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Delphi would have a much wider adoption if the compiler was open source and the IDE was propietary and sold only as a subscription, that is, similar to Jetbrain

Delphi would have a much wider adoption if the compiler was open source and the IDE was propietary and sold only as a subscription, that is, similar to Jetbrains Kotlin model. Unfortunately it will not happen because Embarcadero current strategy revolves around milking their existing enterprise customers while their IT policies require that an aplication in production is built with components that have a support contract in place.

pjmlp 6y ago
Ironically, when I watched the Kotlin conf, that seems exactly where JetBrains is trying to drive Kotlin, boosted by Android's adoption, trying to make a Kotlin eco-system out of it. I am betting it is going the Delphi way.
- jen20 6y ago
  It’s unclear which “that” you mean here, but: - if you’re alluding to the idea that Kotlin would be driven in the direction of closed source compilers and tooling in order to “milk” enterprise adopters: that would require a bizaare set of changes, including changing the license of both the tooling and the compiler - neither of which require copyright assignment, so JetBrains are not even free to do. - if you’re betting on an open compiler but closed tooling, again that would require changing the license of the tooling, which JetBrains is not entirely free to do since it does not get assigned copyright on contributions. I don’t know what agreement JetBrains has in place with Google, but I’d wager it precludes making Kotlin proprietary.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I am alluding to the tooling features only available in Clion and Enterprise version, alongside the comprising language design to be able to satisfy JVM, JS, Native, ART and WebAssembly. And the active role to make it a InteliJ language for most part, withdrawing support for Eclipse.
- lelanthran 6y ago
  I don't understand what you and grandparent are trying to say; can you explain in more detail about the parallels you see between JB/Kotlin and Borland/Delphi?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Delphi fall apart because Borland trying to grow bigger than they could chew, ignored their independence developer customer base and turned into enterprise customers as their main selling target. Now after a couple of changing hands, about 4 of them, they are trying to grow back the numbers of the small shops. Likewise JetBrains seems to have forgotten the JVM roots of Kotlin and is now trying to go beyond JVM, comprising language design choices on features that don't have the same semantics, e.g. value types on JVM vs JS/ART/Native, or the incompatible memory semantics of immutable types on Kotlin/Native.
vbezhenar 6y ago
What do you mean about Jetbrains? Idea Community Edition is free, open source and supports Kotlin.
- antaviana 6y ago
  I meant that it gives Kotlin adopters the sense that there is no vendor lock-in on the code they write, while at the same time they keep a strong bind on the present and future market IDE for Kotlin (if a competitor appears, Jetbrains will be first to market for everything Kotlin so they will have a persistent edge), capturing with the IDE the dollars of those who seriously plan to develop for Kotlin. The fact that they have a freemium model is irrelevant to that goal of owing the Kotlin IDE space. The free offering you mention is used both for funnelling or for having customers do the market segmentation themselves, as there are customers that want to pay for everyone in the team, there are customers who want to pay for only some of members of the team and those who do not want to pay for anyone in the team.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    They even asserted this on their blog, Kotlin is a means to sell InteliJ licenses. https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-needs-kotlin/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need... > The next thing is also fairly straightforward: we expect Kotlin to drive the sales of IntelliJ IDEA. We’re working on a new language, but we do not plan to replace the entire ecosystem of libraries that have been built for the JVM. So you’re likely to keep using Spring and Hibernate, or other similar frameworks, in your projects built with Kotlin. And while the development tools for Kotlin itself are going to be free and open-source, the support for the enterprise development frameworks and tools will remain part of IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, the commercial version of the IDE. And of course the framework support will be fully integrated with Kotlin.

pjmlp 6y ago

Ironically, when I watched the Kotlin conf, that seems exactly where JetBrains is trying to drive Kotlin, boosted by Android's adoption, trying to make a Kotlin eco-system out of it. I am betting it is going the Delphi way.

jen20 6y ago
It’s unclear which “that” you mean here, but: - if you’re alluding to the idea that Kotlin would be driven in the direction of closed source compilers and tooling in order to “milk” enterprise adopters: that would require a bizaare set of changes, including changing the license of both the tooling and the compiler - neither of which require copyright assignment, so JetBrains are not even free to do. - if you’re betting on an open compiler but closed tooling, again that would require changing the license of the tooling, which JetBrains is not entirely free to do since it does not get assigned copyright on contributions. I don’t know what agreement JetBrains has in place with Google, but I’d wager it precludes making Kotlin proprietary.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I am alluding to the tooling features only available in Clion and Enterprise version, alongside the comprising language design to be able to satisfy JVM, JS, Native, ART and WebAssembly. And the active role to make it a InteliJ language for most part, withdrawing support for Eclipse.
lelanthran 6y ago
I don't understand what you and grandparent are trying to say; can you explain in more detail about the parallels you see between JB/Kotlin and Borland/Delphi?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Delphi fall apart because Borland trying to grow bigger than they could chew, ignored their independence developer customer base and turned into enterprise customers as their main selling target. Now after a couple of changing hands, about 4 of them, they are trying to grow back the numbers of the small shops. Likewise JetBrains seems to have forgotten the JVM roots of Kotlin and is now trying to go beyond JVM, comprising language design choices on features that don't have the same semantics, e.g. value types on JVM vs JS/ART/Native, or the incompatible memory semantics of immutable types on Kotlin/Native.

vbezhenar 6y ago

What do you mean about Jetbrains? Idea Community Edition is free, open source and supports Kotlin.

antaviana 6y ago
I meant that it gives Kotlin adopters the sense that there is no vendor lock-in on the code they write, while at the same time they keep a strong bind on the present and future market IDE for Kotlin (if a competitor appears, Jetbrains will be first to market for everything Kotlin so they will have a persistent edge), capturing with the IDE the dollars of those who seriously plan to develop for Kotlin. The fact that they have a freemium model is irrelevant to that goal of owing the Kotlin IDE space. The free offering you mention is used both for funnelling or for having customers do the market segmentation themselves, as there are customers that want to pay for everyone in the team, there are customers who want to pay for only some of members of the team and those who do not want to pay for anyone in the team.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  They even asserted this on their blog, Kotlin is a means to sell InteliJ licenses. https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-needs-kotlin/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need... > The next thing is also fairly straightforward: we expect Kotlin to drive the sales of IntelliJ IDEA. We’re working on a new language, but we do not plan to replace the entire ecosystem of libraries that have been built for the JVM. So you’re likely to keep using Spring and Hibernate, or other similar frameworks, in your projects built with Kotlin. And while the development tools for Kotlin itself are going to be free and open-source, the support for the enterprise development frameworks and tools will remain part of IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, the commercial version of the IDE. And of course the framework support will be fully integrated with Kotlin.