Quo vadis, GPC?

27 Jul 2010

      Hi everybody,

since GPC development has mostly stalled, I've thought about if and
how its development could be continued. Here are my current thoughts
about it. Since the text is quite long, I put it on the web:
http://fjf.gnu.de/gpc-future.html

As I write there, I don't see much future in the current way of
developing GPC, but also alternative development models will not be
a task for a single person. In other words, without some new
contributors, there is probably no chance for GPC development to
continue.

I don't really know how many of you currently use GPC, and to what
extent and in which ways, e.g., do you use it just to maintain some
legacy code, or are you actively writing new applications?

So in order to tell whether continuing GPC development is
worthwhile, I'd like to know who of you would actually care about
major new features in GPC (as opposed to just preserving the status
quo), and who would be interested not only in using GPC, but also
supporting its continued development, either by actively
contributing to it, or -- perhaps in the case of companies that use
GPC -- by paying for continued development.

If it turns out there is no sufficient amount of interest, I'm
afraid to say it's probably better to put an end to it now rather
than further dragging along. (Of course, the existing GPC versions
will continue to be available, and anyone who wants to can use and
modify them, which the GPL already guarantees, but without prospects
for the future, I would then retire from GPC development and start
to rewrite my own Pascal programs in other languages.)

Frank

-- 
Frank Heckenbach, f.heckenbach@fh-soft.de, http://fjf.gnu.de/, 7977168E
GPC To-Do list, latest features, fixed bugs:
http://www.gnu-pascal.de/todo.html
GPC download signing key: ACB3 79B2 7EB2 B7A7 EFDE  D101 CD02 4C9D 0FE0 E5E8

Frank Heckenbach

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