Re: Visual Studio 2005 Express in now permanently free...

Admittedly Microsoft is probably targetting Eclipse with this move, but it does impact Delphi...

Quite severely (IMHO) - by doing this, Microsoft has blanketed the hobby/freeware/shareware developer market. VS2005 is a good product, and the limits that exist in the Express editions probably will never have an impact on those developers.

When Borland had DB support in the 'Standard' edition of Delphi, it was the ultimate tool - it was well supported with 3rd party VCL controls, had the functionality to develop basically any type of app, and it was cheap. After discontinuing the Standard edition, and taking out DB support in the Personal versions, there was nothing left for this market segment in the Borland line up.

Delphi is (and, I hope, always will be) my tool of choice, but it's not an affordable solution for the shareware market, which if you look at all the software listed on Tucows, Download.com etc, is huge, and growing all the time. If DevCo were to re-instate lower end SKUs for smaller developers, MS has a big head start. If they do not do a low end SKU, then MS does present a big dillema to the developer - a good quality free tool, or a good quality paid tool (BDS). I know what I would choose of course, but for someone who has never tried Delphi, the financial angle might win out.

I am not comparing the languages themselves of course, since I would rather do something horrible to myself than work with VB etc :), but commenting more on the overall marketing.

Cheers,

Dave

--
David Ridgway : Manager
glyFX : Icons & graphics for developers : www.glyfx.com
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