History
Lazarus was started in February of 1999. It was primarily founded by
three individuals:
Cliff Baeseman
Shane Miller
Michael A. Hess
All three had attempted to get involved with the Megido project which
dissolved. In frustration they started the Lazarus project. It has had a steady
growth of supporters and developers during the following years. The founders
are not involved with the project any more.
The next oldest member of the team is Marc Weustink. He got involved
with the project in Aug. 1999. Following him is Mattias Gaertner who got
involved in Sept. 2000. Both of them have been the major contributors to the
core of what makes Lazarus tick. More about the history in the Wiki
So just what is Lazarus?
Lazarus is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Free Pascal. It
includes LCL which is more or less compatible with Delphi's VCL. Free Pascal is
a GPL'ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, 68K and more. Free Pascal is
designed to be able to understand and compile Delphi syntax, which is OOP.
Lazarus is the part of the missing puzzle that will allow you to develop Delphi
like programs in all of the above platforms. Unlike Java which strives to be a
write once run anywhere, Lazarus and Free Pascal strives for write once compile
anywhere. Since the exact same compiler is available on all of the above
platforms it means you don't need to do any recoding to produce identical products
for different platforms.
Yeah, but what about the GUI? What widget set are you using?
That is the neat part. You decide. Lazarus is being developed to be
totally and completely API independent. Once you write your code you just link
it against the API widget set of your choice. If you want to use GTK+, great!
If you want it to be Gnome compliant, great! As long as the interface code for
the widget set you want to use is available you can link to it. If it isn't
available, well you can write it.
For example. Let's say you are creating a product on Windows using the
standard Windows widgets. Now you want to create a Linux version. First you
decide what widget set you want to use. Let's assume you want to use gtk+. So
you copy the code over to your Linux development machine, compile, and link
against the gtk+ interface unit. That's it. You've now just created a Linux
version of the Windows product without any additional coding.
At this point in the development we are using Win32, gtk2+, Carbon and
QT as our API widget set. Bindings for custom drawn components are in the works
and other widget sets are planned, too.
So is this thing really RAD like Delphi?
It sure is. Is it totally completed? No not yet.The overall IDE is
complete and can be used for most programming needs. Several aspects of the
project are still in need of help. Hint. Hint.
Can I use my existing Delphi code?
Some of it yes. If the code is standard Delphi pascal and it uses the
standard components found in Delphi then the answer is yes. If it uses some
specific database, OCX, or DCU then the answer would be no. These items are
specific to Windows and would only work on and within Windows. However, if you
are only looking to create a Windows product using Free Pascal and Lazarus then
the answer would be yes. This hasn't been added to the LCL yet but it should be
possible in the future.
Can I create commercial products with this?
Yes. The code for the Free Pascal compiler is licensed under the GPL.
This means that it is open source, free, whatever name you want to stick to it.
You can modify the code if you wish but you MUST distribute those changes or
make them available to others if they wish to use it.
The FCL (Free Pascal Component Libraries) and the LCL (which will
eventually become part of the FCL) are licensed under a modified LGPL. In a nut
shell this means that you can write your own proprietary software that just
links to these libraries. You can sell your application without the need to
supply or make available your code. However, as with the compiler if you make
modifications to the FCL or LCL you must make those changes available to the
general public and the world.
I give up, where did the name come from?
One of the original projects that made an attempt to build a Delphi
clone was Megido. However this effort died. Lazarus as you know was the
biblical figure that was raised from the dead by Christ. Soooooo. The project
is named Lazarus as it was started/raised from the death of Megido.
