Re: Trolltech: No-Charge License for Qt/Windows

faq
flatforty
contribute
subscribe
configure
search
rdf

main
parent
thread

Re: Trolltech: No-Charge License for Qt/Windows
by Carbon on Saturday 30/Jun/2001, @23:57

>The only way that KDE (or GNOME) is going to take the desktop market in America is...

I believe that you may be missing the point of Open Source. KDE is not a business or a corporation, and the whole concept of market share isn't applicable. Sure, KDE developers love it when KDE is used by users and by other developers, but unlike a business, KDE has a major advantage : it's progress does not depend that it be used by a certain amount of people.

KDE's continued existence depends totally on whether or not the developers continue to work on it, and this will continue even if the developers themselves are the majority of the people using it! The primary reason that open-source software will (IMHO) almost totally replace commercial software in non-specialized fields is because the developers of Open Source have as much time as they feel like to work on it, since marketing is (rightly so) almost non-existant.

This is the way capitalism is designed to work, that is, a product will make it or not depending almost entirely on it's quality. Microsoft and (to a lesser degree) Sun are more concerned over whether or not their customers _think_ the product is of high quality, then whether or not it actually is.

For instance, for all of M$'s raving over how Win2k no longer has DOS, this "feature" is in fact a detriment! With a minor amount of registry editing, you can discover that in fact the OS still depends on and can boot into a version of DOS, but now it is almost impossible for the average user to get at it, even if only to run some classic games or for emergency purposes.

This is why I don't think OpenOffice will last for the long haul. You said yourself that :

>I'm not suggesting that OpenOffice is the better
technical solution

In Open Source development, what else _is_ there but the quality of the software?

Related Links

·   Articles on Qt
·   Also by Carbon
·   Contact author

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )


		"KDE is much too well-structured for this world..." -- Rob Buis
KDE®, "K Desktop Environment", "KDE Dot News", "got the dot?" and the KDE Logo® are trademarks or registered trademarks of KDE e.V. in the European Union, the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the poster. The rest: Copyright © 2000-2008 KDE e.V. for The KDE Project. For further information or comments on this site, please contact the Webmaster.