This is because Delphi belongs to is a commercial enterprise, and it is in their best interested not to bend over backwards to work with a free competing product.
The power I felt FPC has had was it's compatibility with Delphi. FPC maintained compatibility with the languages and even with the class library (SysUtils.pas, Classes.pas). I understand it's difficult to maintain this parity between FPC and Delphi, especially when Delphi does things which seem wrong (such as they way they implemented operator overloading), but IMO keeping that parity goes is more important than ego (if that is where the problem really lays). To Marco: Thanks for that link. I will read that rocument and try to get started with the developer repository and build environment this week. If I have and questions (which google and my own experimentation can't answer), where would be the best place to submit them? On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 9:41 AM, Michael Van Canneyt <mich...@freepascal.org> wrote: > > > On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Anthony Walter wrote: > >> As I said in my introduction. I am new to Linux and FPC. I've used >> them both for maybe 8 years, but not seriously. >> >> On the Linux side for years I've just used it for minimal compiling >> and a lot of web browser. >> >> On the FPC I've fired it up from time to time over the years (and read >> the website, mailing lists). >> >> None of that I consider real use, just casual poking around. >> >> But now I am taking a serious stab at porting my Windows OpenGL game >> engine to a cross platform Windows, Linux, and Mac engine. I feel like >> I am actually doing something real with Linux and FPC for the first >> time. >> >> One thing I've noticed about the FPC community which has me a somewhat >> apprehensive is a bit of a particular attitude I've picked up on. >> >> A few times now I've read comments by or had conversations with people >> in the FPC community who have explained incompatibilities away using >> the phrase: >> >> "FreePascal did this before something else so we shouldn't change" >> >> Forgetting the whole argument about who was actually first, I have to >> ask what difference does it make? >> >> Why does doing something first make it written in stone. It seems a >> bit childish to say, "No way, I way here first, I won't budge. You >> move." >> >> Really, that attitude is quite the turn off. > > Correct, but then the same applies to Borland/Codegear/Embarcadero. > > Go ahead, and ask them to be more FPC compliant. > > It'll be interesting to see their reaction. > > People take such a position from Borland, but not from FPC. Why ? > > This is quite ironic, because you PAY Borland and you put up with their > attitudes. You don't pay FPC but you also don't want to put up with our > attitudes. Where is the logic in that ? I would expect the opposite. You pay > them for god's sake, so they should do your bidding... > > In reality it's always the FPC team that is f*d when an incompatibility > arises. > > Michael. > _______________________________________________ > fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pas...@lists.freepascal.org > http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal > _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
