[Lazarus] Is Lazarus project in a downward spiral?

[Tom Lisjac]

> It's a matter of the glass being
> half-empty or half-full. Graeme currently sees a half-empty glass.

I think the point of these threads is not how one views a partially
filled glass... but that it remains in a partial state year after year
with no clear goal to ever make it full.

A Lazarus 1.0 would go a long way toward filling the glass, but it's
only half of the equation. To provide a stable and production ready
platform, the compiler developers must also commit to respecting
developer codebases and not breaking them with frivolous language
changes... otherwise even with a Lazarus 1.0, the glass will remain
clouded and one that large scale and commercial developers will
continue to avoid drinking from.

Tools are judged by what they have built... not on their potential.
Frustration sometimes bubbles up on these threads because the
potential is there... and the potential is great! No other open source
tool of comparable power exists for generating light, fast, self
contained and cross-platform graphical apps with an equally fast and
full featured IDE. Given the bloated or proprietary alternatives,
Lazarus/FPC should be the tool of choice for creating world class apps
for all the major OS environments... but as Graeme accurately pointed
out, what we have today is still "potential".

The only thing that is stopping Lazarus/FPC from become a stable,
mainstream production tool is attitudes... and I'm hoping threads like
these will cause a change of focus across the core teams from feature
development to "stabilize what we have and to release 1.0" as Paul
Ishenin suggested yesterday.

Thanks,

-Tom