[fpc-pascal]FreeCLX

[Marco van de Voort]

> > > FreeCLX is the GPL'd portion of the CLX that comes with Kylix and will
> come
> > > with Delphi 6.
> >
> > We know. Actually, the GPL is a problem, since it explicitly forbids
> > development of commercial applications. the FPC license does.
> 
> They have to make money somehow!!

Yup, but we don't have to help them!!!
 
> > Actually, it is NOT so easy, since there are some issues:
> > - Multithreading support of FPC is not yet finished
> > - WideString support also is not done
> > - Variants are not yet integrated in the language.
> > These are the main issues, and they require some work on the compiler.
> 
> All this is planned however?

Partially supported yes.
 
> > I beg to differ. I have extensively worked with kylix, and it is _not_
> > release quality. Late-stage Beta at most, but not release.
> 
> I'm currently using Kylix Desktop Developer - no problems at all. Not had
> any problems under Mandrake since FT 3 (the first one that was usable) and
> to be honest the release version works like a charm ;) Which distro are you
> using? Used Kylix under Mandrake 7.1 and 7.2.. wouldn't touch any other
> distro bar maybe Red Hat.. not really into sparse installers... (mind you
> Suse is probably better than it was last time I used it by now!)

Otherway around. And Linux is already ugly enough if you are used to BSD :-)
Let alone one of the more commercial distro's :)

> > But, may I remind you that
> > 1) Qt (the underlying building blocks of VisualCLX)
> >    is maintained since about 5-6 years by a commercial company.
> > 2) Kylix is managed by a company with about 800 employees, of which about
> >    50 on the R&D staff only.
> > 3) FPC is maintained by essentially 6-7 people in their spare time.
> 
> There are only about 2 guys working on Delphi at any one time. More come
> release time, but on average two guys, for the whole product. (or so I was
> told by a Borland employee.)
 
> > Given that, I think the comparision is not really fair.
> 
> Kylix is a commercial product that cost money to produce.. FPC is free.. It
> all kind of evens out in the mix ;)

That is the problem. If we use FreeCLX, then we would be less free.

If we would build something on it, nobody could do anything commercial with
the result, and we would depend on Borland to decide what was commercial or
not. (And RMS would be on Borlands side on that one).

As a result, we can't build anything of some size  on top of it, so the only
reason for porting would be compiler testing. So the porting should be done
(for testing and for GPL apps), but there is no real hurry, since it isn't
going to be a building block.

GPL is not a problem for end applications, but 

> > But, as I said: We're working on it, and in a year or so, we'll see who
> > will kick who's butt, to use your words :)
> 
> That's exactly what I want to hear.. though Lasarus was supposed to be
> kicking Delphi's butt about 2 years ago ;) (nuff said.. only messin/joking
> :)

Actually, then it still was Medigo :-)
But the problem is that nearly nobody has time.......