From: fountai@hursley.ibm.com
Hi,
Wait a month and use Kylix (Delphi/C++Builder)
More than I month I suspect. They've been promising this for ages now and it's still vapourware. I've a feeling this one arrive eventually, but I wouldn't bank on anytime soon!
The 'official' line is Q1 2001, with the normal Borland disclaimer of 'When its ready' (They got stung by releasing a version of Delphi to suit 'financial' time frames, rather than development ones). As the beta testers are under NDA, nobody 'public' knows the real state of it, but I have it on good authority (<g>) that it is all but finished.
AFAIK the 'command line' compiler, and class libraries will be free, but the IDE, Debugger and other 'visual' stuff will cost around the same as the Windows versions.
Which is how much?
In UKP ... Standard Version - ?90 Professional Version - ?250 (Standard + Database Development Libraries); Enterprise Version - ?1700 (Professional + Web Development + Multi tier Development (CORBA etc.))
And wasn't there something in the news recently about "free for free-software-development" use?
I think this has been a real 'issue' for Borland, as they are a commercial company, and have spent 80+ man-years developing Kylix, and obviously need to make some money somewhere. They have always said that Kylix will be able to be used to develop 'free' software, and AFAIK they plan to 'open source' some of the class libraries, and make the rest of them, together with the complier 'free' to download, much like they have done with there 'Windows' C++ compiler and class libraries. This will mean that any Kylix project can be compiled and built at 'no cost', but to develop the software, you will have to use your favourite 'text editor' or purchase the IDE. Cheers Phil