Hello List,

I have written a post to the database section of the Lazarus forum about a commercial database engine recently ported for Lazarus, which made me think about the whole "Commercial components for Lazarus" issue. This is a part of that post: (It can be found here http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=27411#27411)

<<Lazarus is a free software, which is good, but I would pay for it just to get the chance to develop crossplatform in a Delphi like style. I believe it is important for the future of Lazarus to attract the developers of quality commercial components to port their work for Lazarus. And it is already happening. The big question is if the Lazarus community is willing to realize how valuable it is to have the wealth of quality commercial components for Lazarus we already have for Delphi. Are they willing to pay for it? I certainly hope they see that it is for the benifit of everyone. It could open the way to port a lot of Widows only Delphi projects for different platforms. Many times a suitable 3rd party component can save lots of time and money, so it is more efficient to spend the money on buying a good 3rd party product. >>

What everyone thinks about this?

Regards,
Leslie
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regards Wim

What is the question exactly ? I understand it as:

"Would the lazarus community pay commercial developers to port their components ?"

Am I correct ?

Michael

"Would the lazarus community pay commercial developers to port their components ?" Am I correct ?

Oh no. :) Simply: What is the attitude of the developers, who are using Lazarus as their development tool? Would they buy commercial 3rd party components to improve thier applications? Is the Lazarus community a financially viable target for the developers of such components?

Regards,
Leslie

> I do not object the idea that some of key deveoppers of are being paid > for their effort to make lazarus a good product

Me neither, but as you can see from my previous mail clarifying my intentions, the original post was about something else. :)

Regards,
Leslie

If it saves me a lot of time, I would be more than happy to pay for something. That goes for any tools I use - commercial or free. The best tool for the job wins! Just the other day I bought Nero for Linux simply because it worked better that the hordes of open-source cd writing software out there.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

Hm.
And here I am, hoping that K3B will finally be included in the next windows... :)

Michael.

I would buy such components, no problem. As long as they come with source included. This is a prerequisite, even when I buy delphi components.

Michael.

Michael Van Canneyt wrote

I would buy such components, no problem. As long as they come with source included. This is a prerequisite, even when I buy delphi components.

Definitely with source, otherwise there is no way I can port it to fpGUI. ;-) On a more serious note, I do agree with Michael. Back in the day when we used Delphi, we got burnt when upgrading Delphi and didn't have the source for components. Never to repeat that mistake again. :)

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

Same here, but our reasons were more being able to debug them in case of
problems.

Nowadays I hardly buy components. I use cport, indy9, VST and one routine from dmath/fpmath and that is about it.

The main reason for that is that most components are not suitable for systems where 10ms is a long time. (indy runs in a separate thread, since it can also block longer, cport is async via windows msgs queues)

One of the components I had problems with was TeeChart. It was simply too slow for us for everything except the slowest systems. (ate more than 300-400ms to draw a simple chart, D7 version)

I want to port some Programs written in Delphi to Lazarus/ Free-Pascal, because there is no other way for further developing. The only other way would be to completely rewrite it in another programming language. :-(Thanks to Borland!)

So, I agree with Graeme and Michael too.

But I have an Idea: what do you think about a little (but continual) contest of high-quality- programming?

Greetings from South-Tyrol.

I would buy such components, no problem. As long as they come with source included. This is a prerequisite, even when I buy delphi components. Michael.

Full ACK on that.

Lukas

Where could I find information on VST under Lazarus or FPC?

Marco van de Voort wrote

Nowadays I hardly buy components. I use cport, indy9, VST and one routine from dmath/fpmath and that is about it.

Hi Matt

Christian Budde set up DelphiAsioVST
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/delphiasiovst/) to help with VST development in Object Pascal. It has alot of classes which you can use, or you can just use Frederick Vanmol's translation of the SDK, and implement everything yourself.

Over the last couple of years there have been some problems, but mostly you can use FPC now. However, at the moment these will only be able to use the host's default UI. I am mid flow sorting out the code so that a plugin can supply it's own UI, then full XPlatform VST development will be possible using Laz/FPC :-)

I'm one of the BetabugsAudio developers, and put out plugs under the moniker of RoughDraftAudio. I'm hoping to be doing this XPlat soon...

ATB,
DSP

Ah - just looked at the context of your post - do you mean audio plugin, or Virtual String Trees?

if the former, see my previous post; if the latter, see http://lazarusroad.blogspot.com/2008/10/status-of-virtual-treeview-port. html :-)

ATB, DSP

Ah, just looked at the context of your post... Do you mean audio plugins, or Virtual String Trees?

If the former, see my previous post; if the latter, see http://lazarusroad.blogspot.com/2008/10/status-of-virtual-treeview-port. html :-)

ATB, DSP

Thanks for the information guys.