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FPC - GPL, a very complete environment (Lazarus offers a nicer IDE)
P5 Pascal - public domain (fork of one of the original Pascal systems)
GNU Pascal
IP Pascal
etc

All of which are more powerful than VisualBasic and not really any more difficult to use. (my opinion)

http://www.gnu-pascal.de/gpc/h...

Here are more examples of pointer arithmetic using Pascal (extensions).

Borland Pascal had limited support fort pointer arithmetic. For example you could use Inc on pointers.

You run it by getting set up with Lazarus. There is also Free Pascal for you. Both have good Delphi capabilities. GPC has merits, too. So you do have options if you were working on an electronic health records system.

Someone has to "save your nation", in both senses. Why not you? Follow the Good $RANDOMCOLORGROUP Road with your hands, not just your pie hole.

You said:

GPL can "infect" a company's IP. And that's not a bug, it's a feature. RMS has said so himself and others are also quite clear on this.

The GPL is no more infectious than the "you can't sell the software that you build with this tool" clause of the license that accompanied "student" versions of MSFT's Visual C++ 6 and 7.

From the first link:

GPL and NDA

* To: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
* Subject: GPL and NDA
* From: Richard Stallman
* Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 05:07:10 -0600 (MDT)
* Reply-to: rms at gnu dot org

GPL-covered code may not be distributed under an NDA.
To do so is a violation of the GPL.

If someone asks you to sign an NDA for receiving GPL-covered code that
is copyright FSF, please inform the FSF immediately. If it involves
GPL-covered code that has some other copyright holder, please inform
that copyright holder, just as you would for any other kind of
violation of the GPL.

It is possible for a person or company to develop changes to a
GPL-covered program and sign an NDA promising not to release these
changes *to anyone*. This is a different case. As long as these
changes are not distributed at all, a fortiori they are not
distributed in a way that violates the GPL.

However, if and when the changes are distributed to another person or
outside the company, they must be distributed under the terms of the
GPL, not under an NDA.

This doesn't have anything to do with the licensing of works that derive from GPL-licensed code. Your inclusion of this information makes you look either illiterate or careless.

From the second link:

From: Phil Nelson
Subject: Inaccurate information in `GNU' section
Date: 23 Apr 2004, 09:33:30

Hash: SHA1

On Thursday 22 April 2004 11:45 pm, Peter N Lewis wrote:
> > > I'm confused by this. If it "does not contain code from any
> >
> >> GPL-covered software", then surely you can release it under any
> >> license you feel like, whether it can run stand-alone or not. If I
> >
> >A program can be free of code from a GPL-covered program, but it links
> >with a library licensed under the GPL, then it has to be under the GPL
> >as well. It is this catch, if you will, that led to the LGPL.
>
> This could only be true if you ship the binary with it linked.

First, the disclaimer, IANAL.

Second, I wrote gdbm for the FSF and have had many many conversations with Mr.
Stallman about the GPL and how it applies to libraries. The key to the GPL
is the understanding of "derivative work". I'll use gdbm as an example.

If code directly calls any of the gdbm functions, it *is* a derivative work.
Therefore, any work that directly calls gdbm functions and is distributed
must be distributed under the terms of the GPL. Of course, the GPL is
transitive, thus any program that has a call path that ends up in a gdbm
function is required to be under the GPL. (If distributed.)

If your code is written for the original dbm interface it is not a derivative
work of gdbm, even if you happen to use the dbm interface to gdbm.
It would be considered a derivative work of dbm.

I don't know if this would stand up in a court of law, but I'm very sure this
is what Mr. Stallman intended for the GPL. I have requested that gdbm be
put under the LGPL so that programs that use gdbm don't have to be under the
GPL, but he has chosen to keep the GPL on gdbm. Therefore, whenever people
ask about gdbm, the GPL and their programs, I must tell them that if they
plan to distri

GPL can "infect" a company's IP. And that's not a bug, it's a feature. RMS has said so himself and others are also quite clear on this.

Considering that the M$ environment is under constant pressure from various threats I would like to call the selection of that environment risky, and almost stupid. By selecting other environments you would be running the risk of being more dependent on a few persons with that particular competence. On the other hand the number of persons competent enough to cause trouble will also decrease significantly.

If I was involved I would have selected OpenVMS , now owned by HP as operating system for the servers running either MySQL or Oracle as a database and developing the software in Ada or (horrendous thought) Pascal or maybe Java.

---
OpenVMS - The OS with longer uptimes than Microsoft support policies

The thing I like about the FreePascal crowd is that they don't go overboard adding shortcuts and special rules. I remember trying out GPC, and wondering if there was any hope of porting one of my frameworks to it, but it's practically Alice-in-Wonderland-esque in there. At least, my impression was that the ground was constantly shifting. Heck, you can use & and | instead of and and or.

I'm pleased also to hear that FreePascal is moving to Subversion - we've been using Subversion as a version control system for a while, and it's a very, very nice alternative to CVS.

I'm also glad that FreePascal has introduced interfaces. We've been forging a very nice foundational class library from interfaces. I have a few presentations put together for CDUG here in town, specifically for Delphi, but now relevant to FreePascal. (I wonder if the Generics trick will work in FP or not :)

Lazarus was still very, very rough around the edges last I checked. Perhaps after my wedding, I'll have time to poke my nose in there and at least help clean things up :)

-- Ritchie

Something that I would really like to see integrated into GCC, sooner or later, is GNU Pascal.
They always seem to be close, yet it never happens.

If you like Object Pascal so much, why not use Free Pascal or even GNU Pascal? Both have support for Delphi's language, though there are no fancy IDEs.

Anyway, I like Free Pascal better.

Are these usable with GNU Pascal or Free Pascal?

Elegant object oriented languages really are a dime a dozen. If you want something like that, Eiffel or Oberon are other choices.