Github keyword lang:delphi, lang:pascal shows an approximate count of Delphi and FreePascal users.
There are 16,500 developers who identify as Delphi developers.
There seems to be more users who identify with Pascal than Delphi.
There are approximately 2.6 million Python developers with more than 17 million repositories.
The number of Pascal users is less than 1% of Python’s user-base.
Estimated total number of Delphi developers
Given there are estimated 28.7 million developers1 and English and Latin-alphabet script (Portugese, Spanish, French, Norwegian, etc.) represents 0.65% of the world’s speaking population2 (i.e., approx 500 million of 8 billion), Github would represent 10% of the public repositories.
Where are the missing 90% ? Several Delphi developers use Gitlab, Bitbucket, some use SVN or Mercurial. Dinosaur developer developers use ADA - a variant of Pascal, legacy StarTeam and even CVS version control.
China-based gitee.com boasts 8 million developers (approximately 20,000 Delphi developers), CSDN boasts 10 million registered developers.
An estimate of 5x to 7x multiplier to 25,000 pascal users provides an interesting number - 125,000 - 175,000 developers for C++ Builder and Delphi.
An estimate of 125,000 to 175,000 developers would result in estimated $66.25m - 92.75m in renewals ($530/year) and estimated 20,000 new registrations per year (between US$1,599 to US$5999) brings in an estimated 120 million (best-case - everyone buys Delphi Architect) to 31 million (worst-case - everyone buys Delphi Pro).
Funnily enough, given the number of compliance fines, some reaching hundreds of thousands (see legal filings) of US$200,000 per case, prosecuting pirates produces extra millions for Embarcadero.3
Delphi on a shoestring
Where does all the money flow to? A recent filing by IDERA in 2021 shows a 1.117 billion-dollar loan4 and 100 million revolving credit.
Instead of investing in Delphi, IDERA has been buying companies - WholeTomato, UltraEdit, Froala, Sencha and many companies under M&A radar.
Parts of UltraEdit and WholeTomato are integrated into RadStudio’s editor.
What do you think of this new estimate of number of Delphi users?
https://distantjob.com/blog/how-many-developers-are-in-the-world/
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world
https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/53863514/NCR_Voyix_Corporation_v_Embarcadero_Technologies_Europe_Limited
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/idera-wraps-1-117b-1st-lien-350m-2nd-lien-term-loans-tight-of-talk-terms-62497378