Approaching Embarcadero for License for Delphi.

[rpottsoh]

@kotp and I have been discussing the desire to have Travis carry a little more weight for this track. It would be nice if he could be used to trigger automatic checking of submitted exercises (new or updated) via. PR.

I have reached out to the sales department at Embarcadero on (1/30/2017) to see what they would be willing to do for exercism.io seeing how it is a free and open source site.

@kotp's and myself hope Embarcadero see this as an opportunity to give back to the open source community and realize they are gaining some free publicity at the same time.

This is issue is related to #3.

[rpottsoh]

This morning I received an email from Nathan Lerma, Corporate Account Representative, at Embarcadero. He wrote:

Ryan,

I received your inquiry from our website yesterday. I reached out to our team of developers to see what we can do to help you. Our Lead Developer Engineer, Jim McKeeth, should be reaching out to you shortly. He will be able to assist you with what you are needing.

Best Regards,

All for now.

[rpottsoh]

We are all aware, via email, where things stand from Embarcadero. I am just going to take a moment to update this issue for the sake of documenting progress:

• 2/12/17
  Jim McKeeth (Lead Developer Evangelist and Engineer) at Embarcadero wrote to me wondering if I was in contact with the maintainer of Execism.io. He went on to say that he is able to provide a limited use Delphi and C++ Builder license for use on their [Exercism's] site. He just wants to make sure that he is in contact with the right people.

• 2/13/17
  I wrote back to Jim, cc'ing @kytrinyx and @kotp and answered his questions regarding with whom he would be communicating with. @kytrinyx has indicated that she is fine to allow @kotp and myself to see this through and to keep her in the loop on things and to contact her if we need her.

• 2/13/17
  Jim wrote back later that same day to introduce himself. He informed us that he is in charge of the Embarcedero MVP (Most Valuable Professional) program, which involves providing licenses and support to members of the community who support their products. He went on to say that he can send us a license to use on the server side for running the units tests for Delphi and C++ Builder. He also mentioned that he is willing to work with us beyond that to support us as well, "Just let me know".

Immediately following that email he wrote to me directly to see if I would be interested in being an MVP. He recognizes that I have been working hard at adding a Delphi track to Exercism.io and that qualifies as an MVP in his mind. I replied that I was surprised and honored by his email and that I am interested and inquired what more information he might need from me. My email immediately triggered an out-of-office response from him; he was going on vacation and would be out all last week.

In my opinion the ball is in our court. I am not sure how next to proceed. I see we still need to understand AppVeyor to see if it is something we can integrate for use with Delphi. This may be a good topic to broach with Jim; how to do CI with Delphi when the server is in the cloud....

[kytrinyx]

Immediately following that email he wrote to me directly to see if I would be interested in being an MVP. He recognizes that I have been working hard at adding a Delphi track to Exercism.io and that qualifies as an MVP in his mind.

🎉 congrats and I completely agree!