I don't think Lazarus is the problem.
Communication is, and that means blogging, our own githubs, launchpads etc, and the like. The ability to see documented source quickly with just a few clicks in the browser. Lots of links to documented source.
The precompiled component mindset from the Delphi world just isn't working here, given the fact of rapid changes in SVN.
Source is the most important, and that means sources to configurations, especially when it comes to installing components, building the IDE etc, and Redmine or something similar for SCM and project management. I often ran into unit not found issues when a simple Ctrl-Enter on the source file brings it up in the IDE, then I ask myself 'What is going on!!?? the file is right there!!'
There should be more use of preconfigured VMs as well, as it looks (from my newbie end) that the time required to set up an environment will take more time than it takes to locate and fix the problem. With Linux this shouldn't be a problem, but Windows licensing which makes it nigh impossible to have ready distributed VMs doesn't help a twit. Microsoft could help by making easing licensing restrictions on VMs used for developing, which it does for Visual Studio, unsurprisingly.
I do find it the Lazarus environment frustrating some times, but it works well. It is much more stable and reliable than I expected from a free development environment.
Not having a centralized source for components such as ruby's rubyforge doesn't help.
The look of the CSS on the wiki doesn't help, neither does that on this wiki. I find myself surprised at the quality of the stuff when I see how the community web sites look. Do Delphi/Freepascal users have an aversion to WordPress, Drupal, or many of the other tools out there? The FreePascal/Lazarus community is in need for Web 2.0 make over. Fluff matters.
Announcements often do not contain links to demos and blogs. It comes down to blogs, blogs, blogs. The Developer Blog has had only one new article since the beginning of this year. No one would know how good Lazarus is from seeing that. Announcements could really do with a proper website.
I also feel that perhaps Lazarus developers should focus more on the Linux environment then port to Windows, I think Windows is too well served by Delphi if the user is willing to pay. I find myself using Lazarus rather than Delphi because I suspect that if I get back into Delphi habit, I will find the the going so easy that I won't be tempted to contribute to Lazarus, and Lazarus is good.
I think professional/commercial developers ought to blog more about their use of Lazarus. They may not be willing for commercial reasons but Lazarus does need that.
My 2 euro cents. I could contribute more than 2, but not everyone would want to keep reading for that long.
I'm really getting sick of lazarus and all the free (i.e., worthless) components out there. I understand that a lot of people have put a lot of effort into porting things over to lazarus, but please don't throw it out there IF IT DOESN'T WORK. The whole promise of lazarus is multiplatform, but everybody seems to forget that when putting out components. It's supposed to be an easy process, just write your code on one machine and when you're happy with it, just transfer the code to the other OS and recompile it again. Other than : showmessage('hello world'); for a program, absolutely nothing works on more than one platform. ZEOS has a wonderful set of database components that I used to put together a rather lengthy program on win32, but it's not 'write once compile anywhere' it's really 'WRITE ONCE, THEN SCREW WITH IT FOR WEEKS ON END TRYING TO EVER GET IT TO WORK ON ANY OTHER MACHINE ON THE PLANET.' Orpheus, is same animal, works fine on win32, but try putting IT on any other machine and even getting it to compile. Nothing in this whole environment works 'out of the box'. Did I miss somethng or is 64bit Linux a thing of the past and not to be dealt with. I haven't even approached the MAC problems yet, other than my first attempt at a simple 'hello world' which worked until i put in a calendar dialog. This is never going to fly at this rate. I'm ready to just give up on linux and mac cross platform, and then at that point why in hell would I ever mess with lazarus instead of just buying Delphi where almost everything does work 'out of the box' That's all for my rant tonight. I'm sure things will get better with time,