[AtlasBarfed]

It is entirely possible for something to be "ruined", and then open sourced as a last resort when the ship has long sailed for that being a useful tactic.

So while I haven't followed the ecosystem since Turbo Pascal for DOS (when I wrote a Battletech simulator over summer in college and had the entire runtime API committed to memory aside from pie graphs)..

My impression of it over the years is that it was closed source for way too long as whoever owned Delphi tried to ride its legacy paying customers as they dwindled to nothingness, and then open sourced it.

I have the same vague impression of smalltalk as well, but I never programmed in it.

[CRConrad]

Your impression is wrong: Delphi hasn't been "open sourced".