Free Pascal and Lazarus foundation

[hnb]

"Foundation" is a registered official legal entity. Initially using the word with NewPascal was factually wrong because you did not have a legal foundation. Once you register it then you can use the word.
However I ask you to hold it back now. We must have a well organized system that truly supports the projects and which is widely accepted by its developers and users.
Just creating competing foundations will not bring anything good.

I agree. I can wait a little more. Hypothetical NewPascal foundation might be focused on other areas like more mobile platforms, Lazarus integration plugins/tools for mORMot. Maybe still will be possible to create non competitive foundation registered as official legal entity, anyway I will drop idea for some time.

But I have one short term plan: I will start to post info about all donated beers (some photo?) for more transparent donations process in NewPascal!

Anyway I sympathize you Maciej. First you were seriously attacked by the horrible Jon Lennart person with claims like "open source means no business".
Then you got negative feedback from Boian.
In both cased you had first created good, innovative SW that improved things. Why it all happened? Quite amazing!
High quality code is a Holy thing in a programming project, attacking it is a big Sin. 

Probably you don't know about my ban in Delphi G+ group. I was banned just because I putted notification about Generics.Collections Delphi compatible library for FPC and some small improvements dedicated for Delphi users for Lazarus in NewPascal release. Ofc. I was forced to read again something like "I did make one mistake at the time – banning Maciej – which was uncalled for.".

 ... It starts to be funny.

[Groffy]

No FOSS project has become good and popular by paying bounties for selected features. It was mentioned also by mORMot developer A. Bouchez in the foundation Google+ page. He used Linux kernel as an example.
Paying a small salary for a developer so he does not need to find other work may be more effective.
Still, I think a foundation's the main purpose should be advertising and publicity. The code is typically created for other reasons than money.

Just a few more words about a possible structure of a Lazarus foundation

The Firebird foundation is based on payed annual memberships. Only these voting members are making decisions. This structure is somehow based on the idea that the interests of the professional (paying) users have more weight than the whishes and ideas of the non paying users. Furthermore this means the idea of making Firebird important and relevant is, to bring it into the professional world. Once its established there, it will be more and more supported also from 3th party companies.

The question is, is it possible (and more important - wanted from the current Lazarus/fps users) to adapt this for Lazarus/fpc and bring it back into the professional world? Is this the way Lazarus/fpc wants to go?


Best regards

[JuhaManninen]

The question is, is it possible (and more important - wanted from the current Lazarus/fps users) to adapt this for Lazarus/fpc and bring it back into the professional world? Is this the way Lazarus/fpc wants to go?

"back into the professional world" ... Do you mean it was professional earlier but is no more?
Of course professional is good. A professional product is good enough for anything. A hobby project means it is not very good.

[avra]

Is Boian Mitov related to Lazarus, because on his youtube channel there is no video or discussion related to Lazarus.

He has 3 messages in this forum (last in 2011):
http://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=17699

He made an effort to make his OpenWire work with Lazarus:
http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/pipermail/lazarus/2009-October/046086.html

He started to extensively use new Delphi language features so in 2012 he dumped Lazarus and all Delphi versions before XE2:
http://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,23902.msg143367.html#msg143367

[Groffy]

"back into the professional world" ... Do you mean it was professional earlier but is no more?
Of course professional is good. A professional product is good enough for anything. A hobby project means it is not very good.

You are right, this is somehow unclear from my side. Furthermore I don't have an objective point of view because I'm coming from the delphi world back in the 1990th. I have no knowledge about how much delphi at that time were used for professional programming. Since 2006 I started working at first with VB6 (that language was for me a huge step back) now with C#. One of our big customer has still a fully automated inspection system running which is programmed in delphi 5. One day this machine will just disappear, and with it a piece of professional delphi programming.

I see Lazarus/fpc taking over the legacy of delphi (I wrote about that somewhwere else in that forum, so I don't want to repeat it) and trying to replace the last pieces of professional delphi programming. The more companies using Lazarus/fpc the more 3rd party companies will invest time and money to bring additional products (right now TMS software is doing excactly this) Establishing "professional" structures inside the Lazarus project are important to encourange companies to trust Lazarus/fpc as a long term foundation for their work.

I'm not a PR professional, so the only other way I could imagine is, to start from the very beginning and bring Lazarus/fpc into schools and universities, hoping that the studends will stick with the language and tools they learned with. To say the truth, I'm not really optimistic in taking this way.

I'm following Lazarus and its community here in that forum now for several years and there is so far no huge evidence that the community members are desperate to change any structures. There are nearly everytime the same handful of highly motivated people who are doing the work, preparing the releases, comitting patches. Thats maybe ok for now, but I'm afraid that one day these people will disappear and with them a lot of project knowledge and motivation. Then starting to think about changing Lazarus project structure will be too late.

Best regards

[JuhaManninen]

... Maybe a foundation can play that role if it can actually raise money, but I would never think of a foundation as being involved in advertising or publicity. In the U.S. most public universities have foundations, but these are largely behind-the-scenes support organizations that take care of things that would be distractions from the university's core educational and research missions. They're not PR machines.

A university and a FOSS project are two different things.
A foundation of a FOSS project can help fund and organize meetings, coding sprints, trade shows and collaboration with companies and other FOSS projects. It can pay advertisements, too.
That makes it pretty close to a "PR machine".

BTW, I found some finance info for the KDE's foundation, KDE e.V., for 2015 at the end here:
 https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2015H2/
The data is not very detailed. It says "Akademy, sprints and meetings" cost some 57,602€. It is a big project and has many meetings around the world.
I believe it, as a legal foundation, must have also more detailed bookkeeping somewhere.

[JuhaManninen]

I'm following Lazarus and its community here in that forum now for several years and there is so far no huge evidence that the community members are desperate to change any structures. There are nearly everytime the same handful of higly motivated people who are doing the work, preparing the releases, comitting patches. Thats maybe ok for now, but I'm afraid that one day these people will disappear and with them a lot of project knowledge and motivation. Then starting to think about changing Lazarus project structure will be too late.

You confuse now the work done by a foundation with the actual SW development process which works rather well. It has meritocracy and rules for being responsible for your own code etc.
The foundation would not change that process. It could potentially lead to more contributions which is nice but still would not change the "project structure". Bounties or even a payed developer would not change it.
Some developers disappeared and some others joined. That's how life goes.
Do you see a problem with the development process? How to improve it?

[Groffy]

Do you see a problem with the development process? How to improve it?

I really can't say anything about the quality of the development process, right now it seems running pretty well. There is always room for improvements. Better documentation...? I know there is a Wiki and everybody can contribute...but for somebody new who takes a look on Lazarus a good documentation can be crucial. Its an awful amount of work, to keep every topic on the same level and keep track with every new release. Perfect work for somebody external who get paid for this...(?)

To come back to the idea of a possible new structure of a "Lazarus foundation" , should this foundation officially represents the Lazarus project? If not, who is doing this right now? If you want to keep the foundation completely separated from the existing Lazarus developing process and its decision makers, who will decide what to do with possible donations? I think it will be hard to keep both structure completely independent from each other, I think there will be (and there should be) intersections of the decision makers from both - Lazarus project and "The Lazarus foundation" If decisions are transparent and public to the community it could be a good symbiosis.


Best regards

[JuhaManninen]

Better documentation...?

Yes, that would be a perfect candidate for a (rather big) bounty.

To come back to the idea of a possible new structure of a "Lazarus foundation" , should this foundation officially represents the Lazarus project?

The current existing one is "Free Pascal and Lazarus foundation". The idea is to represent both projects.

If not, who is doing this right now?

The developers and active users, as you can see in this forum and in mailing list.

If you want to keep the foundation completely separated from the existing Lazarus developing process and its decision makers, who will decide what to do with possible donations? I think it will be hard to keep both structure completely independent from each other, I think there will be (and there should be) intersections of the decision makers from both - Lazarus project and "The Lazarus foundation" If decisions are transparent and public to the community it could be a good symbiosis.

Yes sure.
I guess you know about decision making in Firebird foundation which is your ideal.
Incidentally, it is the ideal also for Michael Van Canneyt, one of the 3 members of "Free Pascal and Lazarus foundation".
I exchanged mails with him which I should have done earlier. The foundation is not dead and some of the information I myself and Maciej gave is incorrect. I will write a correction tomorrow. Now I am tired ...

Anyway, please use this e-mail address to ask details from Michael V.C. himself.
 foundation@freepascal.org
It is listed also here: https://foundation.freepascal.org/contact

If you were suggesting SW features, I would ask for a patch, first telling you where the relevant code is.
I cannot tell about running a foundation but Michael V.C. can. The biggest problem also there is lack of contributors. Can you please help him?
Please remember that a foundation does not magically turn things into well organized and systematic. That all needs people to work. A foundation is mainly a tool to manage money. As long as your actions do not need (much) money, you can do them easier without a foundation.

[JuhaManninen]

So, the correction:
Boian Mitov was not the original primus motor for the foundation. It was Detlef Overbeek, the editor-in-chief of Blaise Pascal magazine, together with Michael Van Canneyt.
Detlef registered the foundation and has used his own money in the process.
Boian Mitov came in later motivated by his own business needs and the anticipated demise of Delphi. He essentially sped up the process so the foundation went live before its members were ready.
There are different views about what pushed it to go live. It was either Maciej's NewPascal project or Embarcadero firing its Spanish team, but who cares really.

One more correction: Maciej was not kicked out from the Google+ group by Boian Mitov but by Michael Van Canneyt. He admits it was an over-reaction and he quitted the group later.
Now Maciej is also a FPC developer. There is tension as he clearly needs more freedom to improvise than some others, but I hope and believe the end result will be good.

I feel uncomfortable now after writing false information. Facts should always be right, especially when critisising somebody.
However the other concerns about the foundation are still valid:

- It looks dead from outside. Michael Van Canneyt says he prefers e-mail communication and will reply to foundation@freepascal.org. It does not sound realistic. Should everybody ask him by e-mail: "Is the foundation dead?"
Then he would reply to each one separately "No it is not."
Anybody interested, please write to him about the situation.

- Boian Mitov is not interested in FPC / Lazarus projects any more now that Delphi's future seems secure, yet he still is the official "Treasurer".
The foundation members should be enthusiastic or at least interested in the projects they represent.

The important fact anyway is the foundation is alive and has high goals for future. Contributors are needed also there. Currently e-mail is the best way to contact.

[Groffy]

- It looks dead from outside. Michael Van Canneyt says he prefers e-mail communication and will reply to foundation@freepascal.org. It does not sound realistic. Should everybody ask him by e-mail: "Is the foundation dead?"
Then he would reply to each one separately "No it is not."

Thank you for clearing that up and informing the community. Obviously the foundation has a comunication problem, at least into the community direction. Would be a [Foundation] section here in the Lazarus forum be possible and accepted as comunication platform by Michael Van Canneyt?


With best regards

[JuhaManninen]

Would be a [Foundation] section here in the Lazarus forum be possible and accepted as comunication platform by Michael Van Canneyt?

Don't ask me. Ask Michael Van Canneyt directly.
Did you write to him already? ... Why not?