Open Source Blog

Vokes told me the group counts around 3.2 million users as its customers, in 29 countries. Perhaps even more to the point, it hasn’t been afraid of keeping up with the latest developments. Last year it launched a number of new products including JBuilder 2007 and JGear plug-ins based on Eclipse, Delphi for PHP and Delphi for Win32, C++Builder 2007, and a new Ruby on Rails product called 3rdRail.

Earlier this year it also announced a new Delphi/400 product line for modernizing System i applications, a new version of 3rdRail which includes Rails 2.0 support and a new Ruby fast debugger that has also contributed back to open source – to Eclipse Foundation’s Dynamic Language Toolkit. It also launched JBuilder 2008 with Application Factories.

All of that development work no doubt helped it win one of its biggest customers to date in EMEA earlier this year, signing a million seat license deal to the Russian Federal Agency of Education for teaching programming and application development to Russian students. OK, it may not be quite the same as a Fortune 500 firm making CodeGear its tools vendor of choice, but it's a big deal nonetheless.

As for Delphi, a venerable development tool with one of the most loyal and committed user groups of any software product, Vokes insisted that the firm will continue to invest in the technology so those customers retain a viable roadmap. He said CodeGear would launch a new version of Delphi, code-named Tiburon after a Californian town, in the second half of this year.

Vokes said that version extends Delphi Win32 and .NET with full support for Unicode, Generics in Win32 and updates to the VCL (visual component library).

In a live chat session between CodeGear and Embarcadero senior management and CodeGear’s customers last month, one user asked: “"Will the deal cause any further delays in the release of Tiburon?" The firm simply answered, “no”.

As for why Embarcadero wanted CodeGear, it argues that the acquisition will, “Create the world’s largest, platform-independent software provider of database and application development tools.”

One user on the recent live chat session asked the question on everyone’s lips: “What can CodeGear community members expect from Embarcadero, in terms of investment in the IDE products?"

Embarcadero’s CEO Wayne Williams was refreshingly honest in his reply: “Before Embarcadero went private, we had a change in direction to focus on large deals. We spent a lot of R&D time in that area, and that focus didn't work at all. We realized it just in time. We love the tools, and turned the ship to focus on building the tools. We have twice the R&D capacity that we had before. I would expect that same focus for CodeGear tools, to be focused on development.”

One user asked, “Does the platform independent streak mean we may see a return of Delphi for Linux?”, to which Williams answered, “I'm still getting my head around a lot of these things. Platform independence is critical, so the concept of targeting multiple operating systems is certainly one we invest in R&D to service.”

As for the rest of CodeGear’s roadmap as it stood before its acquisition, there is a new version of C++Builder code-named Barracuda on the way; and a project supporting development on 64-bit Windows – both for Delphi, C++Builder and with VCL support – code-named Commodore. If you didn’t get the pun in the code name, the Commodore 64 was one of the most popular home computers in the pre-PC era.

At least one punter was happy after the recent live chat: “I don't know what you've done to the sound, but it's gone from the unusable mush I have had in past InterWise conferences to today's ‘clear as a bell’. Many thanks.”

I’ll be keeping an eye on Embarcadero’s progress as it integrates the CodeGear biz.