Lazarus Foundation (pros) advantages and disadvantages
I think that the 2 main reasons that support a Lazarus/FPC foundation are:
- Organization
- Donations
Before I continue, let me say that I thanks all the guys in this community
for their work, and any comment I make, it will be as a positive critic.
I want to get Lazarus "To get better", no to start a "flame war"...
Organization.
By organization, I mean administration, leadership, control, resources. I
see a foundation as a natural evolution of a open source community,
examples:
-Open Office
-Apache
-GNU
There's a lot of things where a legally established foundation can do,
that a community may lack.
For example, I surprised that Lazarus forums aren't updated as it happens
to Borland's groups (Delphi and others) or M$ groups...
I find the mailing list/wiki very useful for bugs and improvements,
but not good for common questions,
(like what do I need to install it in certain Linux distribution),
which I think it's better in a forum.
In fact, this topic, I think it should be in a working forum ;-)
I understand also that making a foundation work is not a trivial task,
and it needs several things, in order to make it work.
Many guys think that the FreePascal project doesn't need a foundation,
but the complexity of Lazarus does.
Donations.
Money is required for several things. Money serves a wildcard for several
things like time (hiring developers time), material resources
(like cpus, servers, merchandising/publicity)
As an example, a few months ago, Open Office development (version 2),
a wide used open source software, has halted by lack of developers,
until Google make a donation.
Personally, my participation in Lazarus development,
is very poor, due to my work and lack of time.
I guess that some of the guys around here have the same problem,
and a set of full-time core developers could help a lot.
Other.
Lazarus was a must for me (not in US), since a few years ago,
due to the high price of Delphi, lack of localization,
and dificulty to port to other OSs like Linux, BSD or mobile,
not just for cheaper OSs or money, but for technical reasons.
Just check how many post are from people from outside US.
A foundation can help on this and more matters.
Just my 2 cents...
-----
Marco Aurelio Ramirez Carrillo
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [.mx]
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