Now this is the Borland I know and love! In a fiendishly clever move, they have released the Open Edition of Kylix for free. The catch is, everything you develop with it must be released to the general public under the terms of the Gnu Public License (GPL). And you have to release the source, and if you use someone else’s GPL’ed sources, the GPL license applies to the derivative work as well.

This ought to be a shot in the arm for Kylix, Borland, and Linux as well. And maybe a shot elsewhere for Microsoft? We can only hope.

Why is this a big deal? Because our high schools and community colleges turn out thousands upon thousands of proto-geeks every year. Due to Borland’s excellent educational purchase program, many of them have more experience with Pascal and its derivatives than any other language. And now here’s a way for them to move into the world of Linux and Open Source without spending a cent.

I am just tickled pink about this.