Light Edition of Delphi at a Low Cost

[noeska]

I am afraid the only legal versions are the one you need register at the embarcadero site to enable them.

[WILL]

I wasn't expecting pirated software to come out of this poll, but hey there we are I guess.

Can anyone, who has a full copy of the current Delphi, tell us what sorts of components could be stripped away should Embarcadero decide to include the RAD portion of the lighter Delphi? I think this information would be highly useful as well.

[noeska]

Ok things that can be left out of delphi 2009.
- Rave Reports
- Lite version of install shield application / installaware
- Vcl for the web (aka all iw controlls) / websnap / internet express
- Ribbon controls
- Teechart Std.
- icon collections
- Interbase components
- dbGO (dao / msaccess)
- Indy components (but i do want to be able add indy components from the latest source version)
- Internet components (see Indy remark)
- BDE ( who is still using it? )
- Win3.1 components ( who is still using it? )
- Version Control
- Data Explorer
- Delphi Class Explorer
- c++ builder
- delphi prism
- rad studio command prompt
- remote debugger
- doc o matic express version

Things that should stay
- Data Controls
- Data Access
- Dialogs
- System
- Win32
- Additional
- Standard
- Webservices
- Debugging


Things i am in doubt on:
- Allow to install componts from source / use packages (my only need is sqlite/indy components)
- dbExpress as i do want to be able to add an sqlite database in an easy way. (support for backfish sql / interbase and datasnap may be dropped) ( or but better i want to use an sqlite database with the data access components)
- Refactoring ( i use it often, but with care i can do without it)
- SVN support that suposedly is added in delphi xe (would be nice, but we have lived without it)
- Offline help / documentation
- source of supplied components

Ok shoot on it :-)

Also i am curious what do the free ms ide tools bring?

[WILL]

That's a great breakdown. I have a feeling what they may try to do is keep things that are symbolic and characteristic of Delphi, such as the IDE and the core VCL, and a few things that they have just put in and want them to get popular, such as SVN and Cloud functionality and maybe even some of the re-factoring.

The Educational version could have similar restrictions such as what the old Turbo Pascal educational compiler did. It told everyone that it was an educational version and software made with it should not be sold and to report it. I'm not sure it if was TP or another compiler I'm thinking of but, I remember such a compiler registered with the name of the school so it was easier to catch where the program came from.

I've played with the free Visual Studio offerings for C# some time ago out of curiosity. It's like C trying to be Delphi, which is kind of funny. Some of the ideas are cool, but they are building on the messy foundation that is C, which is it's main problem. Lots of files just to start with instead of a unified set of code to extend from. Some people seem happy to deal with it, but for this coder, I'm far less impressed than others seem to be. C I'm sure is still C under the VS umbrella.

[Darkhog]

I know last post was 3 years ago, but I want to give you this:

Why they can't go back into model that worked so well up until Delphi 7? I'm talking about free Personal editions.

[SilverWarior]

I would gues taht it is so becouse those t the top of Embarcadero leadership are not programers but some marketing guys. They don't understand that for a tool such as Delphi you always need to be atracting new peepole othervise you are facing scenario that someday noone would be left to use your product (pepole retire, swithc to other programming languages, etc).
I mean which newbie developer would be prepared to pay 199€ for Starter Edition just to see wheter Objective Pascal (Delphi) is the programming language suitable for him. Especially when you consider that Starter Edition only supports Win32 development with no databases. It is almost like you would have Delphi 7 Personal Edition with support for some new features that were included in Delphi programing language (Unicode, Generisc, etc).
And when you also take a look at limitation of only being able to earn 1000$ of revenues before you are forced to upgrade to athleast Proffesional edition that just sucks.

Once your company's total revenue reaches US $1,000, or your team expands to more than 5 developers, you can move up to an unrestricted commercial license with a specially priced Professional edition license.

http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter-faq

Unles they change the way of their thinking soon noone wuld be using Delphi anymore. Even long term developers are leaving becouse EMB is to lazy to go and fix many bugs that are present in Delphi for years.
I could never understand how can someone go and implement new features/extensions of existing code when that code itself is buggy as hell instead of fuxing the bugs first.
Doing so means that al those bugs would be hampering your newest features to work properly. Not to mention that when you finally go to fix those bugs it migh result you in need to rewrite portion of those features implementations.

PS Sorry for my rant but I just had to get this out of me.

[pitfiend]

I know last post was 3 years ago, but I want to give you this:

Why they can't go back into model that worked so well up until Delphi 7? I'm talking about free Personal editions.

Did you mean something like Turbo editions... wait... they killed it for the wrong reasons I think, who knows now.

[SilverWarior]

I think he means that at some point Borland has been providing Delphi 6 and later Delphi 7 personal editions for free. I belive that was the time when delphi 2007 and later 2009 came out.
The reason why I started using Delphi in the first place was becouse I got first Delphi 6 and later Delphi 7 for free. And since at the time FPC was still early in its development and quite unstable Delphi was one of rare fully featured and stable Objective Pascal development tools for Windows.
If at that time I would have to pay for Delphi I would have never started programming in Objective Pascal but probably still banging my head in C++ (its sintax is quite inlogical to me) in which I first started programming or even quit on my atempt to become programer.
The reason why I'm still Delphi supporter even if it is far from perfect is that if it wasn't for Delphi I wouldn't be here today.