[Lazarus] Is Lazarus project in a downward spiral?

[Martin Schreiber]

On Sunday 07 March 2010 13:21:37 Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> > Martin (MSEgui) and myself having first hand experience in this will
> > definitely tell you that there are much less bugs (simply because the
> > code is simpler), easier to fix bugs too. And to fix a bug it's in one
> > location for all supported platforms (99% of the time).
>
> The downside to this is: there is also a lot less functionality.
> A simpler product is by definition easier to maintain.
>
> As you will introduce more components, you'll also introduce more
> bugs, this is inevitable.
>
I don't think MSEide+MSEgui has "a lot less functionality" than Lazarus. In 
many areas it has even more. Examples:
Database components, graphics (transparency, 100% flicker free), skinning 
(tframe, tface, tskincontroller), sophisticated key, shortcut and action 
handling, twidgetgrid and many editwidgets, a unicode capable postscript 
printer, sophisticated base widget component without the differentiation 
TGraphicControl/TWinControl and 100% working transparency, docking...

MSEide+MSEgui is on version 2.2 and reached production stability in 2006.
Many of the MSEgui functions were impossible to achieve or need an enormous 
work with native widgetsets and MSEide+MSEgui surely had not production 
quality now. Lazarus too had not 100% production quality now if I invested my 
time into Lazarus instead to develop MSEide+MSEgui.
Please don't underestimate the difficulty to reach 100% quality from 90% level 
if one can not modify the underlaying widget libraries. Although 90% is 
sufficient for most of the projects and the commercial concurrence is not 
better maybe. :-)

Martin