> In all of this talk about the need for a foundation it has been said how
> we could have these people doing this job instead of the developers. We
> could have others doing other jobs, etc. etc. etc.
>
> Well as the statements point out this needs people. It needs people that
> are involved and interested in FPC/Lazarus. That is where the problem
> starts.
It's not just people doing work though - it is also communicating about the
attitudes of the current people in charge too. The current attitude
consensus is that it's just a hobby.
On every single successful project, there is always lots of discussion and
lots of code. Not just lots of code alone. Lots of code alone are the one
man developer projects that become a selfish endeavor of one attitude
from one developer (if two developers are on the project, it leads to two
different code bases because of disagreement and no discussion on plans).
Some of our attitudes our not in line. Some of us will and already are using
FPC/Pascal
for real work.. and pleasure too. But not just pleasure and not just hobby.
What scares me
most is the hobby attitude because I know FPC is much more than just hobby
quality.
It's not just as simple as gathering an army of programmers together and doing
lots and
lots of work. I've had conflicts of attitude before and it doesn't matter if
you are both
very hard workers, if your attitude isn't the same then you can code all you
want but you
might disagree on the goals of the project and start your own project. This is
why
OpenSource/Mozilla/OSI licenses spouted off from GNU - because people didn't
agree on the
same ideas. RMS is a good Lisp programmer and so is ESR, and they can pump out
lots and
lots of code - but that doesn't mean they will work good together.
With FPC camp right now, we have two crowds or camps:
1. Those who want FPC to be successful for serious use, but hobby use is nice
2. Those who only want FPC to be hobby, serious - nahh - serious ruins the fun.
I am part of camp 1 because I currently use FPC for serious use. I also use it
for hobby
too.
Look, if we only use FPC for hobby and then we go off and use a real tool like
MS VC or
GCC for real work, how does that make FPC look? I feel that less of a hobby
attitude is
needed, otherwise people will get a feeling about this open source project
"they just work
in their spare time, it's not a serious project - only a hobby for fun".
But, this is all too common in many open source projects... On the other hand
if it
becomes too serious of a "Business" compiler it may end up being a corporate
buzzword
society. Have to balance it out - don't go too far as to making FPC a buzzword
Borland
style group - but please, at least admit that FPC is more than hobby quality.
Some of you might be thinking" will FPC split into two projects such as
FreeBSD/NetBSD/EtcBSD split up? This would only happen, if some core
developers had different views - right now I think ALL (Every Single One) of
the core developers is part of camp 2, not camp 1.
Yes, Camp 2 is doing more of the core compiler work - so it means they have
more control.
It could also be though that the core developers are just humble folks, and
they do intend
for these projects to be serious quality - and when they say hobby, they are
just being
really humble. I think this is true, because I know FPC is more than just hobby
quality -
and the documentation, and everything else about the project.
As for Lazarus, it is more on the hobby quality side - being honest - since it
is a
huge project which isn't as near complete as FPC is. Not that this couldn't or
wouldn't
change.
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