Friday, March 1, 2013

Embarcadero DROPS Anydac support for Linux

Embarcadero buy Anydac company and transform to Firedac product. They promise two weeks ago to ENHANCE this libraries, Dmirty Areiev (former anydac developer) also promise that. Great news right?

The bad news are old anydac customers, you lost! Fpc/Lazarus users you lost too! You have a linux server working with anydac? Sorry: Game over!

Sorry folks, I'm really shocked for that. We invested a lot of time on make anydac work for linux and nobody care, and nobody will pay for this.

Edit: You just can work with the old code from any dad, the future releases probably work, probably don't. your mileage can vary.


Unknown said...

Sad news. Yes, Embarcadero seems to be driven only by profit.

Anonymous said...

Given the track record of Embarcadero "acquisitions", even Delphi users that are currently using AnyDAC should start looking for another alternative.

Exhibit A is Bold. Bold was a revolutionary ORM at the time, was purchased by Borland and bundled with Delphi Enterprise (so as to try to make Bold users to upgrade to Enterprise, and afterwards keeping updating, just as they are doing now with AnyDAC), and, after a while, simply was dropped.

Bold users were left without a path to update their applications - you could not even try to update the components yourself, as they did not include all the source code.
Worse, from time to time word came from Embarcadero that they were close to arriving at a solution for their stranded users. It turned out, however, that they (specially Mssrs Nick Hodges and David I) were only creating uncertainty and doubt, as there were never any solution, and they have never given any details. Shame on them.

Other example is TPNGObjects, that was available to all as open source, but Embarcadero "close-sourced" it, so to try to make people upgrade.

So it is clear that Embarcadero does not care about their users, just about extracting as much as possible of their money. This, however, is not sustainable, and soon almost no one will be using Delphi. For my part, I will use Lazarus/FPC in any new project.

alcalde said...

@Roland: To be more specific, they're driven by short-term immediate profit at the expense of sustainable profit and growth.

Everyone does lose with this acquisition. Originally Embarcadero tried to get everyone to use the more expensive SKUs by changing the EULA to prevent database access from Pro. When that failed, they've now purchased one of the most popular 3rd party alternatives to dbExpress and have integrated it into Enterprise/Architect. While the introductory price of FireDAC is $399USD (same as AnyDAC) this is scheduled to rise by $100 in the future, and that's not counting the $150 they want for support. That means all existing Pro users will lose, and Enterprise users (what few of them there are) are getting something better, but if they preferred AnyDAC to dbExpress they probably would have gone the Pro/AnyDAC route in the first place. On the other hand, if Embarcadero scraps dbExpress (not much point in having redundant database drivers) then existing Enterprise/dbExpress users also lose. It looks like in the long run no one wins except the fellow who sold AnyDAC. Even then he'll probably come to regret it.

What's also terrible is the way FreePascal is being treated. When Embarcadero needed an ARM compiler right away, they went and used FPC and didn't contribute any of their profits or even a line of code to the project in return. Now that they've bought AnyDAC, they're not only dropping FPC support but their EULA forbids using the product outside of their own commercial tools. Nice way to repay the community!

I'd like to think that this could be played up in the open source community; especially the EULA restriction. Even Microsoft doesn't expressly forbid someone trying to run Office or one of their other software packages on Linux with the WINE compatibility libraries. The headline "Embarcadero forbids products to be used with open source" would be quite catchy, don't you think? :-) Maybe Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman might even weigh in. Perhaps the way they employed FPC in XE2 will be scrutinized very, very carefully.....

But for everyone else, the conclusion might be it's time to choose open source development tools. You don't have diabolical plots, EULAs extoll your rights rather than your limitations, and the products are controlled by the community. With the threat of forking, there's no reward to being evil. There's no way the end users can be controlled, and better still they get to have a say in the development of the products. Instead of angry, bitter fanboys with a "siege mentality" running the message boards, you'll find growing, thriving, friendly communities where anyone can propose changes and have their say in the future of the product. Everything is done in the open; there's no NDAs, no secret roadmaps, no David I.'s to revise history. It's quite a different experience and a much less stressful and more pleasant one. One can actually spend more time fighting code than fighting the corporation that controls one's development tools!

donaldshimoda said...

Alcalde, your comment really sinthetize my feelings about all that s***. Great post!

AplíkmUj said...

@acalde. EMB are making profits. That's ok. The AnyDAC acquisition is not an overnight activity. EMB did not acquire AnyDAC overnight to bump up their sales on a short term.

The fellow who sold will very likely not regret it. The fellow was not dependent on AnyDAC before and not now. It's simply about adding value to Delphi and C++ Builder on a short term and strengthen Delphi DB.

Do you know what EMB sell - EMB.

The 'whole' Delphi ECO system is on .net already.

EMB also does not grow a nice Delphi community. All vendors have to provide an ECO system and a developer community... this is something no vendor escape so simple.

There is no need to mention that Tony De La Lam grew the Java Business from 25 mio to 100 millions if you are aiming at selling your products to the mouse developer. Nothing wrong with growing the business.

EMB are influential. They also on-boarded the Vice President for Christmas but in April. Christmas in April - this is Delphi. When the Easter Bunny meets Santa Claus - when things come to full circle.

EMB offer EMB. btw: If EMB decides to change something, they simply buy another business. They do not need to grow one from scratch - IT world does not work this way.

Of course on day someone will come and say, 'We look back on a long history of Delphi with pride but times have changed and now we invite you a lot bigger opportunity to participate in another decade of amazing things to come'. Microsoft called this Win32, Win64 or Azure, Office 365 others call this ABAP Stack next generation ... - this is commercial IT.

You are totally correct with open source. 3 years ago I decided to move to open source. To me the response to IP madness in the IT world in general is to move to another license model. Linux is here in various flavors, Apple is back, the web technologies deeply influence the way applications and technologies evolve.

Kyle A. Miller said...

I don't understand this post. Lazarus and Free Pascal lose AnyDac support. How is this audience EMB's customers? EMB customers use Delphi.

So you say EMB purchased AnyDac, so they are responsible for AnyDac's customers. That's true to an extent. They should take care of AnyDac's customers because they are EMB's now. But, they are not responsible for supporting competing products.

If you don't like the situation, maybe you should focus your anger on Dmirty Areiev. He sold the company. Of course, he also designed the product you love. I guess that makes it difficult.

Unidac is always an option. Devart makes great products.

alcalde said...

@Kyle A. Miller:
>Free Pascal lose AnyDac support. How
>is this audience EMB's customers? EMB
>customers use Delphi.

This audience is *AnyDAC's* customers. Free Pascal users no longer have the option to continue to buy AnyDAC/FireDAC. Embarcadero sells a rebranded version of Rem Objects' Pascal for .Net, don't they? They have their HTML5 builder and JBuilder, don't they? They sell Interbase, which interfaces with languages other than Delphi, don't they? Microsoft sells Office for the Mac, doesn't it? There's no logical reason to legally lock FireDAC into Delphi/C++ Builder other than if it was purchased specifically to drive users to the higher SKU's or the C/S pack. Otherwise, selling to as broad a range of customers as possible (including FPC users) would make sense.

>But, they are not responsible for
>supporting competing products.

The only thing they need to support is FireDAC, not "competing products". If a customer is using Lazarus instead of Delphi, then you've already lost that customer on the IDE/compiler front. The question is whether you want to make any profit from them on the database driver front or write them off entirely. Most people would not insist that the customer must by everything from them or nothing. By that logic, FireDAC should only include a driver for Interbase! Since it doesn't, that argument falls flat.

Lazarus/FPC is non-profit, not competition. If it is competition, it's somewhat humiliating then that EMB needed to use it in XE2, isn't it? Lazarus didn't amend their license to prevent this, did they?

>If you don't like the situation, maybe
>you should focus your anger on Dmirty
>Areiev. He sold the company.

He didn't make this decision though.

>Unidac is always an option. Devart
>makes great products.

Meanwhile people are using FPC and AnyDAC on production Linux servers because EMB has no intention of supporting Linux in the forseeable future. This hardly makes FPC "competition" because EMB has written off this segment of the market. Meanwhile, this move means that they'll need to rewrite their applications if they switch to a different tool. Wouldn't you be upset too?

Unknown said...

do not vry for ANYDAC,
use ZEOS instead of it

Unknown said...


I recently renewed my license for anydac. But...

What I am doing is migrating to devart. I'm using IBDAC and pgdac and works perfectly in fpc 64-bit (centos 6.3)

Anonymous said...

In the long run, this move will probably hurt Delphi and EmBorCodeGear-o.... Lazarus/FPC should be both the entry point into and the escape route out of Delphi. It has a thriving community of developers that could attract new users for Delphi's higher-end tools. Embarcadero would need to maintain higher quality and consistency but also support Lazarus/FPC. XE2's reliance on FPC on the MAC is testimony to this fact. It is for very sound reasons that companies absolutely do not (and should not) want to use Delphi for any new project developments. Who wants to be stuck with a proprietary tool-chain controlled by a single entity with a reputation like Embarcadero, even among its own customers? Embarcadero must be a short-sighted IT investment entity to behave this way, and people like David I may be too close to retirement age to really care.