/2022 14:32, Jan Bakuwel wrote:
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>> ...snip...
>>> So to make progress we had to make a move.
>>> Which has proven great as the Lazarus project has grown and matured,
>>> and Delphi licenses remained static in nature, so the time has been
>>> well invested moving, at the time it was sad to be leaving Delphi
>>> though having signed up in Borland's day.
>> I too have used Delphi since version 2 but the business model (of
>> perpetual upgrades of *everything*) is not sustainable / financially
>> feasible for my company.
>>
>> I think it's indeed well worth investing in alternatives, such as
>Lazarus.
>>
>>> You sometimes have to research more, and do more homework in
>Lazarus,
>>> but the time is well spent and you obtain a better scope and
>knowledge
>>> of what is achievable.
>>> And if you make full Forum postings—others benefit too.
>> The open source community has proven to be superior where it comes to
>> bug fixes... I recall spending many many days finding workarounds for
>> bugs in RTL for the MacOS target and fixes were never released (for
>the
>> version of Delphi I got "stuck" with).
>>
>> My two cents.
>>
>> Jan
>>
>>
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