Hi,

I will port a GPL program that runs only in Windows (Apophysis) to Unix-like OSs and X-11 (I will favour a distro as the stable version of the port, but it will be coded with cross-platform among Unix-like OSs with X11 in mind). I code in Java and LOGO (my first language, don't ask) and when this project will start (in the middle of this year) I will also know C/C++.

I haven't investigated much about Delphi and I've some questions before starting my first FOSS project:

What programming paradigm follows Delphi? How close to machine language is this language? How much cross-platform is it? Is more effective to port it to another language? Does porting a program to a different OS takes too much time for a single developer (I hope that changes but Apophysis is the only program that runs only on Windows and not on a Unix-like & FOSS combo -dual boot or main OS with virtual machines-; meaning that I will end this project because of a real interest)? What are good methods to start and develop an Open Source project?

Delphi uses an object oriented pascal. If you want to program in C++, you might consider using using Qt. The Qt designer closely resembles Delphi, and the Qt libraries are available for windows, so a program could be written using Qt, and compiled for either Linux or Windows. Of course there will be parts of the programs that may be different, such as how file paths are written.