I really like REm Objects, In fact I was a big promoter between 2002 and 2004 when the company was not very well know.
Its a good option if you want to go native.
If you want to do WEb Apps,and hybrids,IW17 is the way to go(and they have plans for Lazarus)
But I think Lazarus is doing well with the few resources it has.
Brazil is under its worst financial crisis ever, I was not involved with coding from 2008 to 2015,So I left a lot of Lazarus history.
But during this time I have donated to some projects,both me,and the companies I worked for.
I don know if its your case,but people pays 3500 on Delphi,but don t contribute with u$200 dollars for a open source project.
I think two things are slowing down Lazarus.
First-There a re thousands of well succeed companies who don't want to leave object Pascal,because they have millions invested in it,and because they can get the work done with anything else(DElphi and Lazarus are still the best tool for those who believe in datacentric rather than domain model approach),but they dont want to state this,they dont want to get involved with it.
It like going to the supermarket with slippers.
SO basically, if someone can glue fpc/Lazzarus with those that have economical interest in it,it would help a lot.
I still don know what Iḿ going to do in the future,but If Iḿ going to use Lazarus,Iĺl do the same noise I did for REm Objects, and IW17.
Second,Lazarus is a bad name,Simple as that,excuse me for being so direct.
It means something that was once dead and came to live again,it would be bad for a car,or a refrigerator,but its even worst for a computer related technology, people want to be related to new things,fresh,fast,fun.pleasure ideas,its marketing.
Maybe we the programmers dont take it in consideration(At least consciously),but many companies wont adopt it if they dont think its cool, it affects even DElphi where the whole propaganda says its old fashioned.
Something like FEPC-Fast environment for Pascal Coding,or anything like that.
Marcello