Category: News

There has been a lot of fuss lately about the lack of openness on apple’s platform.  There is still time for things to change, and hopefully this ends as a win for developers and consumers, but unless Apple changes their tune there will be no winners, only losers.

The general consensus among the developers falls into two camps:

1. Apple should open their platform and let people develop however they want.
2. Objective-C and XCode is all roses, why use anything else?

Personally I fall in the first camp (which you probably guessed from my opening paragraph.)  I think it would be great if Apple’s platforms were open and I could use most any tool as long as I called the correct API and use the right UI controls.

At the same time I disagree with those who believe laws should be passed, or lawyers retained to regulate how open Apple makes their platform, all in the name of freedom.  I’ve got news for you, freedom means Apple can decide to not have an open platform.

I may disprove of Apple’s actions, but I will defend their right to do it.  That is what is known as freedom, and I will not give up freedom for the benefit of openness.  If I want openness to be an option in the future, then that means allowing Apple the freedom to have a closed platform today.

Giving up freedom for openness means loosing both.

Voltaire wrote “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too,” which Evelyn Beatrice Hall summarized as “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Ben Franklin said “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power,” which was later paraphrased as “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

Seeking to take away Apple’s freedom for the sake of openness is to sacrifice the very freedom that allows others to make open platforms.  So if we take away that freedom and we give up our freedom to be open.

I’ll just remind you of Hodges 1st Law before someone makes another car analogy, they don’t work anyway.

Today is Cary Jensen‘s birthday, and all he wants is your Unicode migration stories.  He is putting together a white paper on Unicode migration, and he needs your stories: both success and horror stories.  He hopes to capture what the migration was like in the real world, to help others who are also migrating to Unicode.  So you give him a present, and we all benefit!

The call is out for Unicode migration stories. If you have encountered a Unicode-related challenge migrating your existing applications to Delphi 2009 or later, other Delphi developers have the opportunity to learn from your success.

Author and Delphi developer Cary Jensen is looking for real-world stories about Unicode migration for inclusion in a white paper on migrating Delphi applications to Unicode. With your input, this white paper should serve as a valuable resource for the entire Delphi community.

What Cary needs are brief descriptions of the challenge or challenges that you encountered, along with your solutions. He will mention your name in the white paper if he includes your story (unless you want to remain anonymous).

Cary is a great guy, and he does so much for all of us, so why don’t you send him a nice birthday present of a Unicode migration story.  You don’t need to gift wrap it, or even put candles on it.  If you are feeling festive when you are done, then you can eat a slice of cake (or whatever you do to celebrate) in his honor.

While today, November 5th is his Birthday, he is accepting gifts through November 27th, but the sooner the better!