i.e. magically all the codegear/borland customers will transfer over to freepascal.

First off, codegear should not go bankrupt and neither should borland.. we want them in business.

Second off.. freepascal or foopascal will need consultants, jobs, and money available. If there is no consulting, jobs, and money.. none of the developers are going to use the tools except the GNU university students who still don't have a clue about getting a job and what it takes to put bread on the table. Stallman is a rare case in that he gets paid once in a while to do talks and speeches.. but most open source GNU hackers don't get paid if they don't work real hard at getting paid. For example the Ada GNAT works hard and they get paid.. good for them. MySQL too. Awesome. But a wet freedom dream like Richard Stallman won't cut it.

Eric S. Raymond has some things right.. with OSI and commerce philosophies... even if I don't agree with ESR on all points. Linus Torvalds has some things right too, again even if I don't agree with all his philosophies. Richard Stallman has many things wrong though.. for example Richard Stallman charges people on cruise ships to hear him speak.. which is a restriction of speech. Charging for speech is a restriction of speech. It is restrictive no matter how much you want to argue with me that money is not a restriction.. because money IS a restriction and that is that. Just look at Third World Countries and you will see why money is a restriction. I should not have to pay to hear Stallman speak in a true GNU free world.. charging for speech is restricting speech.. I should have the freedom to hear him openly.

Without a bit of money available and large sites like delphipages.com and torry.net with developer profiles, job resumes, and large component repositories where some components even cost lots of money.. freepascal ain't gonna be the big thing folks. We have to have lots of that stuff. DelphiBasics.co.uk is another great example of what a community needs. Not one site, but at least ten big huge sites with at least a few of them offering costly support contracts.. proving that Foopascal is worth a lot, even if the price of the compiler is free.

Look at the Ada GNAT compiler... big financial interest here because of government funding and airports that pay Adacore GNAT. Look at GCC (gnu compiler collection) which is not just a hobby compiler collection. There are plenty of jobs out there that you can get employed at using GCC.

Look at PHP with its large consulting firms and plenty of developers who get paid.. and look at Zend the PHP company which has money around it. And look at the PHP software out there that costs money such as VBulletin, etc.

Look at CPanel and how much money it costs (Cpanel is the Windows Operating system of the Linux world.. in fact it is more restrictive and worse than Windows because people pay monthly fees for Cpanel whereas windows does not cost monthly fees as of this date).

Freepascal or Foopascal ain't gonna be big unless many of you all make an effort to become consultants, vendors, support contract sales men, etc... Start showing that freepascal is worth some money.. such as charging for some of your source code or components, or an hourly fee.. because the delphi community ain't gonna magically walk over to freepascal if it is a GNU wet dream folks. This isn't about a GNU wet freedom dream.. this is about a Professional Compiler. And I do everything in my right mind to show that Foopascal is a professional compiler worth money... the source, like GNAT does not have to cost money folks.. but the consulting or components or support contracts or something does have to cost money.. because Foopascal is worth a lot.

And in order for delphi developers to use Foopascal the delphi compatibility is not enough. It's excellent and of course necessary to have delphi compatibility and it is one big reason Foopascal is a hot thing today.. lots of discussions and interest in it even from Delphi fanboys who you'd never see downloading it.. but folks it takes more than just a compiler.. it takes consulting, support contracts, showing of worth, proving there is money here, job availability, chickens and eggs.

Make freepascal look more than free please.. yes the source to freepascal is free but the GNAT team wouldn't be where they are now if they didn't offer the other non free stuff such as support contracts which are a restriction that ultimately helps the compile become more mainstream. Yes restrictions, costs, and such things help a compiler... so start advertising your services, support, and hourly rates for freepascal. And start even selling source code, programs, tools, components, plugins, clever re-branding and modifications (as Morfik is doing).. and start hammering away lots of professional 'this foopascal compiler kicks ass' reviews.

The possible transfer from Delphi over to FPC is impossible, without some possibilities and impossibilities. Understand? I thought so.

Now get to work. If I had more thousands of dollars, I'd hire many of you today.

Lots of people move to .NET/Ruby/C# because there is more money there than FPC. Admit it. It is a big important factor folks. Z505 Software will do everything it can to help... but understand that one company or two companies is not enough.

Imagine someone on Torry.net is currently selling a $325.99 component and they have the option to port it to Lazarus... once they port it to Lazarus they will not have any income since Lazarus components are a GNU Free Wet Dream. What benefit does Lazarus offer to someone who was previously selling a $325 component... now this author has to ditch his code and move to C# because the GNU Wet Dream isn't going to help him. Unless he cleverly figures out how to get his $325 from the same way GNAT gets its $325 or MySQL gets its $325... but the problem right now is that Foopascal doesn't even have support contracts avail.. except for a few companies like Z505, OptimaSC, Jason Sage's company, and a couple other freelancers.

What can Z505 do to help? Do I have to hold your hand and tell you what Foopascal needs and wipe your bum.. or will you go and build a professional site and put up a professional Resume right now? Do I have to build a website like Torry.net or delphipages.com where authors can advertise their Foopascal services? That is actually in the making.. and if you know me well enough you know that when I say things I mean them.. even if late at times. But still, this isn't going to magically solve the Foopascal money issue just by me making delphipages/torry style sites. The Foopascal community needs to take class action and show that FPC is worth lots of cash.. even if the Foopascal compiler itself does not cost any.

GNAT and MySQL restrict our speech by forcing us to pay for their support (we can get support elsewhere, so the support itself is not forced on us.. but the support from THEM is forced on us). And Foopascal needs these restrictions too.. you need to advertise that you do custom work for an hourly fee and custom coding and custom contracts and even custom programs, and even charge money for source.. go against freedom in some place and Foopascal WILL BE successful. Nothing is ideal and a holy grail. What is more important is that Foopascal is shown to be worth something.. proof of worth.. even if it is free source itself.

I am open to suggestions as someone has to be a man here and take charge.. but even if I take some charge and build a site four times as large as torry, it still won't help.. we have to be hard on ourselves and pump out more and more and more... it has to be more than five hundred and five efforts.