faq
flatforty
contribute
subscribe
configure
search
rdf
main
parent
thread
|
Re: Desktop Summit
by Eric Laffoon on Sunday 14/Mar/2004, @18:38
|
I haven't decided. I was thinking actually of contacting someone with Lindows. I am a KDE developer and I'm on the West coast. Actually it's roughly 20-24 hours drive. The thing is though that I work on weekends. I have to check, this may be before other markets open, but I generally need a good reason to drop that kind of money on a weekend when you factor in lost income.
Another factor for me is that while Lindows is supporting KDE they have also chose to support a competing web development tool... which may have made sense at one time. However Quanta is the first serious tool on Linux with a visual mode, it writes W3C compliant tagging to your DTD and we're currently implementing our revised CSS tools and making more refinements. If I'm going to be there I'm going to be talking about how we have the best tool for visually producing compliant markup and the only tool you'd consider if you were a serious developer. For all I know that may not be what they want to hear.
I've been sponsoring one developer starting out with just my income to guarantee his pay and I will probably have another exciting announcement soon. Whatever their status I know I don't have the kind of money laying around that they do. I don't really care who sponsors what, but I don't feel like saying "KDE is great but there's a web development tool other than what I develop that's the big news here".
Seriously I have been just too busy to think about it but I will look into it and figure out if I'm going in the next week or two. |
|
|
The Fine Print: The following comments
are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )
|
Re: Desktop Summit
by anon on Monday 15/Mar/2004, @12:09
|
Perhaps ask Novell. Doesn't hurt to ask, eh?
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Desktop Summit
by David on Monday 15/Mar/2004, @13:39
|
Personally, I'm not sure Lindows even realises that they are supporting a non-KDE web development app. Notice that they also support Gaim and Mozilla, which are generally the more well known apps. Do they know Quanta even exists?
I can understand this to an extent as it is sometimes difficult for the commercial interests around KDE to know just what is available within KDE. Perhaps Mr. Robertson would like to be enlightened about the delights of KDE applications?
"If I'm going to be there I'm going to be talking about how we have the best tool for visually producing compliant markup and the only tool you'd consider if you were a serious developer. For all I know that may not be what they want to hear."
I'm willing to bet that they would. Tell them that Quanta is 'integrated' with their desktop :).
I've pictured some sort of, perhaps KDE e.V., commercial arm thingy for KDE over the past few months, as a sort of umbrella division to facilitate commercial and free software communication and development. There have been a few such organisations formed over the past few months and years for various things (and I won't go into them :)), but I don't think anyone has really thought about it all in quite the right way. The only one that really seems to work in any meaningful way is the OSDL. Commercial interests like Lindows, Suse and Trolltech (perhaps to a lesser extent) need to know what is going on, and free software developers can more easily get commercial feedback, get user feedback through commercial sources and support or sponsorship for their work. Commercial companies can become more involved and talk about what they would like to see done, but they would never be able to 'take over' KDE. People need to recognise that free, commercial and proprietary software are complementary - they are not enemies. I hear people talking of litigating against free software or trying to get a foot in the door so free software can 'rise up' the enterprise software stack. I'm getting rather sick of hearing both.
Note that this would not be a 'Ximian' for KDE, and I don't think this should ever happen in quite that way to be honest. Nat and Miguel are obviously very clever and talented people (Nat's blog page is sometimes an interesting read :)), and they both have good programming ideas), but honestly, I have just never believed that free and open source software provides a workable foundation for the way that Ximian operate. Does free (the emphasis always seems to be on money) software have to pay for itself is a question I keep hearing. Yes is the answer (besides, like Quanta, if you see a need in something, invest in it and you use it, it's paying for itself), but people need to think about free software in the right way first.
Would all this be a KDE League version 2? Well sort of. People criticised the KDE League, perhaps justifiably, mostly unjustifiably. I don't think you can blame anyone. It perhaps just didn't work out as intended.
Anyway, I didn't intend to write all that, it is just something that sprung into my mind while reading Tink and Eric's article, and I think Aaron Seigo mentioned it somewhere or other. My memory's rubbish at the moment as I'm trying to wrestle with Windows and a Samba PDC and I've consumed a fair bit of alcohol to forget about it. NetBIOS. Why?
Your catnip mice are rather well put together Eric. Our cat is too strong too fight with me now (and she's sharp!) so she takes out all her frustration on her mice rather than me, which is a plus. She's never been too impressed with anything we've bought her before, and that includes rather expensive food. Females....
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Desktop Summit
by Eric Laffoon on Monday 15/Mar/2004, @15:17
|
This is quite a tome... and I thought I wrote too much. ;-)
> Personally, I'm not sure Lindows even realises that they are supporting a non-KDE web development app. Notice that they also support Gaim and Mozilla, which are generally the more well known apps. Do they know Quanta even exists?
I'm sure they know it exists. Frankly I'm not really all that concerned. I have the contact name to talk with there, I've just been busy. I also feel like I've done a lot more with less money and I personally like being beholden to people in the community more than companies. Dealing with committees and hanging your hopes on it is not fun either. Personally I see some difference in our approaches too. They're looking to have a simple tool that writes a dead language to counter a MS tool that has not been able to achieve market domination. While I'm interested in supporting novice users the rest of that is of no interest to me. I'm interested in building the best tool for the job. Also if you read their site they make some claims that are real turn offs to me like they are the first Linux tool that uses projects as well as the first visual development tool... Actually their copy looks as if they don't know we exist.
You know IBM has Websphere too. Take a look at what that generates if you want to scratch your head and wonder how that could render with several document heads and body declarations. Whatever. I will make a presentation to them about us shortly. What they decided to do with their strategy is up to them. I'm not going to get worked up about it one way or another and I'm not going to spend a lot of energy on it.
> I've pictured some sort of, perhaps KDE e.V., commercial arm thingy for KDE over the past few months, as a sort of umbrella division to facilitate commercial and free software communication and development. There have been a few such organisations formed over the past few months and years for various things (and I won't go into them :)), but I don't think anyone has really thought about it all in quite the right way.
The next logical question is what are your credentials and do you have a pile of money? I'm not trying to discourage you. I'm just saying that this is not an easy proposition from a lot of angles, nor should it be. You have technical programming aspects, the social fabric of our current environment that is very productive, business and government influences and the incredibly challenging task of influencing corporate entities. From there the complexity grows. While there is a logical linkage on both sides the connection is like trying to connect power out of phase. It has the potential to do real damage to either side of the equation if not properly synced up and in order to be effective requires huge amounts of resource capital, a completely non standard business model, massive amounts of time and skill and huge risks by very talented people.
I've given this a good deal of thought. I don't have the time and money to do such a thing. I may at some time, but then I have the experience to avoid a lot of potential problems. That is no gaurantee of success.
> Your catnip mice are rather well put together Eric. Our cat is too strong too fight with me now (and she's sharp!) so she takes out all her frustration on her mice rather than me, which is a plus. She's never been too impressed with anything we've bought her before, and that includes rather expensive food. Females....
Thank you. It was a little easier to put together the ultimate catnip product than Quanta has been and we have some very loyal customers. If I could convert web developers as reliably as I have cats we would only need some advertising to rule the web. We're working on both. ;-) In the mean time maybe your cat might like our gourmet "Catnip Jerked Chicken"?
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Desktop Summit
by David on Tuesday 16/Mar/2004, @06:07
|
"This is quite a tome... and I thought I wrote too much. ;-)"
Yer. Some thinks popped into my head as I was writing, and it continued....
"They're looking to have a simple tool that writes a dead language to counter a MS tool that has not been able to achieve market domination. While I'm interested in supporting novice users the rest of that is of no interest to me. I'm interested in building the best tool for the job. Also if you read their site they make some claims that are real turn offs to me like they are the first Linux tool that uses projects as well as the first visual development tool... Actually their copy looks as if they don't know we exist."
Yes, I see your point. Is anyone actually going to use what they are doing though, because it is quite clear people are using Quanta? However, as you say, that's their problem.
"You know IBM has Websphere too."
Yes I've seen it, and we evaluated it when I worked at our University Medical School. It is large, crap and worse - expensive. We spent good money on a Sun Server and Sun support to support a VLE for several thousand students. Quite wisely, we decided to use Zope and our existing PHP framework. It's the best decision we ever made, as we watched an all-Microsoft department next door grind to a halt through a simple virus.
"What they decided to do with their strategy is up to them. I'm not going to get worked up about it one way or another and I'm not going to spend a lot of energy on it."
Good plan.
"The next logical question is what are your credentials and do you have a pile of money? I'm not trying to discourage you. I'm just saying that this is not an easy proposition from a lot of angles, nor should it be. You have technical programming aspects, the social fabric of our current environment that is very productive, business and government influences and the incredibly challenging task of influencing corporate entities. From there the complexity grows. While there is a logical linkage on both sides the connection is like trying to connect power out of phase. It has the potential to do real damage to either side of the equation if not properly synced up and in order to be effective requires huge amounts of resource capital, a completely non standard business model, massive amounts of time and skill and huge risks by very talented people."
Spot on Eric - I think you're dead right there. I'm certainly not rich and I didn't envisage getting together a huge pile of cash or anything, or a KDE version of Ximian. Personally I think KDE has all the resources it needs at the moment. What I think is required is some serious thought and some organisation. Money may actually be the easy bit - you can see it.
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Desktop Summit
by anon on Monday 15/Mar/2004, @18:29
|
> Personally, I'm not sure Lindows even realises that they are supporting a non-KDE web development app. Notice that they also support Gaim and Mozilla, which are generally the more well known apps. Do they know Quanta even exists?
Probably.. . I think they want to make a replacement for Frontpage (which Mozilla's composer/Nvu is becoming more like) rather than Dreamweaver (which Quanta is fast becoming more like)
As for Gaim versus Kopete, they started supporting Gaim when Kopete had just started. The rest of the KDE apps weren't mature yet. Kevin Carmony (president of Lindows) recently said (http://dot.kde.org/1074759718/1074981221/addPostingForm) they would switch to kopete if they deem it a "better fit". As kopete matures I think they'll do that.
As for Mozilla versus Konqueror (as web browser); once again, they probably evaluated Konqueror when it wasn't mature. I think for more and more people, it is becoming mature enough. Perhaps they will switch in the future.
Same thing with OpenOffice versus KOffice, although I don't think koffice is there yet(tm).
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Desktop Summit
by Alexander Neundorf on Tuesday 16/Mar/2004, @04:38
|
Hi David,
if you are interested in getting something like a "commercial arm thingy" for kde going please contact me via direct email:
neundorf@kde.org
We are planning some things and we need people :-)
Bye
Alex
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Desktop Summit
by David on Wednesday 17/Mar/2004, @04:28
|
I've got a lot on my plate at the moment, but over the next few weeks and months I'll be learning a lot more about KDE, mostly from the Quality team stuff. Major kudos on that one.
After that it will be formulating some ideas. I know that KDE has everything it needs at its disposal, but it is more a case of brining things together.
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
|
The Fine Print: The previous
comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )
|
|
![[KDE Dot News]](http://www.kde.org/dot/Images/kdedotnews.gif)
