Please write to Embarcadero to get a free Delphi 11 edition for Andreas Hausladen

[PeterPanettone 157]

Hi Jim,

 

Andreas Hausladen is a MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR of free essential software tools for the Delphi IDE, for example:

 

https://www.idefixpack.de/blog/ide-tools/

 

Today, as an answer to a Delphi user's request to update his IDE tools for Delphi 11 Alexandria, he answered:

 

"Sorry, I don't own Delphi 11. So I can't help you with that."

 

I am sure that the whole Delphi community's wish is that Andreas Hausladen gets a free Delphi edition, so he can continue to support the Delphi Community. Can you make that possible?

Thanks in advance!

Edited October 2, 2021 by PeterPanettone

[David Heffernan 2345]

I have the feeling that Andy is quite happy not to have to keep chasing updates..... 

[PeterPanettone 157]

15 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

I have the feeling that Andy is quite happy not to have to keep chasing updates..... 

Can you base your fanciful assumption on anything substantial?

[aehimself 396]

53 minutes ago, PeterPanettone said:

Can you base your fanciful assumption on anything substantial?

There is nothing fanciful here. There is only a substantial difference between "I have a feeling" and "I know for sure".

[David Heffernan 2345]

1 hour ago, PeterPanettone said:

Can you base your fanciful assumption on anything substantial?

Previous comments from Andy 

[Dave Nottage 557]

3 hours ago, PeterPanettone said:

Today, as an answer to a Delphi user's request to update his IDE tools for Delphi 11 Alexandria

Is there some reason you're unable to compile the library yourself? The Delphi 11 project files have even been added

[David Schwartz 426]

Back when Delphi was owned by Borland, they had a fairly generous policy towards handing out free copies of their software products. Their actual "Cost of Goods" was tangible since back then sofware came on disks and there were always books included in the boxes. (Delphi itself was given out free to everybody who attended the launch event in 1995. I was there! And lots of free stuff was handed out at all sorts of conferences throughout the 90's. But those things have faded out, along with User Groups and similar in-person events. I did do a local in-person event as an MVP a few years ago, and they refused to give me a free license to raffle off. But they did send a bunch of pens and note-pads -- at far greater actual expense than a license code sent via email.)

 

Today you have to pay to get a DVD if you want a physical copy on disk. The COGs is ZERO. Yet Embt fails to see the value in giving away licenses for any number of valid reasons that used to be commonplace. Even MVPs only get a license that's valid for 365 days.

 

Even though the COGs for Delphi are ZERO, they build-in a 4% automatic increase in the maintenance agreement every year. 

 

When was the last time anybody here got even close to a 4% raise from their current employer? I don't think I've EVER gotten a raise over 2.5% without changing jobs.

 

Honestly, I may be done upgrading Delphi. I let my maintenance agreement lapse just before D11 was released and I'm not missing it a bit. The whole world is moving towards web-based products and the only thing in D11 of any consequence is support for Microsoft's new Windows update -- because I suspect most of the revenues for Delphi come from thousands of corporations who are beholden to Microsoft and will all be upgrading (whether they like it or not) over the next 6 months or so. This creates a lot of maintenance work, which seems to be the only thing anybody hires Delphi people for today.

 

Nobody is building web stuff using Delphi. Most companies are moving towards a "mobile-first" approach to apps, and even that is being dominated by Microsoft in many shops. Which means C# and .NET.

 

Hobbiests are not buying Delphi for its cross-platform benefits because all the tools and libraries needed have FOSS licenses.

 

But TMS has this thing called WebCore and you can build web apps in Delphi with it. In fact, you can even use Visual Studio Code, which is free, instead of the Dephi IDE.

 

They just made all of their FNC components so you can add them to VSC, quadrupling the number of components available for WebCore apps.

 

And they're preparing an update to their "wrapper" technology (Miletus) that's like Electron and lets you take a web app and turn it into a native app. The next version will support more platforms than Delphi, including Raspberry Pi's. 

 

I have an ALL-ACCESS license from TMS and the annual cost to renew it is less than half of my Delphi Enterprise license. It doesn't automatically increase by 4% annually, and it buys me a collection of tools that offer far more flexibility and relevance in today's market. They're also not afraid to add valueable things to the language that WebCore supports (Object Pascal) that people have been asking for in Delphi for ages.

 

They're constantly adding more and more cool things to their platform; it's enough to make your head spin. 

 

Meanwhile, this latest Delphi release had nothing new that I need in it. It doesn't even fix the Refactoring bugs introduced in the last couple of 10.4 releases. They still charged 4% more for it again; but to me, it failed to deliver even 4% more value over 10.4.2.

 

If I look at what has happened with Delphi over the past 12 months, and at what WebCore has done, there's no comparison. WebCore is moving faster in directions that the market is embracing, while Delphi is simply providing support for the latest version of Windows, hoping to justify its existence for Corporate IT Depts who need to decide whether to write a check to keep the maintenance releases coming or not while all of their new development is being done with other tools.

 

And here we are debating on whether this huge billion-dollar corporation can afford to give a comp license (that doesn't cost them a penny) to a guy who has contributed more value to the Delphi community than most of the new features and bugs they ship with every update they put out. Same debate, different year. I think the problem is that most Corporations are very slow to move new Delphi releases into production, so they don't miss delays in updates for big component libs and things like what Andreus does because they do make it out sooner or later anyway. I think Embt is really only interested in Corporations because they just keep renewing their licenses and don't do much otherwise. They don't care about language features, only whether it supports the latest Microsoft Windows needs.

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by David Schwartz

[Rinzwind 26]

Delphi is best for native Windows development. IMHO way prettier, faster and and easier code than anything C++&Qt. I fail to understand why they never made the VCL truly cross platform (as far as possible). I do hope they are finally looking into HTML-lite type of controls for applications that want a more modern bling bling interface while still remaining relatively light. I believe a partnership with Sciter would be wise. That owner is a smart guy and looking for investors . But seems Delphi improvements and additions are very minor indeed and very unwilling to create a new fresh customer base. Very belated hi-dpi ide support? 10 years ago that would be worth mentioning.. Something Lazarus already had working quite well. I hope they implemented it practically. MS did have its part too in trying to kill it. MS offerings for native GUI design are a mess, way over-engineered and joke at the same time so Delphi still could win some people over if it hurry's.

[PeterPanettone 157]

2 hours ago, Rinzwind said:

Sciter

There seems to be a Delphi wrapper here:

 

https://github.com/da-baranov/SciDe

[dummzeuch 1505]

Several Embarcadero employees (one of them Matthias Eissing from Embarcadero Germany) stated multiple times that Andy could get a free copy. But apparently there are strings attached to this offer that Andy didn't like so he declined.

 

And having read the legal paperwork involved with becoming an MVP, I have an idea why.

[PeterPanettone 157]

6 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

Refactoring

Thanks for the extensive Delphi history. I do refactoring only with MMX.

 

In my opinion, Delphi programs suffer mainly from the old-fashioned STATIC LAYOUT reminiscent of DOS programs: if you change the font size of the main form in a Delphi application, the layout of the entire program collapses and becomes unusable. What Delphi needs most are DYNAMIC UI layouts. Example: Responsive web design in HTML.

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

13 hours ago, PeterPanettone said:

I am sure that the whole Delphi community's wish is that Andreas Hausladen gets a free Delphi edition, so he can continue to support the Delphi Community. Can you make that possible?

 

IIRC, Andy has been offered a free license at least twice, but he reclined.

[Stano 143]

I don't think he's interested in D11. One reason: their tool has already been partially implemented in D11.

[PeterPanettone 157]

10 hours ago, Dave Nottage said:

Is there some reason you're unable to compile the library yourself?

Please don't assume what you don't know:

 

 

The source can be found here:

 

https://github.com/ahausladen/DDevExtensions

 

[Daniel 417]

Nonetheless - your question is answered.

[PeterPanettone 157]

5 minutes ago, Daniel said:

Nonetheless - your question is answered.

Which question? I can't see any questions.

[Daniel 417]

Peter come on - as you can read in the previous answers there is no need to write to EMBT.

And this is the wrong thread to discuss about the things that Delphi may be suffering from.

[PeterPanettone 157]

34 minutes ago, Daniel said:

as you can read in the previous answers there is no need to write to EMBT.

Has anyone stated that there is a NEED to write EMB?

 

34 minutes ago, Daniel said:

And this is the wrong thread to discuss about the things that Delphi may be suffering from.

I answered David Schwartz's excellent comment where he talked about specific Delphi sufferings. So you should redirect your complaint to him.

Edited October 3, 2021 by PeterPanettone

[dummzeuch 1505]

10 minutes ago, PeterPanettone said:

Has anyone stated that there is a NEED to write EMB?

You named your topic ...

Please write to Embarcadero to get a free Delphi 11 edition for Andreas Hausladen

... which pretty much states exactly that.

[David Heffernan 2345]

I bet Peter hasn't even written to Embarcadero!! 

[PeterPanettone 157]

6 minutes ago, dummzeuch said:

which pretty much states exactly that.

This is a very FUNNY thread...

[Attila Kovacs 629]

Who is Jim? And why are you ppl. answering to a request to Jim?

[Dave Nottage 557]

13 hours ago, PeterPanettone said:

Please don't assume what you don't know:

The title of the issue you lodged, and the question itself seemed to indicate that you did not have a version for Delphi 11 Alexandria. Perhaps I should have asked whether or not you could compile. I guess your answer means that you can. Given that, is the issue resolved?

[Remy Lebeau 1396]

On 10/2/2021 at 9:48 PM, Rinzwind said:

I fail to understand why they never made the VCL truly cross platform (as far as possible).

Borland tried that once, with Kylix in Delphi 6.  It was basically VCL for Linux, and it was a big failure, so it got dropped.  VCL is just too dependent on Windows to go cross-platform.  Hence why we have FireMonkey now for that task, which has no real relation to VCL, other than a few shared class names and public interfaces, but ultimately based on different architectures.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Remy Lebeau

[Darian Miller 361]

49 minutes ago, Remy Lebeau said:

VCL is just too dependent on Windows to go cross-platform

 

FWIW, there is apparently an effort:  https://www.crossvcl.com/