[Lazarus] Release 1.0, part 2

[Martin]

Tom Lisjac wrote:
>>> So what exactly is the Lazarus team afraid of in getting to v1.0?
>>>       
>> Since we think it's not ready for 1.0.
>>
>> Period.
>>     
...
> The problem I see is credibility... or "if we write a lot of code with
> Lazarus/FPC, will it be maintainable with the project in perpetual
> beta?". Delphi was stable from release 2 and code I developed with it
> in versions 2, 3, 4 and 5 continued to "just work" as I upgraded. Not
> the case here. I've been writing new code with Lazarus since 2002 and
> have learned that anything I write today is virtually guaranteed to be
> broken and uncompilable tomorrow because somebody thought it would be
> cool to change some aspect of the Object Pascal language or completely
> revise a library interface or function. It's become a lot of work to
> maintain the stuff I've already written and I'm reluctantly
> considering not using Lazarus for any new projects.
>   
Then this may be an argument against 1.0. I agree, that in a none beta 
(V1.0) the interface should be stable.
So  if the interface isn't yet stable, if it still needs changes....

Besides this, I don't know, if it does need incompatibility changes.

I don't know neither which ones you experienced. Unless you checked on 
the mailing list or attempted to report them, they may or may not have 
been intentional? They could have been bugs introduced by a new feature?

On the other hand, even after reaching V1.0 such things can happen. Like 
in FPC: V2.x and there where changes in FPC, some of them resulted from 
because people exploided a bug (like using properties as var param). Now 
the bug is closed, the "feature" doesn't exist anymore.

Anyway, if you want to help stabilizing the LCL interface => start a 
thread with examples (unless it has been reasonable explained why a 
change was made). Then it can be established if it was needed. And if 
the cost for people to "fix/update" their code was to high.

> Businesses laugh in our general direction over the code breakage issue
> where a project investment using Lazarus/FPC may end up a QA and
> maintenance nightmare. This view is shared by many of my colleagues
> who can't understand why I'm still using a beta ide on a "dinosaur
> language from the 80's". How's that for an insult? I agree with
> Graeme's posting that this has become a public relations issue... an
> obvious one. I'm also starting to see it as a squandered opportunity
>   
It may be that a few people will be convinced by a V1.0..

I don't believe the majority will, they will change the wording of the 
argument, but keep it the same. It will then be:
- Lazarus, still about 10 versions behind Delphi (unless we skip a few 
versions and release V11.0)
- Lazarus they released to early, look at all the bugs.... (people a 
narrow minded in that they will ignore that delphi has bugs too)

And as for Graeme (correct me if I am wrong), who startet the topic in 
the other mail, IIRC it was him who mentioned one major argument for not 
going 1.0 => The debugger and it's usability (which is another thing 
people are going to hold against Lazarus, never mind what the version 
number is).

It is true, that Version numbers today are very often used for marketing.
But that implies that you have a lot ot people, time, and money to go 
into marketing.

That you can advertise, that you can present your products on 
exhibitions, and that you can tell people about all the good. Because 
only if you tell people activly about all the good, only then they may 
stop seeing the bad.

Oh, yes, Of course I would like to see Lazarus being more popular. but I 
don't believe that V1.0 will do a major difference here.

For example: There was a recent mail about some Linux magazine reporting 
about Lazarus. That is the only time I heard it was in the press. What 
about all the other Computer magazines? Many of them have a section 
where they introduce new Hard/Software. Some CAD product released a new 
Version => it gets an article (How many people use CAD?). Lazarus does 
not. Why? Because the company behind that product has people who write a 
release article, and send it to every magazine.
Get that for Lazarus and you may see a major burst in visibility. (like 
in germany their is CT magazine). Give them an article (and hope they 
publish it), announcing the release of Lazarus 0.9.28(.2) and in this 
article point out that Lazarus besides it' version number includes 
features, that delphi only had far later (in V5 or so).

There was another mail about free places for open source on the CEBIT. 
It got lost. Get people who can represent Lazarus, and try getting such 
a place.

Of course, once you actually get Lazarus that much visibility (cebit), 
yes then I will agree: The version number can be used as a marketing 
argument. But now? I don't think so.

My 2 cents (probably a little more than 2 cents)
Martin