Every year it was the same old story. Borland would make some minor improvements to Delphi, increase the version number, announce a free "Personal" version, then make it virtually impossible to actually obtain. They'd stick it on a few magazine cover disks, and hope that nobody found it. Unfortunately, nobody did.
My guess is that Microsoft's successful launch of its competing free Visual Studio Express family finally nudged Borland out of their apathy. A few weeks ago they made Turbo Delphi Explorer (and Delphi for .Net, C++ and C#) available for download. Thus the major stumbling block in actually getting Delphi has been removed.
A second crucial point is that the free editions finally include various essential components built in. Previously, if you wanted to do even the simplest internet-related task you needed to install a separate component. Turbo Delphi comes with the brilliant Indy Sockets, as well as numerous other components, already installed. This means that the keen hobbyist can get immediately to work, instead of jumping across to a platform that is easier to start actual coding in.
For even more inspiration, the inimitable Huw Collingbourne has a great new tutorial series on Turbo Delphi.