Tales from the scene #4 - Freebies

Has anyone wondered why nobody in Delphi community gives free components anymore? Your reviewer, DelphiHater will tell very dark tale.

Replying to Mr. DelphiLover (or one of Mr. DelphiLover's friends et al). there's always some kind of community project which for some reason, would require paid components and paid libraries, some free webhosting.

(Don't be surprised that one of Mr. Delphi Lover's friends/ or himself is organizing one right now...)

The tale goes back 8 or 9 years ago, in the wild, wild west of the internet. Many years ago, the there were these kind souls which would want to make those open-source projects and then use a bit of "paid" Delphi libraries here and there, and then post on their website they used this or that, etc.

In those days, there were plenty of open-source projects going along, when it seemed better to make open-source projects and somehow, paid libraries got in the way of doing business. Some kind souls would ask those paid-libraries vendors for a free version of their product in return for some blurb on their website that they used this, that, etc.

Some of those suckers were Mr. Tim Young (ElevateSoft), Mr. Glenn Couch (ESB Consult), Mr. Franciso Sanchez (Billenium Effects), Mr. Serge (Dream Company), Mr. Roy Woll (Woll2Woll) and Mr. Ray N. (DevExpress), Mr. Serge (TRichView), Mr. Mike S. (Scalabium), Mr. Vincent P. (of AToZed) to name a few.

The tale would go in this manner, there are kind souls who wants to make an open-source product and had some fetish "need" for using paid libraries and asked in return to make products which would benefit everyone.

What happened was opposite instead. Anyone remembers those days when the vendor released it, a few days later, the "free" version of his products would start floating around?

One of the vendors who got poor sales was Billenium Effects, Mr. Franciso Sanchez. He "used" to entertain those requests for free versions until he (and some other vendors) registered himself into those "Delphi Forums" and found the same culprit releasing his product for free... One of the more outspoken vendors, Mr. Vincent (AToZed) posted on the newsgroup about it. The word spread around, and from what DelphiHater knows, that kind soul (et al), lost almost all his "licenses".

Now you know why nobody gives free licenses, even for open-source projects...

... and, coming back to DelphiHater's reply to DelphiLover's question, the last version that was leaked out from ElevateSoft was DBISAM v4.28, and since the leak was shut down (wonder why?) there have been no leaks since then.

For AdinExpress, the files were watermarked. your reviewer, DelphiHater compared his version of AdinExpress 2007/2008/2009 files to DelphiLover's AdinExpress 2007 "free" to know that...

For DvaExpress, nobody is paid subscriber, otherwise, they would know about the components posted as attachment to DvaExpress private forums. They are interesting and useful.

DelphiHater can easily get support from Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Cornelius and Mr. Diman. and access more expensive libraries, such as Kaka Ez-PlanIt.

до встречи,

:)