5 ms·

Delphi 11 Community Edition

albertzeyer 3y ago
Is this new or has this been around already for a while? Limited commercial use license. So I guess not interesting for many people? At least I would not want to work with such a product, even if I don't have any commercial plans. Obviously, I such a post, someone needs to mention Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/). How does it compare?
- tecleandor 3y ago
  Also the limit is quite, quite low. Only if you make less than $5K a year. But not on your Delphi project, but in anything else you do as a contractor or as a company.
  - contravariant 3y ago
    I mean they're free to put the limit wherever they want. I think allowing it to be used for hobby projects is still a good thing. To use the same limit for donations to non-profits, however, is harsh. It basically makes it impossible to use for any serious open source project, which is a damn shame.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Hardly much different from using VS Community edition.
    - tecleandor 3y ago
      VS Community limits are way different. Seems like there's no limit for individuals, and the limits for "corporations" begin in $1M on annual revenue. An even when hitting those "corporation limits" you can still use it if it's for " (i) open source; (ii) Visual Studio extensions; (iii) device drivers for the Windows operating system; (iv) SQL Server development; and, (v) education purposes as permitted above." edit: VS Community Terms: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-community/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-c...
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Still, I find the license quite alright for what is ultimely a commercial product, https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq Even JetBrains isn't that into charity with their products, see recent RustRover announcement.
        mihular 3y ago
        Rider is commercial only as well and not expensive at all. I guess MS compensates from other services (Azure) when you build an app with free VS against them.
        pasc1878 3y ago
        Or the usual MS gain that they have been using for the last 40 years. Most VS written programs run on MS operating system and/or Office so they get there money from sellinmg these.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Lazarus is currently behind in Delphi features, also stuck on Gtk migration AFAIK.
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    This is misleading as Lazarus and Delphi both have features that the other one does not, that doesn't make one "behind" than the other. Lazarus is a community driven project, if someone needs something to be implemented they can implement it themselves - and if something is not implemented then nobody really needed it enough to do it. Also there is no such a thing as "Gtk migration", since sadly Gtk is not backwards compatible with its own major versions, every new version needs a new LCL backend. But existing backends are not replaced (there is no migration from one to another) and any ongoing work reflect the interests of the people using it. Personally i have contributed to LCL and i dislike Gtk3 and later versions of Gtk so i do not even bother trying Gtk3 or later, but i have contributed several fixes for both Gtk2 and even the Gtk1 backends. Also i have implemented Win32 fixes, including MDI support (which wasn't available for years) since that was something that i wanted. Also FWIW there are also Qt-based backends. I haven't used them much but some developers prefer to use Qt as a backend instead of Gtk.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      No it is not, as most people care about Delphi support on Lazarus, not the other way around. Likewise, it is misleading not to consider moving to the actual, maintained Gtk version, migration. Whatever how one feels about Gtk development process, supporting the actual version is quite relevant for most people.
      - badsectoracula 3y ago
        > No it is not, as most people care about Delphi support on Lazarus, not the other way around. The majority of Lazarus users do not care about Delphi at all, they treat Lazarus as a project of its own, not a free version of Delphi. Lazarus (and Free Pascal) developers provide Delphi compatibility where that makes sense to let people convert their Delphi projects to Lazarus and allow component authors to share code between Delphi and Lazarus, but it was never meant to be 100% compatible nor replicate everything Delphi does. If you want to share code between Delphi and Lazarus/FPC you are expected to restrict yourself to the common set of features between the two - and even then you are still going to have to do convertions between the two (AFAIK the form format is incompatible and you need to use Lazarus to convert Delphi forms to it) and use IFDEFs in the code. > Likewise, it is misleading not to consider moving to the actual, maintained Gtk version, migration. There is nothing misleading here nor there is any migration going on, i explained how the widgetsets are developed very clearly. There are some people working on Gtk3 and AFAIK there is even some Gtk4 code but those are not going to replace the existing Gtk1 and Gtk2 widgetsets. In fact Gtk is not even the only toolkit(s) supported as there are also Qt4, Qt5 and Qt6 widgetsets. > Whatever how one feels about Gtk development process, supporting the actual version is quite relevant for most people. And these people can easily help develop the version they want to use, which is precisely what i've done myself. Again, it is a community driven project.
- ensocode 3y ago
  Lazarus supports different languages
- wongarsu 3y ago
  The UI designer of Lazarus seems about on par with Delphi 7, from what I gather? Given that UI is one of Delphi's big selling point that's a substantial difference. Imo the Delhi licenses aren't very expensive for professional use, but to maintain a talent pool they need an option for hobbyists. That's what community edition is supposed to be
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    The Lazarus UI designer is way more advanced than the one in Delphi 7. The anchor system alone (which allows you to place controls in relation to other controls which maintaining automatic layout and resizing - e.g. make a bunch of buttons share the same right edge regardless of how large the text inside the buttons is, then put a separator a few pixels[0] ahead of that edge and have other controls' left edge be at the same distance from the separator - then have the container automatically size itself to fit these, taking margins into account, all these done through the GUI with no need to write any code). Perhaps you saw the floating windows and thought it was similar to Delphi 7? The floating windows mode is the default (as a lot of people using Lazarus prefer it) but you can also have a single window mode (with or without embedded form designer). It used to be clunky at the past but in recent times it got polished out as some of the developers use the single window mode instead.
- signaru 3y ago
  Lazarus gives you cross-platform and multiple architecttures at no cost. From what I recall, Lazarus is a more lightweight install, while the Delphi IDE has better coding features. For the classic VCL (Delphi has other new frameworks), I haven't found anything that LCL cannot do yet, but I don't do anything unusual with the widgets. The FreePascal language is mostly compatible, however, they don't plan to strictly follow newer Delphi language features (e.g. inline declarations).
  - nunobrito 3y ago
    Lazarus was crap. That was the reason why it never replaced Delphi in the first place. Compiler was slow by comparison to get anything compiled, produced 10x bigger binaries. The IDE for GUI wasn't something to brag about and the help system (yes, Delphi actually had code snippets built into the docs) was dramatically worse. Delphi 7 was a masterpiece. Haven't tried Lazarus in the last 10 years. Hopefully many of my critics have become obsolete by now.
    - memsom 3y ago
      I did Delphi dev for about 10 years. For me it was Delphi 5 that was the king (I did use every version prior to that too.. including version 1). Delphi 6 added CLX and that was weird and awkward. No where I was working wanted to go to Delphi 6+, and I left Delphi in about 2007 anyway, so all the Embarcadero years are a mystery to me. I worked for a company that had a relationship with Borland and I have early versions of Kylix (I think the first version I saw, the IDE barely worked) - and that sort of made some sense of CLX, but the upgrade path was way way too steep. Would I ever go back to Delphi/Object Pascal? In a word - no.
      - nunobrito 3y ago
        Same feelings here. Did the same in 2010 and jumped boat to Java. After almost 17 years on Pascal for serious/intensive programming, nowadays don't even remember the syntax basics. Oh well, so is life.
    - anotherlab 3y ago
- slotrans 3y ago
  It's not new. I downloaded community edition under these same terms 3 or 4 years ago.
tecleandor 3y ago
Has regular price for Delphi been reduced? Not that I find it cheap at all, but I recall way bigger license prices than these: https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delphi https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delp...
- dvh 3y ago
  ($5600/seat + $1600/seat/year) if you want to use SQL?
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
    Generally I'm in favour of developers paying for their tools but I'm glad I dodged the Delphi bullet.
  - peterhull90 3y ago
    So if your revenue (not profit) exceeds $5000, you need to pay $5600 for Delphi. Surely that can't be right? [edit] I can only get the prices in GBP but for 'professional' it's £1,140 (Perpetual License) + £399 (Year one Maintenance) so not quite as bad as I thought but still a sizeable portion for year 1.
geiser 3y ago
Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Enough people in Germany are, to keep one conference going (EKON), having tracks on a Windows/.NET conference (BASTA!), and articles on developer magazines. Also most of the software at this Belgium company uses Delphi, https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home
- f311a 3y ago
  I'm also curious about what kind of companies are still using it.
  - dejv 3y ago
    A lot of lab instrumentation companies across EU still use it. Also quite a few companies producing industry machinery, industrial displays etc.
    - rubidium 3y ago
      This. It’s a great little system for such use cases. It is mainly falling out of favor for new development because it’s hard to find devs. But in terms of quickly getting automation equipment designed and running it’s a workhorse.
      - dejv 3y ago
        + you can write both UI and low level code in one language
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
  I did a little bit of Delphi 10ish or so years ago. This was a legacy application. It actually wasn't too bad. I assume it is mostly people working on legacy stuff at this point. Rewriting a huge code base which deals with thousands of edge cases is probably simply not worth it and sticking with Delphi is simply easier then.
AugustoCAS 3y ago
If I had any Delphi books, I would put them next to my copy of Learn Sumerian in 24 Hours.
DaOne256 3y ago
More interesting imho is that they also offer a Community Edition of C++Builder: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter Back in the days (~ 25 years ago) it was the standard IDE to use for writing C++ Windows programs. But it was Borland back then iirc before Embarcadero took over.
- DaOne256 3y ago
  I also submitted C++Builder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520509
- signaru 3y ago
  From what I've heard (from podcasts) the challenge of C++ Builder is catching up with Clang to add their additional C++ language features.
  - jenadine 3y ago
    They should open source and upstream their patches to clang and llvm, and let the llvm community maintain it.
    - nunobrito 3y ago
      That doesn't pay the bills. Cases of profitable open source projects are very scarce and difficult to achieve.
      - jenadine 3y ago
        I was referring to the changes they made to the compiler in their fork of clang, which makes the "catching up" with upstream clang challenging as they need to rebase. They can still sell their IDE and runtime libraries.
        signaru 3y ago
mikewarot 3y ago
The whole "you can use it until you reach $X of revenue" is a reason I just won't touch this. It's really weird, and it's none of their business how I earn my living. (Ironically, I make $0 from software, but it's the principle of it that sticks in my craw) I'll stick with Lazarus / Free Pascal until they get rid of that one weird trick.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  Why? Seems like a very good license for this category of software. They get paid if if and only if you get paid, their interests are perfectly aligned with your interests.
  - T-A 3y ago
    Ask yourself how they will know if and how much you get paid. I'm not downloading their stuff just to find out, but it seems like a safe bet that the license agreement grants them the right to audit you, and requires you to provide any documentation (like bank and tax statements) they deem necessary to do so. In order to know whom to audit, they are probably scanning app stores and software sites for apps made with Delphi. Personally identifiable telemetry and/or developer IDs embedded in each executable also wouldn't surprise me.
    - kwanbix 3y ago
      As far as I know, they trust that you would tell them as soon as you reach that level.
    - bruce511 3y ago
      I confess I'm not a delphi user, but I've used licenses like this in other places. I would be really surprised if they have any of the items you hypothesise. (Maybe an actual delphi user can comment.) The short answer (I cases I have experienced) is that they don't need to do any of this. If you use it past that point you are in violation of the license. If you choose to do that (or, you know, just pirate it) then you run existential business risk. If you think saving a few $ when you have a business making cash, then take the risk. In other words, businesses making money will tend to spend money because it's a good idea, from a business point of view, to do that.
ithkuil 3y ago
Does the IDE work only on windows (while producing binaries for multiple platforms) ?
hathym 3y ago
direct link: https://altd.embarcadero.com/download/radstudio/11.0/RADStudio_11_3_esd_28_13236.exe https://altd.embarcadero.com/download/radstudio/11.0/RADStud...
- hathym 3y ago
  fyi, you still have to create an account to use the trial version
shimonabi 3y ago
If you bought a license in the past for one of their products, but let the subscription expire, they won't let you download the version of the product for which you have a valid license. I had to search my backups for the installer of C++ Builder when I bought a new laptop. Luckily I had a backup.
jve 3y ago
At my other work, when I was an inexperienced developer I had one task: add support for different scales (that weights cars). We had an utility that sent it to axis camera via api so one can see weight on surveillance video. Anyways, I got the source from the vendor and it was Delphi. I thought: I heard this is similar to Pascal. I got introducet to programming with Pascal, so I'll just give Delphi a shot. Was disappointed to find out I have to pay for it given other languages are free. That was my perception: I'll invest my time to learn something that I will have to pay to use.. no thanks. Didnt bother and rewrote it in C# - the software was small. Now I get to think that maybe 10+ years ago I could have found some free IDE that compiles Delphi? The price tag from what seemed to me the official Delphi turned me off. Good that they now do CE version.
nxobject 3y ago
FYI – it seems like the Community Edition lacks a Linux toolchain, and the ability to compile for Linux.
prmoustache 3y ago
Too little too late.
- radicalriddler 3y ago
  They've been offering community editions for years. It's not too late, it's just too little.
donor20 3y ago
To connect to a non local data source you need to pay 3,000 for enterprise version once you exceed CE limits plus maintenance- a bit too much - wish they’d put that level a bit less
ceeam 3y ago
Lazarus is generally fine, but I wanted to port my one old small app and was pretty surprised that they have nothing Bluetooth-related OOB. Also kinda wish it were possible to build your apps with dynamic RTL/VCL (or whatever they call it there).
T3RMINATED 3y ago
[dead]

Is this new or has this been around already for a while? Limited commercial use license. So I guess not interesting for many people? At least I would not want to work with such a product, even if I don't have any commercial plans. Obviously, I such a post, someone needs to mention Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/). How does it compare?

tecleandor 3y ago
Also the limit is quite, quite low. Only if you make less than $5K a year. But not on your Delphi project, but in anything else you do as a contractor or as a company.
- contravariant 3y ago
  I mean they're free to put the limit wherever they want. I think allowing it to be used for hobby projects is still a good thing. To use the same limit for donations to non-profits, however, is harsh. It basically makes it impossible to use for any serious open source project, which is a damn shame.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Hardly much different from using VS Community edition.
  - tecleandor 3y ago
    VS Community limits are way different. Seems like there's no limit for individuals, and the limits for "corporations" begin in $1M on annual revenue. An even when hitting those "corporation limits" you can still use it if it's for " (i) open source; (ii) Visual Studio extensions; (iii) device drivers for the Windows operating system; (iv) SQL Server development; and, (v) education purposes as permitted above." edit: VS Community Terms: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-community/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-c...
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Still, I find the license quite alright for what is ultimely a commercial product, https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq Even JetBrains isn't that into charity with their products, see recent RustRover announcement.
      - mihular 3y ago
        Rider is commercial only as well and not expensive at all. I guess MS compensates from other services (Azure) when you build an app with free VS against them.
        pasc1878 3y ago
        Or the usual MS gain that they have been using for the last 40 years. Most VS written programs run on MS operating system and/or Office so they get there money from sellinmg these.
pjmlp 3y ago
Lazarus is currently behind in Delphi features, also stuck on Gtk migration AFAIK.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  This is misleading as Lazarus and Delphi both have features that the other one does not, that doesn't make one "behind" than the other. Lazarus is a community driven project, if someone needs something to be implemented they can implement it themselves - and if something is not implemented then nobody really needed it enough to do it. Also there is no such a thing as "Gtk migration", since sadly Gtk is not backwards compatible with its own major versions, every new version needs a new LCL backend. But existing backends are not replaced (there is no migration from one to another) and any ongoing work reflect the interests of the people using it. Personally i have contributed to LCL and i dislike Gtk3 and later versions of Gtk so i do not even bother trying Gtk3 or later, but i have contributed several fixes for both Gtk2 and even the Gtk1 backends. Also i have implemented Win32 fixes, including MDI support (which wasn't available for years) since that was something that i wanted. Also FWIW there are also Qt-based backends. I haven't used them much but some developers prefer to use Qt as a backend instead of Gtk.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    No it is not, as most people care about Delphi support on Lazarus, not the other way around. Likewise, it is misleading not to consider moving to the actual, maintained Gtk version, migration. Whatever how one feels about Gtk development process, supporting the actual version is quite relevant for most people.
    - badsectoracula 3y ago
      > No it is not, as most people care about Delphi support on Lazarus, not the other way around. The majority of Lazarus users do not care about Delphi at all, they treat Lazarus as a project of its own, not a free version of Delphi. Lazarus (and Free Pascal) developers provide Delphi compatibility where that makes sense to let people convert their Delphi projects to Lazarus and allow component authors to share code between Delphi and Lazarus, but it was never meant to be 100% compatible nor replicate everything Delphi does. If you want to share code between Delphi and Lazarus/FPC you are expected to restrict yourself to the common set of features between the two - and even then you are still going to have to do convertions between the two (AFAIK the form format is incompatible and you need to use Lazarus to convert Delphi forms to it) and use IFDEFs in the code. > Likewise, it is misleading not to consider moving to the actual, maintained Gtk version, migration. There is nothing misleading here nor there is any migration going on, i explained how the widgetsets are developed very clearly. There are some people working on Gtk3 and AFAIK there is even some Gtk4 code but those are not going to replace the existing Gtk1 and Gtk2 widgetsets. In fact Gtk is not even the only toolkit(s) supported as there are also Qt4, Qt5 and Qt6 widgetsets. > Whatever how one feels about Gtk development process, supporting the actual version is quite relevant for most people. And these people can easily help develop the version they want to use, which is precisely what i've done myself. Again, it is a community driven project.
ensocode 3y ago
Lazarus supports different languages
wongarsu 3y ago
The UI designer of Lazarus seems about on par with Delphi 7, from what I gather? Given that UI is one of Delphi's big selling point that's a substantial difference. Imo the Delhi licenses aren't very expensive for professional use, but to maintain a talent pool they need an option for hobbyists. That's what community edition is supposed to be
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  The Lazarus UI designer is way more advanced than the one in Delphi 7. The anchor system alone (which allows you to place controls in relation to other controls which maintaining automatic layout and resizing - e.g. make a bunch of buttons share the same right edge regardless of how large the text inside the buttons is, then put a separator a few pixels[0] ahead of that edge and have other controls' left edge be at the same distance from the separator - then have the container automatically size itself to fit these, taking margins into account, all these done through the GUI with no need to write any code). Perhaps you saw the floating windows and thought it was similar to Delphi 7? The floating windows mode is the default (as a lot of people using Lazarus prefer it) but you can also have a single window mode (with or without embedded form designer). It used to be clunky at the past but in recent times it got polished out as some of the developers use the single window mode instead.
signaru 3y ago
Lazarus gives you cross-platform and multiple architecttures at no cost. From what I recall, Lazarus is a more lightweight install, while the Delphi IDE has better coding features. For the classic VCL (Delphi has other new frameworks), I haven't found anything that LCL cannot do yet, but I don't do anything unusual with the widgets. The FreePascal language is mostly compatible, however, they don't plan to strictly follow newer Delphi language features (e.g. inline declarations).
- nunobrito 3y ago
  Lazarus was crap. That was the reason why it never replaced Delphi in the first place. Compiler was slow by comparison to get anything compiled, produced 10x bigger binaries. The IDE for GUI wasn't something to brag about and the help system (yes, Delphi actually had code snippets built into the docs) was dramatically worse. Delphi 7 was a masterpiece. Haven't tried Lazarus in the last 10 years. Hopefully many of my critics have become obsolete by now.
  - memsom 3y ago
    I did Delphi dev for about 10 years. For me it was Delphi 5 that was the king (I did use every version prior to that too.. including version 1). Delphi 6 added CLX and that was weird and awkward. No where I was working wanted to go to Delphi 6+, and I left Delphi in about 2007 anyway, so all the Embarcadero years are a mystery to me. I worked for a company that had a relationship with Borland and I have early versions of Kylix (I think the first version I saw, the IDE barely worked) - and that sort of made some sense of CLX, but the upgrade path was way way too steep. Would I ever go back to Delphi/Object Pascal? In a word - no.
    - nunobrito 3y ago
      Same feelings here. Did the same in 2010 and jumped boat to Java. After almost 17 years on Pascal for serious/intensive programming, nowadays don't even remember the syntax basics. Oh well, so is life.
  - anotherlab 3y ago
slotrans 3y ago
It's not new. I downloaded community edition under these same terms 3 or 4 years ago.

tecleandor 3y ago

Has regular price for Delphi been reduced? Not that I find it cheap at all, but I recall way bigger license prices than these: https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delphi https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delp...

dvh 3y ago
($5600/seat + $1600/seat/year) if you want to use SQL?
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  Generally I'm in favour of developers paying for their tools but I'm glad I dodged the Delphi bullet.
- peterhull90 3y ago
  So if your revenue (not profit) exceeds $5000, you need to pay $5600 for Delphi. Surely that can't be right? [edit] I can only get the prices in GBP but for 'professional' it's £1,140 (Perpetual License) + £399 (Year one Maintenance) so not quite as bad as I thought but still a sizeable portion for year 1.

geiser 3y ago

Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke.

pjmlp 3y ago
Enough people in Germany are, to keep one conference going (EKON), having tracks on a Windows/.NET conference (BASTA!), and articles on developer magazines. Also most of the software at this Belgium company uses Delphi, https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home
f311a 3y ago
I'm also curious about what kind of companies are still using it.
- dejv 3y ago
  A lot of lab instrumentation companies across EU still use it. Also quite a few companies producing industry machinery, industrial displays etc.
  - rubidium 3y ago
    This. It’s a great little system for such use cases. It is mainly falling out of favor for new development because it’s hard to find devs. But in terms of quickly getting automation equipment designed and running it’s a workhorse.
    - dejv 3y ago
      + you can write both UI and low level code in one language
_fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
I did a little bit of Delphi 10ish or so years ago. This was a legacy application. It actually wasn't too bad. I assume it is mostly people working on legacy stuff at this point. Rewriting a huge code base which deals with thousands of edge cases is probably simply not worth it and sticking with Delphi is simply easier then.

AugustoCAS 3y ago

If I had any Delphi books, I would put them next to my copy of Learn Sumerian in 24 Hours.

DaOne256 3y ago

More interesting imho is that they also offer a Community Edition of C++Builder: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter Back in the days (~ 25 years ago) it was the standard IDE to use for writing C++ Windows programs. But it was Borland back then iirc before Embarcadero took over.

DaOne256 3y ago
I also submitted C++Builder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520509
signaru 3y ago
From what I've heard (from podcasts) the challenge of C++ Builder is catching up with Clang to add their additional C++ language features.
- jenadine 3y ago
  They should open source and upstream their patches to clang and llvm, and let the llvm community maintain it.
  - nunobrito 3y ago
    That doesn't pay the bills. Cases of profitable open source projects are very scarce and difficult to achieve.
    - jenadine 3y ago
      I was referring to the changes they made to the compiler in their fork of clang, which makes the "catching up" with upstream clang challenging as they need to rebase. They can still sell their IDE and runtime libraries.
      - signaru 3y ago

mikewarot 3y ago

The whole "you can use it until you reach $X of revenue" is a reason I just won't touch this. It's really weird, and it's none of their business how I earn my living. (Ironically, I make $0 from software, but it's the principle of it that sticks in my craw) I'll stick with Lazarus / Free Pascal until they get rid of that one weird trick.

marginalia_nu 3y ago
Why? Seems like a very good license for this category of software. They get paid if if and only if you get paid, their interests are perfectly aligned with your interests.
- T-A 3y ago
  Ask yourself how they will know if and how much you get paid. I'm not downloading their stuff just to find out, but it seems like a safe bet that the license agreement grants them the right to audit you, and requires you to provide any documentation (like bank and tax statements) they deem necessary to do so. In order to know whom to audit, they are probably scanning app stores and software sites for apps made with Delphi. Personally identifiable telemetry and/or developer IDs embedded in each executable also wouldn't surprise me.
  - kwanbix 3y ago
    As far as I know, they trust that you would tell them as soon as you reach that level.
  - bruce511 3y ago
    I confess I'm not a delphi user, but I've used licenses like this in other places. I would be really surprised if they have any of the items you hypothesise. (Maybe an actual delphi user can comment.) The short answer (I cases I have experienced) is that they don't need to do any of this. If you use it past that point you are in violation of the license. If you choose to do that (or, you know, just pirate it) then you run existential business risk. If you think saving a few $ when you have a business making cash, then take the risk. In other words, businesses making money will tend to spend money because it's a good idea, from a business point of view, to do that.

ithkuil 3y ago

Does the IDE work only on windows (while producing binaries for multiple platforms) ?

hathym 3y ago

direct link: https://altd.embarcadero.com/download/radstudio/11.0/RADStudio_11_3_esd_28_13236.exe https://altd.embarcadero.com/download/radstudio/11.0/RADStud...

hathym 3y ago
fyi, you still have to create an account to use the trial version

shimonabi 3y ago

If you bought a license in the past for one of their products, but let the subscription expire, they won't let you download the version of the product for which you have a valid license. I had to search my backups for the installer of C++ Builder when I bought a new laptop. Luckily I had a backup.

jve 3y ago

At my other work, when I was an inexperienced developer I had one task: add support for different scales (that weights cars). We had an utility that sent it to axis camera via api so one can see weight on surveillance video. Anyways, I got the source from the vendor and it was Delphi. I thought: I heard this is similar to Pascal. I got introducet to programming with Pascal, so I'll just give Delphi a shot. Was disappointed to find out I have to pay for it given other languages are free. That was my perception: I'll invest my time to learn something that I will have to pay to use.. no thanks. Didnt bother and rewrote it in C# - the software was small. Now I get to think that maybe 10+ years ago I could have found some free IDE that compiles Delphi? The price tag from what seemed to me the official Delphi turned me off. Good that they now do CE version.

nxobject 3y ago

FYI – it seems like the Community Edition lacks a Linux toolchain, and the ability to compile for Linux.

prmoustache 3y ago

Too little too late.

radicalriddler 3y ago
They've been offering community editions for years. It's not too late, it's just too little.

donor20 3y ago

To connect to a non local data source you need to pay 3,000 for enterprise version once you exceed CE limits plus maintenance- a bit too much - wish they’d put that level a bit less

ceeam 3y ago

Lazarus is generally fine, but I wanted to port my one old small app and was pretty surprised that they have nothing Bluetooth-related OOB. Also kinda wish it were possible to build your apps with dynamic RTL/VCL (or whatever they call it there).

T3RMINATED 3y ago

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