Re: [lazarus] Lazarus vs Patents
On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1. FPC/Lazarus is a european project mostly, and software patents are not enforced in Europe. They have no clear legal status here. 2. They would be shooting in their own foot, because FPC/GPC are actually enlarging their user-base instead of making it smaller. Hi! Just curious... That is interesting that you think 2. I would expect it would making their user-base smaller. What is the logic behind your assertion? Pascal is no longer a mainstream language. If FPC has success, then the use of Pascal becomes more widespread. Large software companies will always want to have a support contract, and will therefore turn to Borland. If we are close enough to Delphi compatibility, we encourage people to develop with Delphi, and offer them a way to migrate to platforms that Borland does not support (let's face it: Borland is a Windows shop): They code their stuff in delphi, but can migrate to, or support, any platform. So, in fact, you could say we are doing development for Borland. Apart from that: The whole event handler patent is too ridiculous to be true; It's just passing 2 hidden pointers. What is the innovation in that ? The idiot that approved this patent didn't have a clue what he was doing. Just like IBM holds the patent on sorting an array... If I remember correctly, Borland also owns the patent of an desktop icon for an application. Try to enforce that... I think Jonas Maebe of the FPC development team could give some more examples of 'ridiculous' patents. He is lobbying (for lack of a better word) in the European Parliament to get the idea of software patents completely abandonded. And rightly so, IMHO. Michael. _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus vs Patents
On Fri, 28 Apr 2006, Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote: On 4/28/06, Michael Van Canneyt [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1. FPC/Lazarus is a european project mostly, and software patents are not enforced in Europe. They have no clear legal status here. A more clear example: I will help the One Laptop Per Child Foundation develop one of their softwares. I am exitating to use Lazarus, because Borland may sue OLPC on patent infringment due to VCL patents. And remeber that OLPC is on the United States. Is this possibility a reality? My second alternative (and a more likely one) is to use Free Pascal with pure GTK+ Assuming that we are actually infringing on any patents (which I don't believe): It will not be Lazarus that 'infringes' on patents. It would be the compiler itself. The whole event handler stuff is a compiler construct. The RTL/FCL/LCL is free of Borland code, so we are not copying any Borland code. You are safe there. So moving to GTK does you no good; you might as well use Lazarus... The IDE is definitely free of Borland code too, since that code has never been released :-) Michael. _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus vs Patents
No problem. Some remarks: 1. FPC/Lazarus is a european project mostly, and software patents are not enforced in Europe. They have no clear legal status here. 2. They would be shooting in their own foot, because FPC/GPC are actually enlarging their user-base instead of making it smaller. IMHO this one is void, since if they realised this, they'd be more supportive. 3. If you are referring to an 'event handler' as far as I know, mac pascal has it too. 4. It was just a way to get a lot of cash from M$. They saw an opportunity, and they used it. I think this is the most important part. If they throw something at FPC, that will at the worst stall us a few years, since we would simply start to remove infringement, and not pay up to get the product out of the door. _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus Foundation pros
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote: 1000 Eur Create a Bountie ( http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Bounties ) to port Free Pascal to Palm OS Isn't PalmOS a dead platform? 1 Eur Create 10 important Bounties ( http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Bounties ). With these 10 we could cover the most important ideas we had about Summer of Code People coding for money don't do much for 1000 Eur :) 10 Eur All devels can go to the Bahamas. We can have a developers meeting on Hawaii perhaps? (With all expenses payed of course) And that has any benefit for FPC/Lazarus :)? 100 Eur Put on the Bank. A reasonably agressive application (like stock market) can easely earn 20% a Year. Acctually you can get much more, but this is a conservative view. Currently, yes. But that's not always the case. So in 1 Year you get: 200.000 And you can invest that amount each year forever. And what to do with that amount? Ummm Bahamas every year + 100 bounties every year =) Now I think we are making progress :^) 1000 Eur Is this enougth to buy Trolltech and make them switch to pascal? -- Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus vs Patents
Michael Van Canneyt a écrit : Assuming that we are actually infringing on any patents (which I don't believe): It perfectly sums up the problem : you don't believe. But you cannot know. The only way to know whether a software is infringing a patent is to publish this software and to wait for the attack of a patent holder. It is impossible to read all the descriptions of patents published by PTO's. There are too much of them (any triviality you can think of is already patented, to get a software patent it is sufficient to pay). Moreover, they are written in a IP lawyer dialect, i.e., not understanble for an ordinary human being. Now, if you think Lazarus and FPC are not infringing some patents, think twice. An example? The dialogue box Compiler options in Lazarus. This is a tabbed notebook. Have a look at http://webshop.ffii.de/index.en.html Particularly, the patent EP #689533. Bonus: At the bottom of the page there is a picture of the famous Frits Bolkestein. Yes, he also worked on patent softwares. In the pro camp, of course. We are living in coherent world. mm _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Is this a bug?
On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:26:20 +0200, Tomas Gregorovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: I don't know what should EchoMode property do I though I know , but you can solve this problem by setting PasswordChar to '*'. Thank you very much. It works! (I set the character to #$7) tombo Ricardo Visit Porto Alegre city at brazilian state Rio GRande do Sul and see the nicest sundown in the world over Guaiba river... _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus Foundation pros
Create 10 important Bounties ( http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Bounties ). With these 10 we could cover the most important ideas we had about Summer of Code People coding for money don't do much for 1000 Eur :) May be not in Europe or USA but in South America (and specially in Argentina), 1000 Eur is enougth for a good full time Semi Senior Developer with at least 3 years of expertise. Horacio Jamilis _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus Foundation pros
My 2 cents about the foundation-stuff. You don't need a foundation for a large opensource project. For example, Fedora doesn't have a foundation. But it does have a very large community. They are administered by the 'Project Board', and the different projects, like for example Fedora Extra's have their own steering committee's. (FESCO for extra's) The ppl in those committees and the Board are chosen by elections. And this all without any foundation. Also Fedora doesn't have any money. But what they do get is people. Redhat has lots of people who are working on Fedora. But they all get paid by Redhat. Further Redhat maintains the Fedora-buildfarm. (well, they provide the hardware and such. Plus the people to maintain it) (And there is the Chairman of the board, who is not elected but appointed by redhat and he has a veto-right) What does this have to do with fpc/lazarus? What they need is people. They (we?) don't need a foundation to make a better website, but we need someone to make a better website. Obviously the core developers don't care much about that. They have other interests. A foundation is only of uses if it raises enough money to hire people. But it's not likely that that's gonna happen soon. But what we can do, is doing linke Michael Hess does: he provides the webservers for Lazarus. And the company of Michael van Canneyt provides bandwith for fpc, just like Coraxnetworks and Tony Maro with the mirrors... Just like Redhat does with the buildsystem for Fedora... And for JohnF and Marco Ramirez. They would like to see that they pay some money, so that the developers can solve their problems... Marco says that he doesn't have time for that. So why doesn't he hire some programmer himself, to do the job? Just like Redhat does? If you have a software-development company, and you need something in Lazarus/FPC, you can just develop it yourself, instead of giving money. If you're using Delphi, you can't do it yourself, so you'll have to give money to Borland. But in the Lazarus case you have everything in your own hands. And if you don't have enough programmers, provide a secretary - to scan the bug-reports. Or someone who can translate things or write some documentation. That way someone else can do the other work... So if you want to donate some money to fpc/lazarus, donate some time instead. That's far more usefull. Unless you have more then about 50.000 to spend, offcourse... Joost. _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
[lazarus] IDE Help
The IDE now supports Help for FPC keywords, messages and IDE windows and dialogs. Now the documentation must be collected/written. I added a wiki page describing the various online Help types of the IDE and how to write documentation for Lazarus: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Creating_IDE_Help Mattias _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus vs Patents
On Fri, 28 Apr 2006, George Lober wrote: 1. FPC/Lazarus is a european project mostly This fact baffles me. Why isn't there more participation in development from North America ? Surely the appeal of Pascal isn't limited to cultural or national borders. Is it lack of interest for Pascal ? Is everybody just content with using Delphi over here ? I can answer that. It isn't taught in school at all. If you go to any school and I mean any school that teaches CompSci in any way they will tell you that, Pascal is a dead and useless language. Nobody uses Pascal anymore. I have actually asked them about Delphi and they have never heard of it. That is why there is such a lack of interest in the US. The general thought process has already killed it off. The following can also be found in the Wikipedia page about Pascal. While very popular (although more so in the 1980s and early 1990s than now), early versions of Pascal have been widely criticised for being unsuitable for serious use outside of teaching. This is the general information that is passed along to business in the US. No business interest. No popularity. Little use. I know some are going to say, Wait a minutes we use it all the time. I realize this but the overall concept is that it is a dead and unused language. At one point I ask people in the IT Dept where I work if they ever heard of Delphi. They had not. They didn't know what it was. So guess what. If they don't even know what Delphi is they are not going to move to use FPC/Lazarus. It is a very tough sell here in the US. -- Programming my first best destiny! Michael A. Hess Miracle Concepts, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.miraclec.com Phone: 570-388-2211 Fax: 570-388-6101 _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
[lazarus] FPC/Lazarus Foundation would need people
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. I don't think the people pushing the foundation have a clear grasp of just how small a community we really are. There are not alot of people interested in FPC/Lazarus. Without those people being interested there is no one to take over these foundation jobs or positions. Just as a comparison I have looked up some details on other foundations mentioned in these emails. Apache Foundation: Currently there are 161 Active Developers in charge of and working on approved Apache projects. OpenOffice: Currently they have 40 Active Developers in charge of and working on approved OO projects. They also have a similar numbers working on incubator and native-lang projects. Totals over 100 Lazarus: The Web Site has 4,337 registered users. Wow sounds like alot. Sounds like a nice community. But wait . The Lazarus Developers mailing list has a grand total of 12 developers. Of those 12 I think 4 and not even interested and some others have done stuff in the past but aren't able to assist at this time. So out of that list we have about 5-6 developers working on Lazarus. The Lazarus mailing list has a grand total of 470 people interested enough to keep up on what is happening with the project. What it boils down to is where are these Foundation members and Foundation administrators, etc. etc. going to come from? So who would do it? The core developers would be the only ones to do it. So what would be the benefit to them to do it? There wouldn't be any. This is where our thought process is coming from on this matter. -- Programming my first best destiny! Michael A. Hess Miracle Concepts, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.miraclec.com Phone: 570-388-2211 Fax: 570-388-6101 _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus vs Patents
I can answer that. It isn't taught in school at all. If you go to any school and I mean any school that teaches CompSci in any way they will tell you that, Pascal is a dead and useless language. Nobody uses Pascal anymore. This was almost the exact quotation I heard from people on a local linux mailing list community when I mentioned something about Pascal.. The best way to respond to people like this is to help them with their Perl problems once in a while.. they will respect that you helped them, then they might respect you more for what language you use. I know nothing about perl but I still answer some questions because the languages have something in common when it comes to a certain way to solve a problem, etc. It's sort of passive marketting, as opposed to active marketing. Active marketing would be to tell someone pascal Kicks Ass who you know is already using a language similar to Pascal - there are quite a few people in Java who can relate to Pascal since it has strong typing in common. _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] FPC/Lazarus Foundation would need people
I think in general this was a very productive talk, even if no foundation comes from this. It was very positive in the sense of getting to know better the community and different points of view. I also think it made clear that what we need is more people helping (not only on development but also on other things), and not necessarely a legal entity. -- Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] FPC/Lazarus Foundation would need people
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. _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] Lazarus Foundation pros
On Saturday 29 April 2006 14:13, Joost van der Sluis wrote: And for JohnF and Marco Ramirez. They would like to see that they pay some money, so that the developers can solve their problems I will assume that I'm Johnf. I don't want to pay money to solve MY problems. Currently, I'm doing fine with my development. I would like to see someone to move Lazarus forward. Recent events made be concerned that lazarus and mostly FPC may not last. A project that I was involved with just stopped when a major player died. I started thinking about FPC and what it would take to break FPC and realized not much would be required. So I changed my mind. If there were some postition that was paid I think we could always get someone to aid FPC and Lazarus. At least that is where I'm coming from. John _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
Re: [lazarus] FPC/Lazarus Foundation would need people
On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 18:45:07 -0600, L505 wrote It's not just people doing work though - it is also communicating about the attitudes of the current people in charge too. People in charge? There aren't people in charge. There are the people who own the code and have written the code. Wheither you use FPC/Lazarus as a user or not FPC/Lazarus is owned by the people who have written it. I assume that makes them 'in charge' as you put it but that would be the same if it was closed source and they just sold you a binary. They didn't. They decided to open it to the world to enjoy and help. 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). Actually there is lots of discussion in both camps. They both have private developers lists where lots of design takes place. They decide direction and implementation on these lists. The FPC team being located in Europe also meet occasionally to discuss issues. FPC is at this point going on 14 years old. This isn't just some unorganized effort that has been going on. It has lasted and grown for that length of time. Lazarus is around 6 years old. It has fewer developers but still an organized effort. Some of our attitudes our not in line. Some of us will and already are using FPC/Pascal for real work.. and pleasure too. This confused me. What is 'real work'. You mean only work for a business or enterprise is real work? 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. Well for one I don't recall anyone ever stating that FPC/Lazarus was a hobby. I do recall it being stated that it was worked on for fun. That isn't the same thing. 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 have never been able to understand your attitude until this email. The above line indicates your attitude. You state, ...then we go off and use a real tool like MS VC From this it indicates that you do not think of FPC or Lazarus as a real tool. Now the question is, why? Is it because it doesn't have some business, foundation, or organization behind it. Maybe you don't think a tool is real unless it has some stricked organization that controls everything. -- Programming my first best destiny! Michael A. Hess Miracle Concepts, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.miraclec.com Phone: 570-388-2211 Fax: 570-388-6101 _ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
