[Cicero]

The early days of wild and piratical innovation, which Borland represented, seem to be over. A lot of small individual shareware people went out of business, too, with the shift to the 32-bit operating system. A few people have survived by sticking to a modest game plan, like Niko Mak and WinZip.

I'd love to see Oracle get its commupance.

[Blue Screen of Death]

I'd love to see Oracle get its commupance.

What? And put 23,000 sales associates and one programmer out on the street.

[tonyinv]

Borland doomed itself when it moved away from its core business, Development. Its got a great product in Delphi, and when they refocused on Development products a couple years ago, the future looked bright. I'm no business man, but even I can see that any company that needs to buy other companies for revenue is in trouble.

Borland's other problem, like most the industry is Microsoft. (I'm not Microsoft hater, I make my living off their products) Borland has a superior product with Delphi and with their Delphi-like Kylix, JBuilder, and CBuilder, but they just couldn't get them widely adopted. Microsoft works tirelessly to get coporations to either standardize on their products or to support their technologies.

The only thing thats keeping Delphi alive are the developers, although we are a dwindling breed. Alot of the shareware thats out there today is developed with Delphi. Its those developers that are getting companies to use Delphi as their development platforms, just not enough of them.

The only brightspot recently has been the deal between IBM and Borland for Kylix. If Linux really does take off, then borland might be in a better position. Especially with all us Delphi progammers moving over and feeling at home in Kylix.