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Borland Kylix Is Free - Sort Of.
StrawberryFrog writes: "Borland Kylix for x86 Linux is now free-as-in-beer for writing free-as-in-GPL'd apps. You can read all about it and download it from the Borland site."
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I think this release is an offense for free software developer. You should be aware that this version adds a nag screen to your program saying that the program has been generated with Kylix Open Edition. Who want to accept to develop and distribute a program in such condition. Moreover, several Open Source library (In FreeCLX) has been removed from the original version. The great Indy tools have also been downsized but are also Open Source (not GPL but Open Source ...)
Really, I see no problem in releasing a commercial RAD for Linux (And have bought a kylix licence already), but I think that it would have been better not to make this version.
This will generate more bad press to Borland (The Evaluation version is better to test the product and nobody will really do something interesting with the Open Source edition.
Yep, Kylix is great, despite a few flaws. I have had several compiler hangs and crashes (under Red Hat 7.1) and obviously Borland needs to work on that.
Also its MySQL driver only supports 3.22.x. That is BAD, and desperately needs an upgrade before it will be worth squat to me (and many other people). I'm also eagerly awaiting a PostgreSQL driver, which there has been talk of, but I don't know status.
And then there's a few deployment issues. You have to have an environment variable set right to avoid conflicts with other Qt versions installed.
All in all Kylix is indeed what Borland said it is, and it does work, and it is the easiest way to produce Linux GUI applications. But an update is sorely needed.
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the IDE hung and crashed, not compiler.
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Once again an instituation that ALMOST gets it ... and then bans at least half of the "Open Source Community" by REQUIRING that stuff made with it be released under the GPL.
To hell with you, troll.
Why should Borland devote their time and money developing tools to allow you to produce closed-source software without paying a penny for the privilege?
And don't give me that "but I want to produce BSD-licensed software" bullshit. The BSD license gives everyone permission to do whatever they like with the code - if you want to grant this permission with regards to your own code, feel free. But who the hell are you to say that anyone can do anything with Borland's code? Don't like it? Write your own goddamn code, don't go trying to use libraries written by people who DON'T want to hand their work to Microsoft on a silver platter.
Xemacs does most of what you want, and you can script the rest in Lisp without too much effort. Apart from the GUI drag-and-drop building, that is.
And any Java IDE that accepts Beans as new components, with their Reflection/Serialization APIs, does the rest.
I believe they used Qt for building the GUI under Linux. Since Qt is distributed under the GPL (not the LGPL), you must GPL your works, too. If you give Borland money (i.e., buy the boxed set), you can distribute it under pretty much any license you want.
No thanks, I'll stick with other truly free languages.
- Develop GPL'd software and pay nothing for Kylix
- Develop commercial software and pay money for Kylix
Sounds much like how QT is licensed. A good idea in my book and a great way to give back to the open source community. It's a great win-win scenario: they get customers for their commercial software and now we have another way to make great open source software.I'm sure somebody will complain that they require the GPL instead of a BSD or Apache style license, but since one may also purchase Kylix, I think developer that most needs are met.
And please, no trolling about "All software should be free and we should just pay for support." Like everything else in life, that works great for some things, but not everything. When rationality re-enters your perverse monochromatic view of the software business, gimme a call.
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Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
The LPGL? What, so you can just link that code to a closed program that you'll go and sell? No, Borland understands what they did. Same with the BSD license.
Borland is a business. Businesses exist to make money. This specific business makes damn good software that's worth the price.
If you don't like it, if you don't want to pay for someone else's work, go and write your own RAD tool. Don't bitch and moan about how you think Borland is being so mean.
Is the Kylix development environment itself GPLed? If not, you'd be using a proprietary editor/compiler/whatever, but you'd be obliged to release your own code under the GPL (unless you pay for the commercial edition). Kinda seems like the worst of both worlds.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
This is a shining example of the "slipper slope" fallacy (with a certain amount of "excluded middles" fallacy thrown in). It is not necessary to follow a "path" to its logical extreme, and the fact that one extreme is obviously bad does not in itself make the other extreme a solution.
The majority of people have nothing to loose by mandating free software
There is a difference between what benefits society in the long run, and what appears to the short-sighted to benefit "the majority of people". Mass dispossesion and forced redistribution of resources might seem like a great idea in the short term, but history has shown that it doesn't work very well in the long term.
free software kind of people are often averse to paying for software for their own use (quite understandably so: there's a plethora of free software that does a good job at all kinds of jobs out there), but we're not averse to trying things. and getting programmers to be familiar with kylix is most definitely in borland's interest. if i download kylix-free-as-in-beer, play with it a bit, and am impressed with it, maybe at some point later i'll recommend it for some serious development work (where the bills would be paid by a company, so the free software developper's averseness to paying for software doesn't apply).
For some of the programmers at least, Kylix represents an honest and helpful direction they can follow away from Billyware and toward working productively in a Linux environment.
My thought is that one of the major points of Kylix is to increase sales of Delphi for Windows. Given a choice between single platform RAD software (VB) and mutli-platform, many MIS managers will play CYA and pick the multi-platform version even if they are on Windows for the time being. If only because it provides a hint of leverage when the Microsoft licence man comes calling.
So, in the short term, I wouldn't expect much increase in the Linux userbase because of tools like Delphi (which is primarly used for internal applications for internal Windows desktops). However, in the long run, it removes the major obstacle to Linux migration of internal Windows-only apps.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
hey its multiplatform how does it run on a solaris 8 machine they seem to all have gcc on
(I recomend gcc 3.1 because it can do 64bit and C++ well but most have gcc 2.95)
its GPL so someone should look @ porting it
lack of solaris boxen here but UNI is FULL of them
also lots of edu use solaris so this would be a good job to get kudos from borland
good job borland
regards
john jones
p.s. does the corba stuff integrate with orbit ?
The GPL doesn't require you to distribute your code, but Borland's license for using their code seems to make that requirement.
l if you want to see the discussion.
I think that their intention is to prevent companies from using the free version to develop code for internal use without distributing it, but the wording seems to say that no matter what you write, including Hello World, you must make it available. I'm not quite sure what available means in this context. I doubt that sourceforge would be willing to carry all the homework ever done for five years.
Actually, a strict construction of the license might even mean that every changed version along the path of development needs to be made publically available. (I hope that changed that some. The version that I saw was from a license that was a proposal from several months ago, so perhaps they fixed this.)
OTOH, there's what the license says, and what they'll be interested in enforcing. Still, I wish they'd been a bit more accurately precise in what they meant. (I was told that no reasonable person would interpret the license the way that I was reading it, but nobody denied that that was what the words meant.)
P.S.: This was on the newsgroup newsgroups.borland.com/borland.kylix.non-technica
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You might argue that this exludes other "free" licenses, but IMHO the GPL is the only way this could have been done.
Why not go the Qt route (which Kylix is based on)? Dual GPL/QPL. It still forbids proprietary development, but allows *all* open source developers to use the library.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Your arguments make a very good reason not to use the GPL.
Bits are inherantly copyable, 1's and 0's are just 1's and 0's. Patterns. Copyable by nature of being digital. You can't stop this happening, so you have the tax payers fork over the fee to remove their right to do so.
You can copy, modify, copy, redistribute, and copy yet again, infinitely, yet the original will never be damaged, sullied or diluted. By its own special nature, software does not need the protection of copyrights, copylefts or any other form of restriction. If you shouldn't "tax" folks with a copyright, then you shouldn't "tax" them with a copyleft.
If the use of copyrights as a "stick" to beat users of the head with is wrong, then the "stick" of copyleft to beat developers over the head with is also wrong.
I don't believe that software should not be owned. But let's say for a moment that I did. Let's say I read the collected works of RMS and came to the conclusion that owning software is wrong. Fine. Don't own the software. Release it to the public domain. Do not assert any ownership rights over it whatsoever. Anything else is hypocrisy.
And if you do not own the software that you have created, then you own derivations of that software even less!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Just like QT is licenced.
Brrzzzt! Wrong! Qt is dual-licensed under BOTH the GPL and QPL. This allows any Open Source software to link to the library. Not just GPLd software. Huge difference.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Really? I wasn't aware of that. ---Robert West, Borland R&D
Sure. The free version of Kylix creates applications with links to libraries that are GPLd. The paid version of Kylix does not. In other words, the free version complies with the GPL *as it requires*; why is this a problem?
Granted, but I think this issue is truely one where the slippery slope argument is most likely to fulfil itself. In every other case of history, the removal of freedom leads those doing it to continue if left unchecked. America now has the DMCA and a human being in jail because of it. If I suggested this would happen 5 years ago you'd have laughed.
While there probably is much middle ground where everyone plays nicely, this doesn't make up for the fact that the most tyrannical extreme is creeping further and further along.
On the latter point you make, I would argue that teaching people not to accept closed software is in their long term interest. I'll readily admit it may cause many of them trouble in the short term.
Many are just waiting till the short and long terms benefits are both positive. That's not far away.
Firstly, noone is dictating that software must be Free. It is up to the customer and they have only been fed one set of propaganda in the past. Now they have two and its easy to see which THEY prefer.
Secondly, sallary nor ego have anything to do with this. Ellison and Gates have larger of both than I and arn't singing the same song.
As backup of my assertions, please look at any respectable, non Microsoft sponsored report on the subject. Go and speak to anyone who routinely purchases software and listen to their opinions. Listen to those who don't understand the issue but who annualy produce budgets and see their "New Pool Table" cancelled becuase for some new vital software product Accounting requires, they have to upgrade to W2000.
They, like you, don't like being forced to hand over money every two years to update their systems.
Right and Wrong are quite subjective here. My opinions appear pragmatically correct in the sphere I apply them. I have no objection to giving those reasons to those who are interested.
I make money singing this song and I'll admit that if I didn't, I'd not be so loud in doing so. I can't even say what I'd believe in that case. I hope it would be simply that I cannot make money in this industry given a more free market where the buyers expect more rights than they are currently granted.
But really, what kind of arguement is that you offer?
We can never answer the question of wether software ought to be Free or not but that won't stop the trends of its adoption. In the end, I refer you to those and ask where you see them slowing.
Copyright on books was granted to protect the investment of printing presses, not because the right of the author to extract money from those reading the work was especially recognised.
I'm not suggestng that copyright be banned. I'm saying that people ought to know that for every Copyrighted song they are forced to pay inflated prices for, there are Free Artists who will happily let them at their work, some in the hope you will pay to see them live.
For every book author who's work is wrapped into the profit of a large publisher, there are many more who be happy just to have you read their output and talk to them about it.
Most would be thrilled to receive a 'tip' and those you passed the book onto.
I simply cannot agree that it it more important that we lock people up for breaking copyright - an authors right to profit, is after all, less important than someone elses right to walk outside when no one is actually hurt except psuedo finacially ("lost earning" are just crap - like the candlemakers could sue the Sun for providing free light).
Calm down. Nobody will take your right to impose control over your customer away - too many people make too much money to start down that path!
Besides I agree with you 100%.
It is, from my viewpoint, irrelevent to this discussion. I'm suggesting that you will find fewer and fewer people, in time, willing to suffer your terms and those of your company. It may have to adapt or die. You see, your customers like Free software and it is their dollars you need.
Remeber, we are going to write Free software wether you like it or not. If your customers find Free software that does what you write does, they may choose the Free and you will get no money.
Noone is taking your right to copyright and limit the distribution of your work, instead there are people who want to make Free Music, Free Books and Free Software. There are more who want to use it.
If you look you'll find that the choices amongst the Free is much larger than you think, and much better than you imagined. Some is crap but so is some nonFree. It just doesn't have a marketing machine pushing it into your dreams and taxing you for that when you buy it.
So Copyright away, but you have to realise that your customers are becoming aware of the Free and have nothing to gain in ignoring it.
In which case you would be very wise to charge a fair sum for the time it took you to develop it in the first place. Surely you can see that?
You will write the software in the future. How, and under what terms you do it is up for debate.
I find that writing Free software, starting from Free software is very lucrative (I'm on a salary but as a Freelancer, I'd find the same - probably moreso).
Customers are always happy to pay more for getting their solution sooner - extending other Free systems will do that.
Wake up developers. You are not solely reliant on your company to make money. The only reliance is with your customers and they seem to be wanting Free software more and more.
I hear you. I'm not sure what idea I'm supposed to be getting though.
What does the customer care there is no version 2.0? Why should there even be a 2.0? So the bugs and features not in 1.0 can be recharged for? In what I'm describing they get those in 1.0 or you don't get paid. Simple and fair.
Sure, the money for future work could be given to another group more competitive. That's not a bad thing is it? Would you like having to pay over and over again to the same company just becuase you did last time? I was rather under the impression that is one of the biggest gripes software users have.
"Sweat shop in Africa" is unlikely, this isn't manual labour - at worst we're looking at the details of future work being posted on USENET or one of the open source reverse auction sites (www.cosource.com perhaps). More likely it'll be sent to 10 or so development houses happy to produce an open source / free software work. It may even make you more money than otherwise but the client will have avoided a certainly level of risk in getting open code after the work is complete.
The biggest difference is that you lose the monopoly you have over your customer - you can't hold them to ransom. You may benefit from that now but its unlikely to stay that way in future. Free Software and Open Source has given software users / customers more choice and that means the ball is swinging back into their court (where it should be IMO).
But lets just assume that the kids in Africa all learn Linux in the next 10 years and are as skilled as the rest of the world in that field. Why should we stop them being more competitive than ourselves? Many of you fear not being able to eat becuase your copyright reliant jobs may not exist if Free software reaches a critical mass. These people already can't.
Good luck to them I say, if they get the work, they deserve it. If the only reason you are 'better' is a function of being white and in the west, then thats not a good reason and I say they deserve the contracts.
Without Free Software, those very same kids would be forced to feed you by having to buy western computers and software in order to keep up technologically. And that is just plain sick.
I'm sure you get the idea.
Free is popular, to some degree, because it is also free but then there are free compilers. GCC is more popular though. A simple case but there are many more like it.
To large users of sofware, the free part is irrelevent, their biggest savings in using Free software come indirectly from initial purchase. They come from having many tool choices and being able to easily find the best (without having to waste developer time filling in product evaluation forms and getting trial license keys.
This already turns most off, so they just use MS stuff becuase it works for the rest. Almost. Some others do exactly the above and still others let their developers choose what works. They tend to choose Free software.
Then there are the other cost savings such as not having to audit for unlicensed software in a paranoid stupor less the BSA shut you down. There are many more widely documented.
So your client is going to sell your work? That's not how the service industry works. You write it on an hourly rate (or salary) and its Free. You wrote it becuase it scratched an itch that was worth scratching for the cost of development. You keep the rights as much as anyone else. Free. If its good, others may contribute to it. In time a comunity may form around it and you may become irrelevent to it. So be it, that is far better than you making a chunk of money for something that remains a distance from what it could become - if only you had the time...
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying "You must make your software Free", that would be tryranical.
What I'm saying is that the current trends indicate that in time you will find a competitive advantage in creating and extending Free software for a fee. Many already do.
The point is, when the Shareholders realise that Free Software makes them money (or rather costs them less) they'll want it where it fits and the technology policies of many corporations will change becuase of that.
The small developer will always have unwritten software to write but that larger corporates will find their products written for Free. They already are in many cases.
Many people fear that small developer will lose out if Free software becomes the consumers choice. I don't think this will happen (in fact, I think they'll be in high demand - suddenly they can know and support sytems knowing everything they are capable of knowing, not what they are allowed to know). But even if it does, this is not a reason to hold something back, nor can you stop it.
Developers are sellers. Markets are defined by the buyers and they will move in time when it suits them to do so.
I think you miss the point. Software is inherantly free. Bits are inherantly copyable, 1's and 0's are just 1's and 0's. Patterns. Copyable by nature of being digital. You can't stop this happening, so you have the tax payers fork over the fee to remove their right to do so. Tyranny knows nothing worse.
.Net. Do you hear them say half as much about Windows or Word any more? These are where they may most of their money and they are dying becuase of Free Software.
1000101001001010101001 is probably owned by someone. I'm probably breaking a law quoting it. It could be the key to unlock a DMCA covered product, it could be a BZIP2 compressed chunk of Mr Gates' The Road Ahead. It could be a million things but it is just 1's and 0's. Free by the very nature that they reach you machine as they already have.
The reason software is not free is not "natural". Its a ruling that has cost enormous amounts of money to enforce and "educate consumers" (brainwash). Why? Because of one reason. One that benefits far fewer people than it harms - it is in a commercial interest.
The majority of people have nothing to loose by mandating free software (or rather, retaining their rights to not granting software companies a stick to beat them with).
Given the current political establishment, this won't happen soon. Microsoft, Oracle et al spend far too much money pandering to the large parties to have them keep their faith. The people no longer care. Some write what you wrote. "We don't need free softare". Well, no we don't need it, but you can bet as sure as hell the commercial software companies "need" copyright protection and they will do anything to get it. Including jailing russians.
This path only leads to tyranny. Coporate tyranny maybe, but tyranny nonetheless.
At the end of the day, Free Software will win. People will come to trust it more and more in the future and closed software less and less. They'll also save money doing so. When someone like, say Ford or HSBC move to free desktops, the world will never be the same again. It will happen. Its just a matter of when. They don't like spending money and you can bet they are already looking at that avenure.
You should note It is already left to Microsoft to defend the "Commercial software model". Who else is? And why do you think they are?
Its their last chance. If they don't say something now, anything no matter how many know its crap, it will be too late tomorrow. In truth it already is. Who doesn't know about Free Software these days? Why would they ever return to only closed source now?
This trend started years ago and like most the encourage freedom and community membership, it is growing exponentially with the staturation point no where in sight yet. World domination will happen. It is simply a matter of when.
Microsoft know their time is limited in the 'commodity software' market. This is why they are changing licensing models, extract as much money as possible in the time they have left. Spread their focus into other areas, XBOX and
It is important to seperate the issue of Free Software and some of its supporters, you do that with your copy of Windows and Bill Gates.
At the end of the day, in future everything you want to do with a computer will be more and more free because others are making it so. Nobody can ignore that forever.
I've been hearing about "Delphi" for linux for over a year now, and it's great to hear that it's finally out.. I haven't read all the comments on this list, but most seem to be dealing with the required GPL issue.. as a student with no money, i would love to be able to develop programs that i can sell for free.. but I don't think that the developers that put many man hours into this program would appreciate me getting money and them not. Besides, most programs i've made with delphi 3 (bought Legally) haven't left my hard drive or my brothers.. and most probably won't..
This is also a good thing cause I've been working on a remote PPP dialer control (not diald cause we only have one phone line and the time is limited..) and the client has been only windows, written in Delphi, and now this will allow me to Port it to linux.
Kenny
As others mentioned, if you don't want to produce GPL programs then you buy the commercial version of Kylix. Just as there are commercial versions of some other GPL'ed programs -- the author owns the copyright and can release separate versions under various licenses.
"The developers were excited about having a professional RAD platform for linux, of which NONE is available from the open source community."
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
D'OH! By some definitions, how can you hope to have a "professional" anything from an open-source community?
Said community writes code. It don't tart it up and stick it in the box-sets.
~Tim
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~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Do you have any data to support what you say ?
I have read in a financial site, Yahoo I believe, that Borland revenues where up 20% for this quarter, and that was among other things to be attribute to Kylix sales which where better than expected.
have a day,
-l
People, stop complaining about Borland writing commercial software for Linux. If you don't like the idea of writing GPL'd code in a proprietary environment then don't, no one is forcing you. In order for Linux to be more accepted as a commercially viable platform there needs to be solutions (such as Borland's) which will hold people's hands through the potentially confusing licensing problems and through the development cycle on a completely new platform. Don't expect any company to develop for Linux if all they have to go on is man pages and how-tos. Borland's software is important for those of us who believe that more commercial software for Linux will speed its adoption as a desktop computing platform.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
Hmmm... Ok, so maybe this is a small step in the right direction, but a step nonetheless.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Borland is working on one, but beware. I've been using C++ Builder since ver 1.0 and it's very nice. It's also not standard c++. You see, in order to get the RAD working they added a couple of keywords to c++.
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You can use the free version of Kylix to produce commercial software for sale. The software just has to be GPLd. Read the GPL, it doesn't prohibit selling GPLd software, it just says you have to provide the code, and whoever buys it has the same rights you do. Including the right to re-sell.
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The review.
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Borland are a business, the "gcc team and many others" are not.
Do you think the team work in just their spare time? Go and find out who the major contributers are and look up who they work for. Then tell me it's not a business.
you don't have the right to make the same decision on Borland's behalf
I'm not trying to. I'm saying I don't want them deciding what license I use. There was no suggestion from me they Borland should release THEIR code under the LGPL.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Its not about how often I will need to modify it, but how often anyone will. And you can bet someone will, and they might release a patch that I can use. It's not neccesarily intuitive, but this is why free software works! The cathedral and the bazaar, remember?
If only companies were less scared of giving their users some control over the code they buy, we could all benefit. (yes, that includes Borland)
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
GPL: If you're going to use our source code, then you must release your source code back to us.
Borland: If you're going to make money off of code made by our product, then you must give money back to us.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Troll feeding time:
Your arguments, sir, are total rubbish. There is nothing to stop you purchasing a commercial copy of Kylix and releasing under any license you wish (so long as it confirms with the Borland "No Nonsense" license). You don't want to pay for this privilige? Then live without it. Your rights are in no way infringed, because to be quite frankly you have no right to avail yourself of another's labour without recompense (slavery is still illegal, after all). In this case the only recompense demanded is conformance with the GPL, hardly an onerous or unreasonable demand from someone who doesn't want to pay cash to do otherwise!
As for the "Pacman" argument (proposed by Mr. Mundy, IIRC, definitely NOT Mr. Gates), it has all the force of someone objecting to freely available municipal bicycles - as seen in Amsterdam, for instance - because he can't take them as his own and charge for their use. Basically, Microsoft is saying: "We can't steal it so it isn't fair!". Anyone is free to develop their own equivalent of any GPL'ed opus and inculde it in a proprietory product, they just can't use someone else's work in a way that the author has explicitly said he/she does not want without additional approval from that author. Something that Intellectual Property fans are supposed to approve of...
It also says the profession version ships with dual liscence. One is GPLed and the other is not. Personally, I think this is a good move. I like the RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools such as C++Builder. Now if they would only do something similar with the windows version.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
...because the site is very busy. Who says Linux is ruled by vi and hand made make files. How many people *really* enjoy doing that?
:)
Anyway...I think this is good move by Borland to generate some interest in their development environment.
I find it funny that there are people in the Linux world who condemn Borland for not totally opening up the source to Kylix. My advice to them is "If you don't like it, the build your own development system." When you have one that you think is good enough and can do more than debug "hello world" release it to the world and feel very happy that you did it.
Unfortunately it will not feed your family.....oh but thats right....most Linux bigots are still in their late teens or are still in college where the world is very rosy.
Have fun building the tool kids...in the mean time us adults have to solve a few of the worlds problems, and cloning Kylix is not one of them
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Our company purchased Kylix Server Developer before it was even released. The developers were excited about having a professional RAD platform for linux, of which NONE is available from the open source community. Borland took a very bold step in allocating the massive resources they have into the Kylix project. Now, they are giving the core of that back in the form of GPL, and that is GREAT! This will only lead to even more great things from Borland, as long as it stays PROFITABLE for them After all, they have shareholders to answer to, and cannot just keep allocating resources to projects that are not profitable.
Before I see another flame about Borland on this topic, I hope that all of you do the following:
1. Download the free version of Kylix
2. Play with it and test it
3. When you post flames about Kylix, please be sure to tell us all what comparable RAD environments are available on linux.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
~sigh~... slashdot, slashdot, slashdot. The article says (for those too lazy/stupid/modemly-impaired) that it links all developed applications to a GPL'ed library, so therefore, under the terms of the GPL, your application must be GPL'ed as well. Short, simple, sweet. Now post away ;)
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Delphi 5/Object Pascal rocks (this is one seriously converted C coder), but it doesn't have CLX.
If Borland were to release a Delphi Open Edition, it could be a strong argument to switch from the VCL to CLX - and then later on... if you're using CLX, why not use Kylix too.
This is an awsome move by Borland, Kylix was prohibitively expensive and I just couldn't see it taking off on a Free OS, but now I agree, it's win-win.
All the developers who have a job at a software house are dependent of the selling of that software. If selling software is 'out of the question', they're out of a job.
And who will then write all those software? You? All other college students? HA!
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Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
They are giving it away for free because they finally realized that there is no market for their product. The market was thought to consist of Windows Delphi developers which would like to have a Linux version. However these people themselves didnt see a market in the linux community ( who really needs all those shareware apps, for many of them a free alternative exists, its a different user group etc. ) and so Kylix was sitting on the shelves unsold. They already had a big price reduction, not to the delightment of the few early buyers. Most people who write programs for linux use C, or C++ and this case they directly use QT. How many would have used Delphi if they had the choice? I dont think its many. I dont think this is good for QT, because Borland was probably their biggest customer. One posibbility of income for QT would be that Borland switches all their classes also in C++ builder etc. to QT internally, and gain a cross platform ( Mac, Win, X ) RAD development environment. This would be nice, since I really like the QT free edition, and someone has to pay for its development.
I love free software, and use it daily, but I also use commercial software purchased with my hard earned dollars. If all software were free then all programmers would need a second job for money to live on.
I disagree. If all software was free bad programmers would need a second job (really a first job) for money to live on, but good programmers would be in the same position they're in now. For all intents and purposes, there are only three types of software that people ever pay for anyway. 1) Server side software - jobs for programmers would obviously not go away with a free model. Server software needs to be constantly updated and enhanced. 2) Business software - jobs for these types of programmers would probably actually increase, since the quality of the tools would probably go down. But even if the jobs decreased, the savings would probably wind up going to the programmers anyway. R&D budgets are fairly fixed. If you save money on the tools, you'll probably pay the programmers more. 3) Windows - yes, if you work for Microsoft, you'd probably be in trouble. Although, Gates is smart, I'm sure he'd figure out a way to still make money.
Copyright law simply isn't enforced that well. It never will be. Changing the law would change very little, other than in the market for business software, because other than businesses, no one gets sued for copyright infringement anyway.
I am a programmer and I am strongly for the elimination of copyright laws. The fact is that I don't own the copyright of my software anyway, my employer does. Neither do most of my employers, too, since I work mainly for backend products which aren't sold. Perhaps this would affect those who make client software, but other than Microsoft, who really makes money off client software anyway? And if you're a good programmer, you'll adjust.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
There is more licenses in here than you can shake a stick at. I bet there is lawyers all over this. What we need is a good old-fashioned Coach and Horses license.
If I write my GPL app using gcc, KDevelop etc then all Linux users stand a reasonable chance of being able to compile and run it. But with Kylix I seem to be limiting my users to those with i386 or possibly ia64 platforms. If I write a GPL program I want as many people as possible to be able to benefit from it. Isn't that the whole ethos of the open-source movement? Why should all those lovely people with PPCs, Alphas, S390s etc not be able to enjoy it as well? Or am I missing something here?
Please understand that I have no problem with the existance of Kylix. One of our contractors has written a large propriatory application in Delphi, and now there is at least a chance that I might manage to persuade him to let me have a Linux version.
Hmm this is a very interesting approach. Being optimistic, I think this can only result in:
- More Delphi developers (free as in beer is always an attraction)
- More Linux developers (Delphi is already a popular and easy to use language, but is not free for Windows)
- A set of libraries maintained by said developers
- More GPL'ed code.
A win for both Borland, OSS and for Linux. You might argue that this exludes other "free" licenses, but IMHO the GPL is the only way this could have been done. Eat that M$Agreed. It's one of the more interesting ways of dealing with the "we want free stuff" thing -- Okay, we'll give you the free stuff, but you gotta play nice with it.
Rather an honorable way of dealing with it, I think; isn't it basically what TrollTech did with Qt, at least at first?
/Brian
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Borland sells Kylix to make money. Perhaps that's a new idea to some of you, but companies still do that. Out of the goodness of their corporate heart, they decided to make an Open Edition of Kylix for all of us GNU freaks (myself included). By doing this, we can hope to see a whole bunch more neat stuff developed under the GNU. I've been using Delphi for years now producing applications for a vertical market, and I believe it to be superior than C++, but please feel free to try it and form your own opinion.
I personally believe that Kylix may do more for GNU than anything has in the past. Look for BIG things to happen in Linux/GNU over the next couple years.
If you do not like the license then buy it loser. At which point you can do what you wish.
Got Code?
I have not seen it yet as I own desktop edition but only a few things are needed anyhow.
1. IDE
2. Compiler
3. Debugger
4. Ability to register component
If just these 4 things are intact there is nothing that cannot be easily built with it. You do not get the apache modules, so what it does not stop anyone from making a free version of the apache interfaces. What mysql missing so what just go grab free pascals version and compile.
Got Code?
If you read the article carefully, Borland clearly states that if you use the FREE tool, then you can ONLY distribute FREE software. If you wish to charge money for your software, then you have to purchase the non-open version.
I think it makes perfect sense and is perfectly fair for a company to ask for payment for a development tool that others will use to earn money with. They are a company duly bound to earn a profit for shareholders. They have graciously decided to allow open source developers a chance to use their rather powerful tool.
They can't give everything away - their employees have to eat, too. If you want an open source development tool that you can use any way you want, you have GCC, KDevelop, Glade and probably a few more.
While Borland believes in offering a free development tool, they apparently DON'T believe in offering a free lunch.
Sure they're expensive, but Borland does offer deep discounts to students - at least they did when I was a student. My C++ compilers, Delphi and JBuilder packages came from the university bookstore. If you aren't a student, surely you know one (unethical, though).
that could be integrated to gcc and other standard gnu tools.
I have been thinking about this for a while. Where is the GUIDE ((Grand Unified Integrated Development Environment) cute eh?) for GNU/Linux? What I would *love* to see is a project, GPLed, that implements an 'open' IDE for development in a language, toolkit, compiler neutral manner. This 'IDE' would accept any language, class, library, toolkit, compiler as long as the developers of the afore mentioned implemented a 'plug-in definition' (or some other 3rd party did the def of her favourite essential 'item'). It should also use make or somesuch for auto-building.
The GUIDE would allow you to 'import' a new language. The language would have been sufficiently described in one of these 'plug-in definitions (an XML document(?)) that would describe a style guide (maybe) but at least provide some highlighting, auto-magic tooltip-type-pop-up describing the function/object (params, methods etc). The GUIDE would also allow you to import a toolkit. A 'plug-in definition' of those widgets would provide their params/methods/variables allowing you to do some drag-and-drop GUI development with these new 'widgets'. A 'plug-in definition' would allow you to install additional libraries/objects from other 'add-on' projects (like the plethora that exist for Perl for instance).
GUIDE would allow modular framework to do GUI assisted coding - so I dont have to re-learn, download a IDE for ever language, and do development in a million applications... and re-learn(re-configure to taste) each and every language's IDE.
Besides - would the GNU/Linux community (essentially computer-capable people) want such a 'thing'? I know allot of people probably do their coding in vi (myself) or emacs, but wouldnt allot like to see such a thing?
I myself am not an uber-coder, so starting a project like this solo is a little silly, anyone know of a project *like* this?
...Any other ideas?
This yet another "pac-man" will probably piss off microsoft, though. I hope there will be even more "open" C++ version (instead of delphi), that could be integrated to gcc and other standard gnu tools. And emacs (gnuserv,gnudoit).
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I believe Borland is planning to sell an "open edition" box set for $99. College students, profs, whoever, just get the desktop version and enjoy your freedom of license!
If I had to guess, its because Borland wants to expand the use of Kylix. By saying it can only be used with GPLed apps, they basically allow all the open source programmers to use it freely, while forcing closed source (and normally NOT free-as-in beer) projects to pay for the software.
Sounds good to me.
Au contraire, they ABSOLUTELY get it.
They're using the strong point of the GPL --- no closed-source variants can exist --- to force people to BUY their product if they want to sell their binaries. This is a brilliant strategy and is impossible using any other license. If they did a BSD-style license noone would care to buy their commercial development kit, and if they disallowed you from distributing at all (demo lincence) it wouldn't get much exposure as noone except the developer can run it.
As they have it now, people can produce great apps using Kylix under the GPL (free advertising), once people want to sell their stuff they have to go to Borland and give them cash.
Nobody's -forcing- you to use Kylix. You use Kylix becuase it's probably it bit easier to program for, and it'll be easier to port user-interfaced programs from Linux to Windows (FWIK, Kylix and Delphi are -very- similar) So what if the Kylix environment isn't GPL'ed? Nobody's forcing you to use it. However, they are offering it for free if you create GPL'ed software, most likely to 1) lower your costs, and 2) as th article said, get a wider customer base.
This is simple. Borland wants to be paid, and perhaps they want to stick it to Microsoft a little by supporting OSS in a backhandedsoret of way.
There were plenty of other options. Borland could have provided an Open Edition which has been crippled in some way, or is time-limited - neither of which solutions would incline developers to use the product for any extended perior or to the point where it's use is required by the product development cycle -,or has some arcaine licensing restrictions (as distinct from forcing users to distribute under the GPL) which would accomplish the same thing. I'm sure their lawyers loved this idea. Make a simple licensing statement that a particular pre-existing license must be used when developing using the Open Edition product, that would provide incentive to developers to buy the commercial product. Now, what license would provide such incentive. Ah - The GPL. Perfect
It's actually a vary shrewd move for which I applaud them. Vary sharp guys.
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Borland intended to release a free download from at least the time of the official launch party at Linuxworldexpo last February. [slurp]
.clx compatibility at component level with Delphi 6. (btw, that's usually writted D6 in online messages) Giving developers the option of coding in Kylix on or offsite and compiling their completed sourcecode in Delphi for deployment onto Windoze desktops is of strategic importance in promoting the incursion of Linux into corporate software development, which is another arguably worthwhile Linux objective.
On the #Kylix channels on irc.linux.org and undernet.org "where is the free download" and "is it out yet" are frequently asked questions.
Borland don't care to say exactly how many Delphi licenses they've sold since 1995 but I would estimate roughly around a million. This is a large enough community to make Borland's initative worthwhile and they've done the most thoughtful job they could in porting, with the result that they've produced a Linux RAD tool that their own community is already substantially familiar with and knows how to use.
I support the finding of the U.S. court system that m$ is operating a monopoly illegally and the call issued yesterday by Senator Charles Schumer for additional Congressional investigation, as do many others of us, and expect (not entirely as a result of Gate$ well-deserved legal difficulties) for Linux to continue to trend it's way toward majority OS status later into this decade.
This however raises a question for the Linux community: What are we going to do with these vast herds of Windoze developers, sysadmins, technicians? For some of the programmers at least, Kylix represents an honest and helpful direction they can follow away from Billyware and toward working productively in a Linux environment.
Another point to consider is
Last of all, in Linux, Kylix is simply one of many plausible development options. For any of you who really don't feel comfortable using it, nobody is saying you have to.
give me a
Borland is trying to make a profit, and paying programmers to write free software will NOT do this. Microsoft did allot of underhanded stuff to remove Borland from the #1 spot in the PC development tools arena. Since then Borland has struggled to stay alive.
Borland is trying to provide something Linux desperately needs (IE: professional software development tools).
Borland and IBM will help provide many of the commercial programming and admin tools missing from Linux that are available on almost every commercial OS.
Some people need reminding that Linux is behind commercial UNIX in many important areas. My 1985 copy of SCO Xenix-286 has good stuff still missing from Linux.
Software you have to pay for on the Linux platform is good news for those of you not still living at home popping zits on Mom's mirror. It means that Linux is becoming a platform for commercial software too, and those of you who have REAL programming skills can get a good job.
At some point you are going to want to get paid for at least part of the work you do, so don't dog Borland for not giving away ALL the software they create (costing them millions).
If you cannot "get a life", then rent one.
According to the FAQ on the Borland site, C++ is in works, as part of the Kylix project. Personally, I'll wait for that, I never could get the hang of PASCAL, and OO PASCAL was worse.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
the GPL version is not the same as the other versions in that Borland took quite a few features out of it.