The Lazarus IDE is a stable Integrated Development Environment for use with the Free Pascal Compiler. Lazarus is a excellent RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool, which allows users to build stable and robust applications for multiple platforms like Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX en Windows.

Lazarus is an Open Source project and is available under a GNU licence.

Lazarus can be used as entry platform to start with programming as well as a platform where teams are working on larger projects. Also the use of databases, both commercial and Open source, like MySql are supported.

Lazarus comes with a lot of ready made components, but it is also easy (and great fun) to build your own components. Components also can be imported from other resources and own components can be made available to other users.

More about Lazarus can be found on the web site of SourceForge. The web site of the Open Source community explains the idea's and developments of the Open Source world. The GNU General Public License (GPL) is explained here.