[fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2012, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Any FPC developer willing to comment on the status of some of these
> issues (that have been years overdue)?

For some reason this thread ended up in my spam box. Hence the late reply.

As for the question:

I've planned to do some work on the unicode string type.

Then:

Please don't bother obfuscating names, the mailing lists are public:
- John Doe 1 is Martin Schreiber himself,
- John Doe 2 is Graeme Geldenhuys.

Concerning "Fighting with Michael or Marco:"

Martin has virtually sole control over MSEide-MSEgui. 
In that position, he does not need to compromise. 
This is quite different from the situation in Free Pascal:

>From our perspective, Martin is simply impossible to work with. 
It's either his way or not at all, always has been so.

In the last discussion I've gone out of my way to find solutions for 
his problems that are acceptable for our own goals, and found them too.
I even implemented some.

In the end he just closed the discussion with "I don't like this approach".

I have no problem with that, but then be honest and do not put the blame on us.

I also sometimes must compromise in the FPC team. I also do not like all
decisions. I also do not want all the latest Delphi features.

But we are cooperating in a group, and then compromise is necessary.

If Martin would be more cooperative and sometimes accepted a compromise, 
we would probably have solved many of the issues that are bothering him a
long time ago, simply because we'd have more manpower and he'd be included
in the FPC core group. The first attempt to do so, on the database design,
failed for exactly the reasons outlined above: Compromise was not
acceptable.

A pity, because there are lots of ideas in MSEgui that I like and plan to
copy, time permitting. That is a waste of time and double work that could 
have been avoided, but alas...

Let us not forget that FPC is gcc+libc+gnu-binutils combined.

All those projects have entire corporations backing them up if need be. 
We do not. FPC is a small team consisting of volunteers who do this after
hours. We do not get payed for this.

It would be good to keep those facts in mind before ranting.

Michael.