Kylix in Limbo

IgD writes "Kylix, Borland's Linux port of their popular Delphi compiler has been covered on Slashdot before. LinuxWorld is reporting that Kylix development is in limbo. Many speculate this is a politically correct way of saying the project has been abandoned. There hasn't been any updates to Kylix 3.0 in well over a year. One user who attended BorCon this year wrote in his blog that Borland didn't have any updates to Kylix planned for 2004. This is really disheartening news. Why didn't Kylix sell? Does this say something about the application or about the difficulties of marketing a commercial Linux application?"

Comments

kylix kind of sucks

[Progoth]

I think kylix didn't catch on for a few reasons

1. kylix was using winelib
   
   linux users don't like using apps which were half-ported using a windows emulator (see wordperfect, winamp3)
   
   
2. better alternatives exist
   
   you want to make gui apps? use the qt or kde libraries. use gtk even. you want a gui app in an easier language? use pyqt, pykde, or even pygtk. perl-gtk if you're really desperate. kylix doesn't offer anything over these. I personally made a few pyqt apps in a matter of hours (see pysp), how much easier can it get?
   
   
3. external libraries
   
   who wants to distribute 40 megs of libraries with their application? I don't remember exactly how many libraries kylix need[s|ed], but it was fairly stupid
   
   
4. advertising
   
   I signed up to download kylix, and I started getting flyers in my mailbox (my physical mailbox) from borland. nobody wants that.
   
   
5. critical mass
   
   enough said
   
   
6. pascal sucks
   
   again...enaugh said