Months ago, Borland offered their excellent Delphi 6 Personal edition free for download at their US Borland website. It is no longer available,. 
Enterprise Professional Personal 10 Apr 03 (1.86 Mb) English (1.86 Mb) French (1.86 Mb) German (1.86 Mb) Japanese (1.86 Mb) English (1.86 Mb) French (1.86 Mb) German (1.86 Mb) Japanese Notes Delphi must be closed before installing this Update Pack. Borland highly recommends that you install the Delphi 6 Runtime Library Update 2 and General Update 2 prior to installing this update. See the readme file for more detailed information. Edition Date Download http Download ftp Delphi 6 Runtime Library Update 2. Enterprise (33.2 Mb) English (39.3 Mb) French (39.3 Mb) German (37.2 Mb) Japanese (352 Kb) Japanese (33.2 Mb) English (39.3 Mb) French (39.3 Mb) German (37.2 Mb) Japanese (352 Kb) Japanese Professional (26.8 Mb) English (31.0 Mb) French (31.0 Mb) German (37.2 Mb) Japanese (320 Kb) Japanese (26.8 Mb) English (31.0 Mb) French (31.0 Mb) German (37.2 Mb) Japanese (320 Kb) Japanese Personal (10.1 Mb) English (13.4 Mb) French (12.5 Mb) German (37.2 Mb) Japanese (10.1 Mb) English (13.4 Mb) French (12.5 Mb) German (37.2 Mb) Japanese Notes Includes General Update 1. Japanese Customers.
Enterprise 11 Nov 02 (0.13 Mb) (0.13 Mb) Notes This update resolves the following VisiBroker 3.3 issues: • Logic error that causes the orbpas dll to release the reference to the server object when the client application does not need to ping the server. • Memory leak in marshaling Corba calls. • Memory leak in Variant to ANY conversion. • IsMultiThreaded is defaulted to True. See the readme file for more detailed information. Edition Date Download http Download ftp dbExpress Informix 9.2.1 Driver.
Delphi 6 personal edition faq Frequently asked questions about this edition and its licensing terms DELPHI 6 PERSONAL EDITION FAQ Why did they call it 'Personal'? Because its license limits you to use it only for noncommercial use. Any commercial, business, governmental or institutional purposes of any kind are expressly prohibited. They called it 'Personal' because it's that, personal!:) You can distribute your works created with Delphi 6 Personal Edition, but may not receive any direct or indirect compensation.
This means for example that you can't sell licenses of your software, charge for a tailor-made application, ask for royalties, distribute 'adware' applications, etc., etc., etc. 'Direct or indirect compensation' is quite comprehensive!!! Who is it meant for? You can draw your own conclusions. I guess it is meant for hobbyists or people who just want to learn some programming. Surely it is not meant for programmers who expect to get paid from their work, for businesses, or for institutions of any kind (including the government). Yes, it's free (gratis), but you have to register.
You can download it from the Borland site: If it's free, why is Borland selling it? The download is 140 MB, too much for the Internet connection many people have.
Besides, the CD-ROM version that Borland is selling for $99.95 includes a printed manual and installation support. Is it open source? No, it isn't open source, although the source code of some units is available (like windows.pas). Do I have to distribute my applications under the GNU GPL? No, that applies to Kylix Open Edition. With Delphi 6 Personal, if you distribute your applications, you have to distribute them free of charge, but you are not forced to distribute the source code if you don't want to, although you cannot charge for it if you decide to distribute it.
Which components does the Personal Edition come with? Delphi 6 Personal Edition comes with 85 components. No DB components, FastNet, QReports, etc. It is very much like Delphi 5 Standard Edition (with some new things, of course). Is there a Delphi 6 Standard Edition? Since version 6, there's no Standard Edition of Delphi.