Delphi 11 Community Edition | Hacker News Reader

Delphi 11 Community Edition

embarcadero.com

The whole "you can use it until you reach $X of revenue" is a reason I just won't touch this. It's really weird, and it's none of their business how I earn my living. (Ironically, I make $0 from software, but it's the principle of it that sticks in my craw)

I'll stick with Lazarus / Free Pascal until they get rid of that one weird trick.

Why? Seems like a very good license for this category of software. They get paid if if and only if you get paid, their interests are perfectly aligned with your interests.

Ask yourself how they will know if and how much you get paid.

I'm not downloading their stuff just to find out, but it seems like a safe bet that the license agreement grants them the right to audit you, and requires you to provide any documentation (like bank and tax statements) they deem necessary to do so.

In order to know whom to audit, they are probably scanning app stores and software sites for apps made with Delphi. Personally identifiable telemetry and/or developer IDs embedded in each executable also wouldn't surprise me.

As far as I know, they trust that you would tell them as soon as you reach that level.

I confess I'm not a delphi user, but I've used licenses like this in other places.

I would be really surprised if they have any of the items you hypothesise. (Maybe an actual delphi user can comment.)

The short answer (I cases I have experienced) is that they don't need to do any of this. If you use it past that point you are in violation of the license. If you choose to do that (or, you know, just pirate it) then you run existential business risk. If you think saving a few $ when you have a business making cash, then take the risk.

In other words, businesses making money will tend to spend money because it's a good idea, from a business point of view, to do that.

> I would be really surprised if they have any of the items you hypothesise

Turns out their "Software License and Support Agreement" is online. [1]

Some relevant excerpts:

Embarcadero will collect information about your use of the Community Edition for auditing purposes and improve our products and services. For more information about our collection, use and disclosure of personal data, please review Embarcadero's Privacy Statement at https://www.embarcadero.com/privacy-statement.

Curiously, clicking the link above does not produce any privacy statement, it just redirects to a generic 'legal' page. [2]

If Licensee is entering into this Agreement as an entity (e.g., as a corporation, a partnership, or other organization) or as an individual, Licensor may, at its expense, audit (electronic or otherwise) Licensee’s records and systems as they may relate to the use of Products, including, but not limited to, the number of copies of the Product in use by Licensee, the designated CPU(s) on which the Product is installed, the access of the Product including access to machine IDs, serial numbers and related information. As part of any such audit, Licensor or its authorized representative will have the additional right, on fifteen (15) days’ prior notice to Licensee, to inspect Licensee or the Named User’s records, systems and facilities, including machine IDs, serial numbers and related information, to verify that the installation, use of, and access to any and all Product is in conformance with this Agreement and its applicable terms. Additionally, within fifteen (15) days of such prior notice for audit, Licensee will provide Licensor all records and information requested by Licensor in order to verify that the installation, use and/or access of the Product is in conformance with this Agreement. Licensee and the Named User will provide full cooperation to enable any such audit. If Licensor determines that Licensee or the Named User’s installation, use of or access to the Product is not in conformity with this Agreement, Licensee will immediately take such steps as are necessary to bring Licensee and the Named Users’ installation, use and/or access into compliance with this Agreement, and pay the reasonable costs of the audit, in addition to any penalties, fees, or other remedies available to Licensor at law. Any such audit shall be conducted during regular business hours at Licensee’s facilities and shall not unreasonably interfere with Licensee’s business activities. If an audit reveals that Licensee has underpaid fees to Licensor, Licensee shall be invoiced for such underpaid fees (based on the list prices in effect at the time the audit is completed); and if the underpaid fees exceed 5% of the License fees already paid, then Licensee shall also pay Licensor the reasonable costs of conducting the audit.

[1] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/rad-studio-e...

[2] https://www.ideracorp.com/legal/embarcadero

Hmmm, yeah, sounds like actually doing that would cost them much more than what they could possibly gain from it...

Serously? Check out their license prices:

https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delp...

It is a very good license. As seen so often on the Internet, that vocal minority who complains are the same bunch who wouldn't use the IDE to start with.

I just wish this kind of thing would have been available 15 years ago, would likely have gave a better life to Delphi which is so far in my experience the best builder for IDE-based apps.

I do prefer this model when companies open up their products and make them usable for someone who just won't afford it for personal use. I.e Visual Studio (the IDE)

For someone like me it is a great agreement. I would install this and start play around and if I liked it I would try to build something and in the end, if it made money, I would buy the product.

It is a much better agreement than a 30 day trial.

This attitude is why we have adware and electron apps everywhere - though the pricing model could be tweaked a little. Unreal engine gets it right

I rather much prefer this, than giving away fake FOSS that gets closed down as soon as there is no more VC money for free beer.

Something either is or isn't FOSS, there is no "fake". If nobody wants to pick up maintenance after the original developers pick up their bags and move on doesn't make something any less of FOSS.

It is, because it was based on an hidden agenda of "bait and switch".

Oracle and RedHat laughing their a++ out while reading this comment.

Try using RedHat Linux without a paid from them and complain all the way to the court that "it is FOSS".

I don't know what does you mean with "using RedHat Linux", but if it is FOSS then i can use it as i want. If i can't then it isn't FOSS. There is no middle ground there, there is a widely accepted definition about what FOSS is and being able to run it as i want is a major aspect of it.

That just reveals lack of experience on the topic, my suggestion is to take some time to look into the licensing model of both cases I've suggested earlier and learn why a middle ground exists.

You're not an expert on the topic and very likely this kind of licensing knowledge is not even relevant to your daily life. Nevertheless, there are nuances on OSS licensing that differ drastically from what you understand as "widely accepted definition".

Case in point, Elasticsearch and Terraform.

This is a nonsensical take. The whole point of FOSS is that is can't be closed down.

Stoping development, moving new versions into proprietary licenses, and having no one around with the resources to pick it up is basically the same thing, for all practical purposes.

I treat picking uncommon OSS packages as adopting a bit of software. As I verify the tests look good, the build system, the api, the correctness, etc I also consider the code style and whether I (or my team) could maintain/patch it if needed. Adopting a bit of OSS is saving me some initial work, but doesnt absolve me of my responaibility to maintain it in the future. My business doesn't care whether the bug is one I wrote or one I greenlit externally, they just want the business app to work well.

Seems really fair to me and I wish it was widely adopted as it's good for both sides.

What makes me uneasy is that it's the business or individual's whole revenue. Not the revenue generated by the app created with Delphi. That's 100% clear form the FAQ.

So if I'm a freelancer, say, doing DB management, and I make 5k in a year, then I cannot get the Community Edition.

The whole thing is weird and reaches way to deep into what I do apart from writing Delphi for my taste. I think I'd just rather prefer it being a commercial product with a reasonable freelance/small-business plan of, like, $200/yr up to $100k revenue or whatever.

The current jump of free to essentially students to $1.5k + $500/yr is too steep to risk it with anything resembling a side project.

The only problem I see, is that 5000 per year is very low, almost 400 dollars per month.

It means that if I make 500 dollars per month, I have to pay 165 to Embarcadero.

Makes no sense.

I think more reasonable would be at least 24.000 per year, 2000 per month, and of course, net.

By the way, Delphi is my favorite language, so is not anything against it, I just think that Delphi is too expensive to start with.

The concept wasn’t weird to me but the revenue threshold of $5k was.

Also, their "license" expires after a year and you have to re-obtain your free keys or reinstall it altogether. Pretty weird.

Is this new or has this been around already for a while?

Limited commercial use license. So I guess not interesting for many people? At least I would not want to work with such a product, even if I don't have any commercial plans.

Obviously, I such a post, someone needs to mention Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/). How does it compare?

Also the limit is quite, quite low. Only if you make less than $5K a year. But not on your Delphi project, but in anything else you do as a contractor or as a company.

I mean they're free to put the limit wherever they want. I think allowing it to be used for hobby projects is still a good thing.

To use the same limit for donations to non-profits, however, is harsh. It basically makes it impossible to use for any serious open source project, which is a damn shame.

Hardly much different from using VS Community edition.

VS Community limits are way different.

Seems like there's no limit for individuals, and the limits for "corporations" begin in $1M on annual revenue.

An even when hitting those "corporation limits" you can still use it if it's for " (i) open source; (ii) Visual Studio extensions; (iii) device drivers for the Windows operating system; (iv) SQL Server development; and, (v) education purposes as permitted above."

edit: VS Community Terms: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-c...

Still, I find the license quite alright for what is ultimely a commercial product,

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq

Even JetBrains isn't that into charity with their products, see recent RustRover announcement.

Rider is commercial only as well and not expensive at all. I guess MS compensates from other services (Azure) when you build an app with free VS against them.

Or the usual MS gain that they have been using for the last 40 years.

Most VS written programs run on MS operating system and/or Office so they get there money from sellinmg these.

Lazarus is currently behind in Delphi features, also stuck on Gtk migration AFAIK.

This is misleading as Lazarus and Delphi both have features that the other one does not, that doesn't make one "behind" than the other. Lazarus is a community driven project, if someone needs something to be implemented they can implement it themselves - and if something is not implemented then nobody really needed it enough to do it.

Also there is no such a thing as "Gtk migration", since sadly Gtk is not backwards compatible with its own major versions, every new version needs a new LCL backend. But existing backends are not replaced (there is no migration from one to another) and any ongoing work reflect the interests of the people using it. Personally i have contributed to LCL and i dislike Gtk3 and later versions of Gtk so i do not even bother trying Gtk3 or later, but i have contributed several fixes for both Gtk2 and even the Gtk1 backends. Also i have implemented Win32 fixes, including MDI support (which wasn't available for years) since that was something that i wanted.

Also FWIW there are also Qt-based backends. I haven't used them much but some developers prefer to use Qt as a backend instead of Gtk.

No it is not, as most people care about Delphi support on Lazarus, not the other way around.

Likewise, it is misleading not to consider moving to the actual, maintained Gtk version, migration.

Whatever how one feels about Gtk development process, supporting the actual version is quite relevant for most people.

> No it is not, as most people care about Delphi support on Lazarus, not the other way around.

The majority of Lazarus users do not care about Delphi at all, they treat Lazarus as a project of its own, not a free version of Delphi. Lazarus (and Free Pascal) developers provide Delphi compatibility where that makes sense to let people convert their Delphi projects to Lazarus and allow component authors to share code between Delphi and Lazarus, but it was never meant to be 100% compatible nor replicate everything Delphi does.

If you want to share code between Delphi and Lazarus/FPC you are expected to restrict yourself to the common set of features between the two - and even then you are still going to have to do convertions between the two (AFAIK the form format is incompatible and you need to use Lazarus to convert Delphi forms to it) and use IFDEFs in the code.

> Likewise, it is misleading not to consider moving to the actual, maintained Gtk version, migration.

There is nothing misleading here nor there is any migration going on, i explained how the widgetsets are developed very clearly. There are some people working on Gtk3 and AFAIK there is even some Gtk4 code but those are not going to replace the existing Gtk1 and Gtk2 widgetsets. In fact Gtk is not even the only toolkit(s) supported as there are also Qt4, Qt5 and Qt6 widgetsets.

> Whatever how one feels about Gtk development process, supporting the actual version is quite relevant for most people.

And these people can easily help develop the version they want to use, which is precisely what i've done myself. Again, it is a community driven project.

Lazarus supports different languages

The UI designer of Lazarus seems about on par with Delphi 7, from what I gather? Given that UI is one of Delphi's big selling point that's a substantial difference.

Imo the Delhi licenses aren't very expensive for professional use, but to maintain a talent pool they need an option for hobbyists. That's what community edition is supposed to be

The Lazarus UI designer is way more advanced than the one in Delphi 7. The anchor system alone (which allows you to place controls in relation to other controls which maintaining automatic layout and resizing - e.g. make a bunch of buttons share the same right edge regardless of how large the text inside the buttons is, then put a separator a few pixels[0] ahead of that edge and have other controls' left edge be at the same distance from the separator - then have the container automatically size itself to fit these, taking margins into account, all these done through the GUI with no need to write any code).

Perhaps you saw the floating windows and thought it was similar to Delphi 7? The floating windows mode is the default (as a lot of people using Lazarus prefer it) but you can also have a single window mode (with or without embedded form designer). It used to be clunky at the past but in recent times it got polished out as some of the developers use the single window mode instead.

Lazarus gives you cross-platform and multiple architecttures at no cost. From what I recall, Lazarus is a more lightweight install, while the Delphi IDE has better coding features. For the classic VCL (Delphi has other new frameworks), I haven't found anything that LCL cannot do yet, but I don't do anything unusual with the widgets. The FreePascal language is mostly compatible, however, they don't plan to strictly follow newer Delphi language features (e.g. inline declarations).

Lazarus was crap. That was the reason why it never replaced Delphi in the first place.

Compiler was slow by comparison to get anything compiled, produced 10x bigger binaries. The IDE for GUI wasn't something to brag about and the help system (yes, Delphi actually had code snippets built into the docs) was dramatically worse.

Delphi 7 was a masterpiece. Haven't tried Lazarus in the last 10 years. Hopefully many of my critics have become obsolete by now.

I did Delphi dev for about 10 years. For me it was Delphi 5 that was the king (I did use every version prior to that too.. including version 1). Delphi 6 added CLX and that was weird and awkward. No where I was working wanted to go to Delphi 6+, and I left Delphi in about 2007 anyway, so all the Embarcadero years are a mystery to me. I worked for a company that had a relationship with Borland and I have early versions of Kylix (I think the first version I saw, the IDE barely worked) - and that sort of made some sense of CLX, but the upgrade path was way way too steep.

Would I ever go back to Delphi/Object Pascal? In a word - no.

Same feelings here. Did the same in 2010 and jumped boat to Java. After almost 17 years on Pascal for serious/intensive programming, nowadays don't even remember the syntax basics.

Oh well, so is life.

I spent years in the Delphi ecosystem, starting with Delphi 1. In the early years, it was a great tool for building desktop apps. I haven't used it in 15+ years, but no regrets.

The $5k limit for the Community Edition is very limiting. Unless you are a student with no income, you'll hit the limit almost immediately. Even if you were to write an app for a non-profit, you'll hit the limit.

It's not new. I downloaded community edition under these same terms 3 or 4 years ago.

More interesting imho is that they also offer a Community Edition of C++Builder: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter

Back in the days (~ 25 years ago) it was the standard IDE to use for writing C++ Windows programs. But it was Borland back then iirc before Embarcadero took over.

I also submitted C++Builder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520509

From what I've heard (from podcasts) the challenge of C++ Builder is catching up with Clang to add their additional C++ language features.

They should open source and upstream their patches to clang and llvm, and let the llvm community maintain it.

That doesn't pay the bills. Cases of profitable open source projects are very scarce and difficult to achieve.

I was referring to the changes they made to the compiler in their fork of clang, which makes the "catching up" with upstream clang challenging as they need to rebase.

They can still sell their IDE and runtime libraries.

What they're adding are non standard C++ extensions only used by C++ Builder (properties, etc). There might be little benefit (and just maintenance cost) to upstream those to Clang. Clang also moves fast while it appears C++ Builder is still at C++17 [0].

[0] https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support/20

That doesn't seem fair. Apple had the same issues with their native clang compiler for a decade; and they were the primary sponsor/host of it.

The open source version will always be bleeding edge compared to any commercially packaged version. C++17 support, in general, is pretty good for a visual editor. IMO, at least.

If you bought a license in the past for one of their products, but let the subscription expire, they won't let you download the version of the product for which you have a valid license.

I had to search my backups for the installer of C++ Builder when I bought a new laptop. Luckily I had a backup.

Has regular price for Delphi been reduced? Not that I find it cheap at all, but I recall way bigger license prices than these: https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delp...

($5600/seat + $1600/seat/year) if you want to use SQL?

Generally I'm in favour of developers paying for their tools but I'm glad I dodged the Delphi bullet.

So if your revenue (not profit) exceeds $5000, you need to pay $5600 for Delphi. Surely that can't be right?

[edit] I can only get the prices in GBP but for 'professional' it's £1,140 (Perpetual License) + £399 (Year one Maintenance) so not quite as bad as I thought but still a sizeable portion for year 1.

Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke.

Enough people in Germany are, to keep one conference going (EKON), having tracks on a Windows/.NET conference (BASTA!), and articles on developer magazines.

Also most of the software at this Belgium company uses Delphi, https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home

I did a little bit of Delphi 10ish or so years ago. This was a legacy application. It actually wasn't too bad. I assume it is mostly people working on legacy stuff at this point. Rewriting a huge code base which deals with thousands of edge cases is probably simply not worth it and sticking with Delphi is simply easier then.

Delphi is one of the best options for rapid UI development, especially if you care more about functionality than looks. From what I gather that makes it somewhat poplar for industrial use cases.

I'm also curious about what kind of companies are still using it.

A lot of lab instrumentation companies across EU still use it. Also quite a few companies producing industry machinery, industrial displays etc.

This. It’s a great little system for such use cases. It is mainly falling out of favor for new development because it’s hard to find devs. But in terms of quickly getting automation equipment designed and running it’s a workhorse.

+ you can write both UI and low level code in one language

i believe image line uses Delphi for fl studio

Quite a lot of software in the industry. I maintain a large scientific application for a big oil & gas company.

15 years ago, Delphi was one of the only system to both allow very fast GUI application creation and had some very nice flowsheeting components. For process engineering, this was really really nice.

Updated: Clarity.

>Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke.

Is there any serious business who believes that only customers in America are still relevant? -- I have friends who are HN posters who believe that, but I love to tell them that joke! :-) <g> :-)

"Still using"...

Our main product is in Delphi. We got 20+ year old code and brand new code in production. Several hundred forms/windows, ~1MLOC. We're serving a few hundred businesses in a niche (~75% market share).

However we're working on migrating to .Net, though the full transition will take many years. Main limitation is that UI design and such is just nowhere near what we got in Delphi. We're quite used to being able to whip up a non-trivial UI in a day.

So for now we're just moving the "backend" stuff to .Net, doing RPC to our .Net service and similar.

Just wondering aloud - wouldn't it be easier to port the .dfm parsing to your desired language of choice and keep designing forms in Delphi?

I can only imagine that it's not just the ease of design part (and legacy code) that keeps you in Delphi, it's the whole aspect of it being integrated with writing code, components, units and fast compilation.

We rely quite heavily on DevExpress components, but yeah dfm parsing is something I've considered. But I have this gut feeling while it might get you 80% there you'll spend a ton of time fixing the last 20%, negating the win.

Same here. More than ten years I've moved to Java as replacement since it was the best next thing. It has a practical WYSIWYG GUI editor but still nowhere the fantastic quality of Delphi and just dead nowadays too.

A GUI written in Delphi would function natively in any Windows and then run any Mac or Linux through Wine without troubles.

Yes, and it has never been a bad experience. However, I don't see a use case for new projects. There are many language options nowadays and most have a larger developer pool. I don't think the Community Edition will have the same impact as for instance Visual Studio CE.

A large proportion of the UKs independent bookshops run on a delphi developed system.

At my other work, when I was an inexperienced developer I had one task: add support for different scales (that weights cars). We had an utility that sent it to axis camera via api so one can see weight on surveillance video.

Anyways, I got the source from the vendor and it was Delphi.

I thought: I heard this is similar to Pascal. I got introducet to programming with Pascal, so I'll just give Delphi a shot.

Was disappointed to find out I have to pay for it given other languages are free. That was my perception: I'll invest my time to learn something that I will have to pay to use.. no thanks.

Didnt bother and rewrote it in C# - the software was small.

Now I get to think that maybe 10+ years ago I could have found some free IDE that compiles Delphi? The price tag from what seemed to me the official Delphi turned me off. Good that they now do CE version.

FYI – it seems like the Community Edition lacks a Linux toolchain, and the ability to compile for Linux.

Lazarus is generally fine, but I wanted to port my one old small app and was pretty surprised that they have nothing Bluetooth-related OOB. Also kinda wish it were possible to build your apps with dynamic RTL/VCL (or whatever they call it there).

To connect to a non local data source you need to pay 3,000 for enterprise version once you exceed CE limits plus maintenance- a bit too much - wish they’d put that level a bit less

direct link: https://altd.embarcadero.com/download/radstudio/11.0/RADStud...

fyi, you still have to create an account to use the trial version

Does the IDE work only on windows (while producing binaries for multiple platforms) ?

If I had any Delphi books, I would put them next to my copy of Learn Sumerian in 24 Hours.

Too little too late.

They've been offering community editions for years. It's not too late, it's just too little.

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