[fpc-pascal]The state of FPC (was: Synapse for FPC)

[Marco van de Voort]

> > > Michael - if none of your developers look at the Delphi source code, I
> > > shudder to think at the standard of programming they produce. I've never
> met
> > > a professional programmer who doesn't at least look at headers/interface
> > > sections of code to understand how a routine works. Not doing so is
> > > completely alien to the way I work normally, and I am not alone in this
> > > either.
> 
> Your developer was refering to the people you work with that you mentioned
> do not look at Delphi source. Not FPC people.

Ok. But that is quite common btw, specially for people that use RADs.
(type-ahead and function syntax in those floating over texts). I also
did that when I used JBuilder.
 
> > How do you propose to look without violating copyrights? We have to
> > reverse engineer free Delphi apps to see what they call, and how they
> > call it.
> 
> Free CLX contains a large chunk of the RTL, and is already supporting Linux
> and Windows. I see sysutils, sysinit, system, types, variants, math,
> inifiles, syncobjs, typinfo, classes, contnrs, and a whole host of Linux
> specific units such as LibC. 

> All the code is under GPL according to sf.net project page, and so all
> should be usable in some way shape or form by FPC developer without fear
> of reverse engineering. 

Yes, maybe to peek at, but not to use (when I last looked it was only the
QT part, and only a bit bad), since that would contaminate FPC's
license, and disallow commercial use of FPC generated binaries.

I did use parts to test 1.1.x compability about half an year ago, when
widestrings started to work a bit (as least their parsing), but in general
it is confusing due to a lot subtle internal differences. 

However 1.1.x keeps getting better, and maybe it can be ported sometime,
as compiler test or so.

> Look at Syllable (also of SF iirc.) This project has branched a complete
> operating system that was GPL, so Borland wouldn't have a leg to stand on
> imho.

If it remains GPL, that is not a problem, but we don't want the libraries
GPL (the compiler and other end-user programs are though, but not the
runtime libraries, since that would hamper users to distribute generated
binaries without those apps themselves getting GPL'ed)