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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by superstoned on Tuesday 28/Feb/2006, @11:58
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well, not sure about this.
gnome might very well be better than Vista in a 2 year timeframe, but it would take a lot of money. i'm quite sure if the companies supporting gnome would put half that money in KDE, the next big release (in a little over a year i guess) will kick vista's ass anytime. weird thing is, they seem to know it - except those that are responsible for the decision...
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by mihnea on Tuesday 28/Feb/2006, @13:04
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> weird thing is, they seem to know it - except those that are responsible for the decision...
They all know it, but corporations are not interested and not expcted to be interested in technology, they are interested in control. Novell particularly is interested in Mono, and this is why:
"If you want to contribute source code to Mono you have to sign a copyright assignment giving Novell the right to relicense the code under other licensing terms, thus preserving Novell's ability under the dual license to commerically license Mono."
(according to Wikipedia)
This is similar to Qt's dual licensing, but not the same. Qt Free Edition is guaranteed to always be the real thing, but Mono can always be replaced/surpassed by a more powerful proprietary offer from Novell.
Now if Novell invested in KDE, it could not
_sell a proprietary version of kdelibs_,
which means it could not
_control a platform_.
Which is why Novell will probably never be persuaded to (heavily) invest in KDE. Sure, some of their employees might dislike/hate KDE, but corporate politics doesn't always depend on some employees - they depend on the 'need' to control a platform (or more of them).
I hope this makes things a bit clearer (although I also hope that I'm wrong).
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by pinky on Wednesday 01/Mar/2006, @16:44
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sorry, but this is just bullshit.
>This is similar to Qt's dual licensing, but not the same. Qt Free Edition is guaranteed to always be the real thing, but Mono can always be replaced/surpassed by a more powerful proprietary offer from Novell.
Qt and Mono facing exactly the same situation.
Qt: Trolltech can theoretically decide to drop the Free Qt. What will happen? The last free version will have to be released under a BSD-style license so Qt will be available for free and non-free software.
Mono: Novell can theoretically decide to drop the free Mono. But the community can still keep the last free version and go on with it. Mono doesn't need a contract to release a last free version under another license like Qt because Mono is already licensed for the use for free and non-free software.
So whether Trolltech or Novell become "evil" in both cases the community will keep a framework which can be used for free and non-free software.
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by mihnea on Thursday 02/Mar/2006, @00:55
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> So whether Trolltech or Novell become "evil" in both cases the community will keep a framework which can be used for free and non-free software.
Agreed (with some details I won't go into). But the whole point was that corporations are not interested in technology, so don't expect them to support KDE just because it has great technology. This is not "just bullshit", it's a matter of lucidity, and of not wasting efforts (and peace of mind).
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by Aaron J. Seigo on Tuesday 28/Feb/2006, @14:13
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a) the usability jihad had a much different/lesser effect on these sorts of decisions than many people seem to think
b) people in the gnome project blog more than people in kde (visit the respective planets) and this goes trebly (or more) so for the kde people who work at novell. so comparing numbers of blog posts really just points to something we all already knew: gnome participants blog more.
but what really astounds me to no end is how a product that isn't even released yet (MS vista) has people declaring the "war" over. when we see increased adoption of the open source desktop, this boggles me. when kde continues to improve at a rapid clip, this boggles me. when microsoft *still* won't have key attributes we have (you know, like vendor neutrality, open formats, open source, works well with others) and we're catching up on the attributes that have won them accolades (works with commodity hardware, easy enough for average joes, reads proprietary formats, works with proprietary protocols) and are these days working on issues (better eyecandy) around the same time they are (instead of being N years behind the lead edge), this REALLY boggles me.
there are two issues that have led us to this point in my mind: explicitly aiming for the enterprise and expecting a "year of the desktop".
i used to think of things in terms of winning the enterprise as well. but you know what? linus is right: take care of the open source project, the enterprise will take care of itself. right now we're having the most impact in schools, government and the SMB/SME spaces (particularly the latter). we'll grow "upwards", just as the server did, into the enterprise space. we have a harder row to hoe than on the server side, but we're making gains and winning the minds and hearts of more and more users every single day. some of those users come in packs of 5,000 or 10,000+ even, but the vast majority don't. if we paid better attention to those people we service best today, we could service their needs perfectly. best yet: most of us working on the desktop have much more in common with those people and know many more of them (so we have a better frame of reference from which to work).
as for the year of the desktop, that's bullocks. when the year of the desktop happens, it'll simply mean that we succeeded several years prior. it's not a year of the desktop, it's a decade and a half (or more) of the desktop. it's a long, hard haul from the first open source desktop systems 9 years ago to our millions of users today to having double digit market share in the years to come. in both the business and music industry world they often say that all overnight successes are years of effort in the making. we're no different.
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday 28/Feb/2006, @21:22
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Aaron,
> but what really astounds me to no end is how a product that isn't even released yet (MS vista) has people declaring the "war"
War is not over, but we need *money* to make the last push. Writing software is fun and all (I love it), but maintaining and squeezing out the last bugs isn't. It needs money no matter if we're talking about kernel, KDE or GNOME. It's kinda funny that KDE would need least of it, yet it's hardly getting any :/
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by Manik Chand on Tuesday 28/Feb/2006, @23:03
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We have a couple of betas of Vista. It looks more of a slow shell. All the razzle and dazzle is superficial and probably much work-underneth is being finished currently.
It is well known that Win has a lot of crap under the polished shell and they would need much time to clean that up.
KDE also accumulated a lot of bloat and that need to be cleared also. However in the current state it is quite fast and efficient than Vista. Many usability considerations need be introduced but what is important is to get the whole infrastructure a plug-n-play system (Not only Hardware).
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by Aaron J. Seigo on Wednesday 01/Mar/2006, @00:34
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> but we need *money* to make the last push
yes, allowing people to concentrate on things full time can certainly help a lot.
of course, it's not a magic bullet, however. there are projects out there that received 7 figures and never produced much to show for that. it needs planning, execution, yadda yadda. all the obvious stuff =) </disclaimer>
there isn't a lot of money being made on open source desktop stuff right now. there is *some* but not a lot. and so funding is pretty scarce as well, no matter where you look. it is better than it was, but we're certainly not on the gravy train yet ;) i think there is room for some innovative business models that target non-enterprise markets that could help bring cash flow into the desktop.
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by Segedunum on Wednesday 01/Mar/2006, @14:41
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"i think there is room for some innovative business models that target non-enterprise markets that could help bring cash flow into the desktop."
Hmmm. Like what?
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by reihal on Wednesday 01/Mar/2006, @22:58
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Schools, universities, administrations?
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by Segedunum on Thursday 02/Mar/2006, @04:10
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"Schools, universities, administrations?"
That's not a businbess model - just possible, potential customers. However, customers and revenue bring up interesting issues.
With what will revenue be brought in and who is going to use and keep that revenue? The distributors, or KDE or other open source projects?
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by A.C. on Wednesday 01/Mar/2006, @03:18
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Aaron,
You've got a lot of good points, and that was a super good read, and it made me feel better about things as a whole, so thank you. :)
I still sort of fear that KDE is likely to become the underdog to a mostly GNOMEified world in the coming years, because a sufficient amount of marketing and industry ties trump even the greatest tech, but even in such a worst-case scenario, thanks to people like you, KDE would be the freaking BEST underdog the world has ever known.
So thanks, Aaron. :)
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Re: OT: 'usability' hype
by Segedunum on Wednesday 01/Mar/2006, @14:39
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1. Novell hasn't got a cat in hell's chance of achieving anything with a lot of the software they are using. It's about control, as someone above has pointed out. Many of Novell's people felt a bit cheated when they bought Ximian because they thought they'd bought a nice shiny version of .Net. They hadn't. It was just an open source project they could have used anyway, but as the principal contributor they are in a position to have you sign away copyright to them for the code you contribute.
2. Novell's Gnome people blog more, as Aaron has pointed out. In layman's speak that means they like to mouth off about nothing more. On the other hand, Suse's people just don't blog enough to the point where people assume they're doing nothing.
3. Vista is a Windows XP shell with 3D graphics. I work for a company that has various MSDN licenses, and I get the Vista releases. There is no WinFS, nothing terribly different. If you don't believe me, read the press releases for Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP and then Windows Vista and tell me the difference. There isn't any.
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