According The Register and other sources, Microsoft is rumored to be positioning itself to buy Borland.
Obviously, given Microsoft problems with its monopolistic position, such purchase would be problematic. By buying Borland, Microsoft would own the leading Java IDE, giving it effective control of that market. Or Microsoft could just use Borland’s know-how and kill its product line. In both instances, the market would stand to lose. A third possibility is that Microsoft wants TogetherSoft, recently bought out by Borland. Since IBM is after Rational, Microsoft may want to complement its tool offerings with a model-driven development tool.
I have used Borland tools for years starting with Turbo Pascal 5.5. Borland always represented a different quality of development; higher coding standards. Delphi developers are a passionate bunch. They love their language and tool, and I felt part of that community.
However, in the last two years since I came to work to the company I’m in now, I’ve used Microsoft products almost exclusively and lost touch with the Delphi community. Borland also changed. It’s now focusing not on the single developer, but on large enterprises. I still own a copy of Delphi, which I use at home, and read its newsgroups, but I don’t feel part of a Borland Nation, as in my earlier Delphi years.
But I hope Borland continues to exist as such. It did and does great application development tools and contributed a lot to the industry. May it live long and prosper.