Delphi 12.1 Amnesty price isn’t what I thought it was…

[Al T 12]

So, sitting on Delphi 11.0 Enterprise because I missed too many renewal periods, so I have to buy a new license.  $4,000 for a new license is too much.

 

I saw the Rad Offer for Amnesty (direct copy paste from website) which is practically a lie:

 

Terms and Conditions

• This offer ends on May 31, 2024.
• This offer is valid with the purchase of:
  • C++Builder 12.1 Athens - All Editions
  • Delphi 12.1 Athens - All Editions
  • RAD Studio 12.1 Athens - All Editions
• Valid for customers with previous versions of C++Builder, Delphi & RAD Studio.
• License type: New Perpetual Licenses Only.
• This offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.
• This offer does not apply to terms, renewals, or academic licenses.
• Embarcadero reserves the right to change, cancel or amend the offer at any time.
• Promotional pricing does not apply to most public bids/tenders or license compliance settlements.
• This offer is void where prohibited by law. Some regions are not eligible for this promotion.
• Additional restrictions may apply.

 

Even ChatGPT thought this would be priced at $999 for the new license for those with any previous version of Delphi Enterprise.  I own Delphi 11.0 Enterprise.

 

 So, I email them.  They Told me they can offer 35% off Delphi Enterprise with the amnesty offer @ $2599 instead of $3999.

 

 I’m thinking, that offer is anytime offer and not really a special deal.  I sent back a decline to accept and will just wait until they come down on price.  If never, I’ll stick with Delphi 11.0 Enterprise.

 

It seems even Delphi 12.1 users are having bugs, so I’m not missing anything.

 

I can still use any IDE with Delphi instead of the Delphi IDE to program it.  I’ve started using Visual Code with co-pilot and Delphi for a better IDE with less bugs.

 

[Brian Evans 105]

Notice in buy now it shows $3,000 Perpetual License + $999 for one year of Maintenance for Delphi Enterprise. If support is still $999/year that is not much of an anmesty at $2599. Looks like they offered that price or close to it last fall but included 24 months of support. 

 

They sometimes offer(ed) discounts on longer support renewals - like 20% off 60 months (paid $ ~4,000 USD in 2022 for that myself on an active Delphi Enterprise license). 

 

Might be worthwhile waiting them out or occasionally asking sales about any offers etc. 

[bazzer747 25]

These 'offers' are nothing like helpful. Why they 'force' a years maintenance into the price makes me wonder - I've used Delphi (now on 10.4) since Delphi 4 - and never required a maintenance contract. Never had to call Emarcardo to help fix a problem. Why would I nee6d one now!

My biggest gripe, though, is that whilst I have Enterprise (that was a 'con' years ago getting a decent price for an upgrade) when I only needed Professional), now I'm stuck with Enterprise because I can't get Firedac with Professional.

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

The maintenance part does get you the upgrades, updates, hotfixes, some GetIt stuff for a year, though.

And, renewing the maintenance deal is less costly than repurchasing.

[bazzer747 25]

Granted, but having used Delphi for probably over 20 years now, there is no 'upgrade' price that acknowledges the amount of money spent on versions over the years. It seems you are treated as a 'new' customer regardless of your 'loyalty' to the product.

 

With other products, existing users normally get upgrade prices that are significantly better than a new customer would pay. Also, when I buy a product I would expect to get any bug fixes for that product free with an apology, rather than having to pay for it. 

 

Embarcadero seem to be like the Carpet shops, there's always a 'sale' on. I can't believe anyone, company or individual, ever pays the advertised price. Why don't they have some integrity and show a normal price! Whatever 'special deal' is running the actual amount they want is always around the same (which in my opinion is way too much).

[Lajos Juhász 293]

Embarcadero made a bad decision to support more and more platforms without proper preparation. Now we have to pay the price that they have to replace everything as it is impossible to support those changing platforms.

 

Combine that with the fact that the 32 bit compiler has also an ancient architecture that should be replaced.

 

[Al T 12]

13 hours ago, bazzer747 said:

 

 Also, when I buy a product I would expect to get any bug fixes for that product free with an apology, rather than having to pay for it. 

 

 

Yes, that's correct.  Instead of allowing me to have all the bugs fixed for version 11, they want me to buy version 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, etc, for the bug fixes.  They are surely getting away with it because people are paying them.  If those whom used thier service stopped paying them, they might change the way they do business.

 

I was hoping to see a shining light at the end of the tunnel when I read the Amnesty deal, but it was a SCAM to get me to email them for a quote that I could get at any time of the year!  They are clearly not sorry for thier business practices.

[Al T 12]

On 6/1/2024 at 4:25 PM, bazzer747 said:

These 'offers' are nothing like helpful. Why they 'force' a years maintenance into the price makes me wonder - I've used Delphi (now on 10.4) since Delphi 4 - and never required a maintenance contract. Never had to call Emarcardo to help fix a problem. Why would I nee6d one now!

My biggest gripe, though, is that whilst I have Enterprise (that was a 'con' years ago getting a decent price for an upgrade) when I only needed Professional), now I'm stuck with Enterprise because I can't get Firedac with Professional.

Well, they do offer the professional version for free (kind of).  If you do go that route with a different email address, etc.  After a week or two, they'll start sending you harassment emails about you using thier product to make a certain amount of money they expect you to buy the professional version else they'll take you to court.  Seriously!

Edited June 3 by Al T
Spelling

[Al T 12]

On 6/1/2024 at 4:25 PM, bazzer747 said:

 

My biggest gripe, though, is that whilst I have Enterprise (that was a 'con' years ago getting a decent price for an upgrade) when I only needed Professional), now I'm stuck with Enterprise because I can't get Firedac with Professional.

I bought Enterprise to access the Linux stuff.  I really don't need to stay Enterprise, but they kind of force you to stay Enterprise.  If you buy the next version as professional, it'll turn all your Enterprise versions into professional!  They forcibly keep you at the version that makes them more money.

[Al T 12]

12 hours ago, Lajos Juhász said:

Embarcadero made a bad decision to support more and more platforms without proper preparation. Now we have to pay the price that they have to replace everything as it is impossible to support those changing platforms.

 

Combine that with the fact that the 32 bit compiler has also an ancient architecture that should be replaced.

 

Too bad they don't let you buy just what you need.  If you just prefer to create Android and Windows, you should be allowed to buy just those two as add-ons.  If you want Linux, then buy it as a addon.  If iOS apps, or Mac OS apps..etc.

[Lajos Juhász 293]

4 hours ago, Al T said:

Too bad they don't let you buy just what you need.  If you just prefer to create Android and Windows, you should be allowed to buy just those two as add-ons.  If you want Linux, then buy it as a addon.  If iOS apps, or Mac OS apps..etc.

 

As any other company they need income to pay their bills,vages and profit to shareholders. To make the product more modular for some reason did not worked out for them. They have tried with the database add-on.

 

4 hours ago, Al T said:

Yes, that's correct.  Instead of allowing me to have all the bugs fixed for version 11, they want me to buy version 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, etc, for the bug fixes. 

 

While that would be good for us. This would be increase the price. It is not always easy to backport bug fixes due to interface changes in the source code. Embarcadero still not able to test a single release good enough to release the new versions withous some serious bugs (eg. most of the customers will not release any program compiled with 0 version). 

 

The company I am working for has a similair policy. A client can pay to get a change to be backported to his version only if that doesn't require too much code to change and we can test the product integrity after the change, otherwise the change can be delivered with a version upgrade.

[Al T 12]

2 hours ago, Lajos Juhász said:

 

As any other company they need income to pay their bills,vages and profit to shareholders. To make the product more modular for some reason did not worked out for them. They have tried with the database add-on.

 

 

While that would be good for us. This would be increase the price. It is not always easy to backport bug fixes due to interface changes in the source code. Embarcadero still not able to test a single release good enough to release the new versions withous some serious bugs (eg. most of the customers will not release any program compiled with 0 version). 

 

The company I am working for has a similair policy. A client can pay to get a change to be backported to his version only if that doesn't require too much code to change and we can test the product integrity after the change, otherwise the change can be delivered with a version upgrade.

So, your basically saying the version of Delphi Enterprise I should really be using is version 10.4?

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

I find some of the EMBT marketing practices to be idiotic and unnecessary.

 

They keep spamming me these offers for "upgrades" and "new licenses" with varying levels of price slashing, all year around.

Don't they consider that I have been a subscriber for more than a decade, and that the offers only are valid for new licenses?

 

The new releases and offers tend to bundle some third party tool or package that is underfunctional and overpriced,

and where the license terms are a tad unclear after the year has passed. After being bought by Idera, it is often some other

Idera purchased product that I have little interest in. I find the bundling practices to be inconsistant, to put it mildly.

 

Not only do they do this directly, but the local representative also spam the same offers, over and over.

According to the local representative - it is EMBT that do the spam on their behalf.

 

Where is the reward for staying a long time paying customer? It is not like the maintenance is cheap, and it is not like I spam EMBT with support issues. 

As for support, I don't think I've every raised a support question apart from the annoying license counter bump requests.

 

Ok, I am paying for new versions, updates, hotfixes, etc. - but to be honest, for many major versions now, the first  xx.0 releases have of sub-par quality.

We've had to wait at least for update 1, and a hotfix or two - before it was fit for use.

 

About license management... Remember the Delphi .NET craze? It led us to purchase RAD Studio licenses to get a the new and shiny .NET stuff. That shit didn't last long, mostly due to MS not fully opening the door on third party .NET tools - but - when they were discontinued, we were still on RAD Studio Enterprise, when we really only need Delphi Enterprise. We have never used the C++ part of RAD Studio., but there is no way to downgrade a license, and it is still cheaper to keep the RAD Studio Enterprise maintenance, than to repurchase Delphi Enterprise licenses.

 

So we stay on maintenance and keep hoping for

• Old problems to be fixed
• New platforms to be supported
• HighDPI to be done right
• Code performance to be improved
• RTL performance to be improved
• IDE to become stable and performant
• Debuggers that actually work in all scenarios
• Less immature and unfinished new libs and components
• Less pointless marketing offers

because, warts and all, the tool is what we have become dependant on.

 

Still hoping that it will change for the better...

 

http://www.toodarkpark.org/computers/humor/shoot-self-in-foot.html

C++: You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can’t tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, “That’s me, over there.”

Delphi: You try to shoot yourself in the foot but discover that the bullets you already had are not compatible with the new gun version, but Borland promises a fix real soon now.

Assembly: You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover that you must first invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.

• You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the system administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rapidly shooting at everyone in sight.
• By the time you’ve written the gun, you are dead, and don’t have to worry about shooting your feet. Alternatively, you shoot and miss, but don’t notice.
• Using only 7 bytes of code, you blow off your entire leg in only 2 CPU clock ticks.

[corneliusdavid 214]

8 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

They keep spamming me these offers for "upgrades" and "new licenses" with varying levels of price slashing, all year around.

Don't they consider that I have been a subscriber for more than a decade, and that the offers only are valid for new licenses?

Yes, I'm a subscriber, too, and find it incredulous that I keep getting emails from "my representative" (as if I need one) about learning about the new version and would I like a demo. I usually just ignore these, shaking my head. But recently, I was in a mood that just sent me over the edge and fired back an email asking why on earth they keep asking if I want a demo and why doesn't the marketing department have a list of current paying customers? (I said a little more than that.) I got an apology back with a note that "marketing will be updated." I think every time we register for a webinar and have to check that box that agrees to receive marketing material, that it re-flags our email address as a "potential" new sale. I might stop registering for webinars and just watch the YouTube replays from now on.

 

8 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

because, warts and all, the tool is what we have become dependent on.

Yep. That's why we're still here.

 

8 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Assembly: You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover that you must first invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.

• You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the system administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rapidly shooting at everyone in sight.
• By the time you’ve written the gun, you are dead, and don’t have to worry about shooting your feet. Alternatively, you shoot and miss, but don’t notice.
• Using only 7 bytes of code, you blow off your entire leg in only 2 CPU clock ticks.

LOL! It's been a while since I heard these "shoot-yourself-in-the-foot" phrases--so funny because they're so true!

[JonRobertson 72]

1 hour ago, corneliusdavid said:

I'm a subscriber, too, and find it incredulous that I keep getting emails from "my representative" (as if I need one) about learning about the new version and would I like a demo.

Same here. I brought this up with Ian Barker and my assigned rep.

 

1 hour ago, corneliusdavid said:

why doesn't the marketing department have a list of current paying customers?

I asked that as well. 

 

1 hour ago, corneliusdavid said:

I got an apology back with a note that "marketing will be updated."

Yep. Wash, rinse, spin, dry, repeat. But wait, those clothes just came out of the dryer...

 

It helped for a little while. But I am back to receiving multiple "upgrade" or "renew" email offers every week, sometimes multiple times in one day. And our licenses do not expire until February, 2026. 

 

But the ones that I find most frustrating are the "personal" emails asking if I'd like a demo of the development tool that has been my tool of choice since 1996.

 

Edited June 4 by JonRobertson

[Al T 12]

On 6/3/2024 at 10:55 PM, Lajos Juhász said:

 

As any other company they need income to pay their bills,vages and profit to shareholders.

 

 

 

With Visual Studio's perpetual license, you typically receive service packs and minor updates for the specific version you purchased. This includes bug fixes and security patches, ensuring the version remains stable and secure even without upgrading to a newer major version.

 

Microsoft needs to pay bills too, yet they can continue to support the whole version you bought with bug fixes and security patches!

 

EDIT:

 

 

 

However, there's no financial penalty for missing years when you purchase a renewal license with Visual Studio, other than the need to catch up with any new pricing if it has increased.

 

 

 

With Delphi, there's a accumulation of stacking increase per year until you need to buy a new license at regular price.

Edited June 5 by Al T
Extra info

[JonRobertson 72]

2 minutes ago, Al T said:

Microsoft needs to pay bills too, yet they can continue to support the whole version you bought with bug fixes and security patches!

I don't understand why anyone would compare Microsoft's business motives to Embarcadero's.

 

Microsoft's bottom line is based on the success of their platforms (Windows, SQL Server, Office 365, Azure, ad nauseam). They could give Visual Studio Enterprise to every interested developer for free and not need to worry about paying the bills. Or their Visual Studio development team's salaries.

 

Embarcadero's bottom line is based on the success of development tools and Interbase. They don't spend resources on Delphi and C++ Builder so they can profit from an operating system or hardware platform.

[Al T 12]

I'm just royalty pissed off at the "AMENSTY" pricing.  I really thought it was going to be $999 to with the idea you'll continue to pay that every year.  If they'd forgive my missing years and let me restart at the renewal pricing, I would continue to purchase it every year.  I'm just waiting for them to give me that chance to jump back on that bandwagon.  I really thought it was the "AMENSTY", but that hope was lost.

 

If they want me to restart at $4000 or even $2599, well.  I'll just continue to use Delphi 11.0 or 10.4.  At least I still have access to all the previous versions, due to their license agreement.  I'm curious to which version had the least amount of bugs... Hint hint.

[Brandon Staggs 277]

18 minutes ago, Al T said:

Microsoft needs to pay bills too, yet they can continue to support the whole version you bought with bug fixes and security patches!

You're not comparing like things.

 

Microsoft's development tools support their platform services, which is where they are making money. Embarcadero cannot treat Delphi the way Microsoft treats VS, because Embarcadero needs to make a profit on the development system while Microsoft doesn't. I have a hard time taking rants about pricing seriously when they say "Embarcadero should do it like Microsoft." They just cannot, and that should be obvious.

 

We all know that if we want bugfixes we have to pay for maintenance, and that they come mostly as new versions, not patches. It's part of the calculus of choosing Delphi. If you want it the way it's done with VS, best just move to VS. If you want to use Delphi, you have to put up with the extra overhead involved (in many aspects) of using what amounts to a niche product.

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

27 minutes ago, Al T said:

I'm just royalty pissed off at the "AMENSTY" pricing. 

I guess everyone has got that now.

[Al T 12]

2 hours ago, Uwe Raabe said:

I guess everyone has got that now.

Sorry about beating a old dead dog.

[Joseph MItzen 251]

On 6/3/2024 at 10:55 PM, Lajos Juhász said:

 

As any other company they need income to pay their bills,vages and profit to shareholders. To make the product more modular for some reason did not worked out for them. They have tried with the database add-on.

 

It's a privately held company; they don't have to answer to shareholders. By saying it didn't work out for them, that really means that most current users would be happy with having less features for a lower price, but this would not attract sufficient new users to make up the difference. So current users have to spend more than they want for things they don't use.

On 6/3/2024 at 10:55 PM, Lajos Juhász said:

It is not always easy to backport bug fixes due to interface changes in the source code. Embarcadero still not able to test a single release good enough to release the new versions withous some serious bugs (eg. most of the customers will not release any program compiled with 0 version). 

 

The company I am working for has a similair policy. A client can pay to get a change to be backported to his version only if that doesn't require too much code to change and we can test the product integrity after the change, otherwise the change can be delivered with a version upgrade.

There's a difference between a change and a bug fix. A bug means you paid for something that actually wasn't delivered as promised. In no circumstances should someone be able to deliver a product that doesn't work correctly and then offer to fix it for an additional fee.

[Joseph MItzen 251]

On 6/4/2024 at 2:04 AM, Lars Fosdal said:

Not only do they do this directly, but the local representative also spam the same offers, over and over.

According to the local representative - it is EMBT that do the spam on their behalf.

Just spam? You're lucky. A while back they made a big deal about giving away a 32-bit, command line-only version of their C++ compiler. I was curious what other restrictions were in place, given anyone could just download clang for free without any significant restrictions. There was no way to read the license without first installing the product, so I filled out a form to be able to download the compiler, supplying name, address, phone number, etc.

A few days later I got a phone call from an unrecognized number and as I was busy I didn't answer. There was a voice mail message left - from an Embarcadero salesperson! They were trying to sell me a full C++ compiler (I don't code in C++ and don't code on Windows anymore, and already had GCC on my system anyway). They kept calling me back for about two weeks to the point I would never answer the phone if I didn't know who it was. They were emailing me, too, weird personalized messages wanting to talk to me and get to now my needs rather than forwarding me generic marketing department emails. I joked at the time I wasn't sure if they were trying to sell me something or ask me out. Finally almost three weeks in they gave up.

 

[Joseph MItzen 251]

On 6/4/2024 at 10:37 AM, corneliusdavid said:

I think every time we register for a webinar and have to check that box that agrees to receive marketing material, that it re-flags our email address as a "potential" new sale

This is absolutely the case. A while back before the Idera acquisition I was using the GlassDoor website which lets people rate their employers. I decided while there to see what Embarcadero employees were saying. There was a very unhappy Delphi sales employee talking about the unrealistic target numbers and that the CEO was willing to do anything to hit target numbers because even they could lose their job if they didn't (this was when the previous owner was trying to pump up numbers so they could sell it for a profit). They said that management had told them they were setting up webinars to generate sales leads for them, but the salesperson complained that the only people who signed up for them were existing customers so they were useless for lead generation.

[Joseph MItzen 251]

12 hours ago, JonRobertson said:

I don't understand why anyone would compare Microsoft's business motives to Embarcadero's.

 

Microsoft's bottom line is based on the success of their platforms (Windows, SQL Server, Office 365, Azure, ad nauseam). They could give Visual Studio Enterprise to every interested developer for free and not need to worry about paying the bills. Or their Visual Studio development team's salaries.

 

Embarcadero's bottom line is based on the success of development tools and Interbase. They don't spend resources on Delphi and C++ Builder so they can profit from an operating system or hardware platform.

OK, first, this reminds me of an observation Jolyon Duranko-Smith once made. He observed that if anyone complained about something Embarcadero did as opposed to another major company, a defender would say it's not fair to compare them to Microsoft/whomever because those companies are much bigger. And if you counter by observing that a company like RemObjects does something that Embarcadero doesn't, the reply will be that that's because RemObjects is a much smaller company and can be more nimble. Every company ever compared to Embarcadero is always bigger or smaller; none of them are ever considered a fair comparison. 🙂

 

We learned during the sale to Idera that Embarcadero's bottom line is NOT based on the success of its development tools and Interbase. It paid only $30M or so for those, but was purchased by Idera for about $425 million a few years later. The bulk of Embarcadero's value is based on its database tools, not its development tools and especially not Interbase, whose market share is negligible (Enlyft estimates it at 0.13%). So Embarcadero could afford to give away Delphi... oh wait, it actually DOES give away a community version of Delphi, just as Microsoft gives away a version of Visual Studio (although MS' terms are more generous). I guess the comparison is apt after all.

 

Finally, here's the terms from JetBrains, which only sells development tools, most of them being IDEs (but unlike Embarcadero, they've expanded to cover everything a developer could need, such as continuous integration software, bug tracking software, etc.):
 

Quote

A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific version of software without an active subscription for it. The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included.

 

So Jetbrains doesn't charge you for bug fixes and IDEs are their core business. It's not normal to charge people for bug fixes. In fact, it's not normal to mix bug fixes and new features in the same update, something I argued with David Millington about in vain. Bug fixes need to be separate so they don't need extensive testing before application. This is how all major enterprise software works.