I wonder if that would work because, since FPC and Lazarus are open source, they cannot be "acquired". I believe, maybe incorrectly, that anyone could keep developing FPC/Lazarus rendering Embarcadero's acquisition a futile effort to eliminate a competitor. Is this not correct ?
I'd think that a corporate sponsorship comes with the corporate control. A project is no longer community controlled any more (even though it might look otherwise).
The bigger question is if anyone would even want to keep developing FPC/Lazarus.
The Pascal is far away from its past glory. The biggest thing that keeps it afloat is a codebase that still needs support (and has not yet been ported to C# or Java or whatever other trending language is).
If Embarcadero to acquire both projects (or even just FPC), would it scare away the community.
And if it is, would there be enough critical mass to assemble the same community around another project.