"Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community?

Tuesday, 13 February 2001 | Kgranroth

What do we do when one of our own, a company with long-time roots in the Open Source community, rejects our code of ethics and resorts to deceitful tactics for the express purpose of undermining an Open Source project? It appears that the newly-named Ximian is doing exactly that. This open letter (authored by Kurt Granroth and Andreas Pour) describes how Ximian is hoping to create and capitalize on a new user's confusion for the express purpose of "tricking" them into buying Ximian products over downloading KDE. Is this what we are reduced to? Unethical (and potentially illegal) tactics so that we can win at all costs? Update: 02/13 03:36 AM by Andreas Pour: I am happy to report that this dispute has been put to rest. After discussions between Nat Friedman, CEO of Ximian, and me, Ximian has resolved to revise its advertisements on Google to eliminate the possibility of confusion, and not to create new advertising campaigns based on KDE-related keyword searches. The full details are available here. Thanks to Ximian for helping to resolve this issue amicably and promptly.

Comments:

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - KDE User - 2001-02-12

This is confusing the market, and hence very bad. KDE != Ximian GNOME Not even close as my experience with Mandrake 7.2 has taught me. GNOME has ways to go and should not dirty the good name of KDE, meanwhile.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jamin P. Gray - 2001-02-13

For the record, Mandrake has had a history of shipping with positively awful bundlings of the Gnome desktop. That's why I ended up going back to Red Hat. Hopefully this will change, now that Mandrake has joined the Gnome Foundation and seems to be working very positively towards better Gnome support (and Gnome/KDE integration) in their distribution. They've done some great work.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Aaron Weber - 2001-02-13

For the record, we don't support Mandrake 7.2 yet. If one installs Ximian GNOME for Mandrake 7.0/7.1 on a Mandrake 7.2 system, one gets some weird errors due to several changes in the login manager for Mandrake 7.2 We expect to support Mandrake 7.2 soon. Sincerely, Aaron Weber Ximian, Inc.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - James L. Morton - 2001-02-13

Mandrake 7.2 is fux0red, don't waste your time:) I like it, and use it at work, but it's hos3d:) - James

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - cmena - 2001-02-12

even if you put theKompany it shows ximian.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Catalin Climov - 2001-02-13

Thx for the hint, cmena. I just checked that myself and couldn't believe my eyes what I saw. Oh well, Ximian got the money, theKompany got the code and the apps - guess wich one is about vapour... And BTW, what Ximian did proves they are acknowledging our name as a brand - what more could one wish from his competition (oh, we can hardly call Ximian 'our competition' *g*) ? :)

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - James L. Morton - 2001-02-12

This is just plain absurd. I cannot characterize this as anything except grasping at straws. In fact, it's almost infuriating to read. IMNSHO, the authors of this open letter should be held in no higher regard than the common troll on Slashdot. This is advertising. It makes perfect sense to advertise GNOME w/ any Linux-related project. This is the way advertising is done. It is by /no/ means unethical. The article purports that a 'new user' would be confused by the link. That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Firstly, give people some credit. You dont have to try and be their fathers. They all know thats it's an advertisement, not a search result. Secondly, if the user already knows enough about Linux to search for KDE, or Kword, or QT for Christ's sake, they almost certainly realize that Ximian GNOME IS NOT KDE...ESPECIALLY IN THE CONTEXT OF CLICKING ON AN ADVERTISEMENT. Anyway, I don't mean to post irrational sounding rants, but I would hope you would give people some more credit. Oh, and as a sidenote, if you would really like to talk about a story with REAL unethical behavior, let's talk about how theKompany forked Magellan. The Magellan folks are NOT happy about this. They realize thats a possibility with open source software, but NOT something they wanted to happen. They were promised contributions to their project in return for access to their CVS code base. theKompany agreed to those terms, were granted access, then took the code, forked it, and contributed nothing. And they have the arrogance to try and shift blame in posts on this very messageboard.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Rick Salts - 2001-02-12

Well put! This letter is just going to paint the KDE community as a bunch of whiners. Grow up guys·

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - ac - 2001-02-12

I think it is ridiculous that Ximian is saying that its sponsoring KDE or KDE links. I don't see them giving KDE any of their $15 million, so this is very misleading. Someone who hears of KDE should not be made to think that GNOME has anything to do with KDE, because it does not! What are Open Source developers to do? The only thing they can do is write articles, and let justice happen. They are being hurt and do not have millions of dollars like Ximian to do anything about it.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Rick Salts - 2001-02-12

Hellloooo, it's just a banner ad. Do you actually think that this excersise will reflect well with KDE community? "I don't see them giving KDE any of their $15 million, so this is very misleading." Tisk, tisk. If one group is doing well, does that prevent another from developing good software?

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Carbn - 2001-02-12

Do you have a link or message board reference on the Magellan port thingie? I'd be interested to see that from the mouths of the Magellan developers. Also, theKompany has only been working on Aethera for a little while, they may yet port code back to Magellan. Finally, a new user may have simply heard any of those buzzwords, without knowing what they are, and seeing that GNOME link there might (as seems to be Ximian's intention) lead them to believe that KDE and GNOME are the same thing. However, I agree with you that it isn't really all that bad, and we would be better off flaming the big advertising idiots on the net, email spammers.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - James L. Morton - 2001-02-12

From the <A HREF="http://zamolxe.csis.ul.ie/faq.html#9">Magellan FAQ</A>: 9. Are you affiliated with theKompany? No. In late August 2000 theKompany has promised to support the development of Magellan with 2 or 3 developers. Unfortunately, after gaining access to the cvs tree they have ceased collaboration and forked the project. Don't feel like searching for the message board comments, but feel free to do so yourself:-) They're there:)

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Catalin Climov - 2001-02-13

Thanks for scheding some light, James. I can't believe it how clueless and ignorant I was before reading your post. And since you seem to know so much about Magellan and Aethera, could you please a couple of questions that are not included in the FAQ: 1. When exactly had theKompany ceased the collaboration, and how long did the collaboration last ? 2. What was the advantage of "gaining access to the cvs tree", given that both source tarballs and anon cvs access to the Magellan source code were avail at that time ? TIA :)

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Christopher Felton - 2001-02-13

You can find Shawn Gordon and Teddy's reaction to the beta release in theKompany's press release on dot.kde.org in the past articles. A lot of it is laid out there, but is still a little foggy.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - cmena - 2001-02-13

a friend pointed this out to me and i found it so outrageous that i decided to post it. i am in no way related to theKompany. one more thing, read the article again before you go on ranting like a lunatic.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - David Walser - 2001-02-13

Magellan has always been a very mismanaged project. They created a lot of hype over a slow developing crappy Microsoft Outlook clone (like Evolution, ugh), and drew interest away the Kmail project. They also used vaporware tactics to keep any project aiming to compete on the same level for KDE from starting (similar to MS in the late 80s, see Caldera lawsuit for more). And their closedness would have never been for KDE or Linux in general. theKompany has made a good project with a good UI and should be commended for giving us something real to get our hands on, and for creating a well managed project out of the mess that Magellan has always been. I think they've largely replaced their code that was derived from Magellan, and if so, this can be in no way construed as a shot against Magellan.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Anonymous Coward - 2001-02-13

Take a look at the source tree for Aethera, the src/ directory has maybe 5 or 6 source files and the rest of the 99% of the source is in the MAGELLAN/ directory ;-)

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Shawn Gordon - 2001-02-13

From a project point of view we first fixed the bugs so that the program would run. We then modified the UI into something that we found more appealing. We are almost done with a complete rewrite of the UI code, which will be in the next beta release. Very little Magellan code will survive the next 6 months. In reality the license of Magellan allowed us to simply take it and not say a word and even close source it. Instead of that, we tried working with the Magellan crew, it didn't work out for various reasons. We then made it very clear that Aethera found it's roots in Magellan and praised Teddy for his work. No one seems upset at a project like Empath which is trying to gather various bits under another user interface. It isn't so very different than what Aethera did. No one was upset that we did Kamera, no one was upset that we did Kivio from Queesio, no one was upset when Metaphrast became Kugar. Why are people upset about this? We are simply trying to finish projects that aren't getting finished, and so far we are giving them all away. I really should probably just concentrate on our commercial endevours and stop working on free code. What do you think?

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - David Walser - 2001-02-13

Thanks for clearing this up Shawn. I didn't know the details on Magellan's license. That's very interesting. I don't think anybody has any practical grounds to complain about what you've done. The only ones who will complain are the ones who have no interest in using your products anyway. I think almost every KDE user loves what you're doing, has interest in using your products, and is quite ready to support you by buying stuff. I know I am. I know originally Magellan wasn't open-source, and that's one of the reasons I couldn't really support it. But I have no problem with creative extensions (like stencils for Kivio) or documentation being proprietary. These are thing value-adds I think you can sell. As well as tech support and other services. Good luck with everything!

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Eron Lloyd - 2001-02-13

Don't do it, Shawn!!! Geez, it feels like every other week or so these (and related) issues come back up. GOD people - theKompany is very well within the proper limits of the licensing... if you keep flaming their contributions, we will be left with nothing... and Ximian will just *keep* accelerating to the various desktops (as the default setup). People like me are very excited about theKompany and KDE, and are counting on them to help us acquire the solutions we need for real-world computing. I'm sure someone could take all of theKompany's wonderful _GPL'd_ products and package them up, call 'em something else, and make a fortune. They are taking an enourmous risk, and need all the support we can muster. Please, let's not attack our biggest allies!!! May peace be with you, Eron

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - James Morton - 2001-02-14

As I've said in the past, I think theKompany makes good, quality products. I'm thankful for the contributions you've made in the past and continue to make. I do however take offense to comments such as "I really should just concentrate on our commercial endevours and stop working on free code." If that's really the way you feel, so far as I'm concerned - and Im sure most everyone else will not agree, good riddance. It's not about 'free' code. It's about Free code (Notice the capitaliation.) The code being Free is it's single most important feature. I won't get into this much deeper, as nearly everyone in these circles disagree with me on this fact. You mention other projects where you have used code provided by other open source projects: The difference is those developers were more than happy w/ your decisions. The Magellan developers were not. It has nothign to do with licensing issues, as I originally said. It has to do with common courtesies afforded to those in the community. I am mindful of the irony of that statement in the context of my original post, btw. Anyway, my post was not directed at you or your company. It was more of an analogy...A knee-jerk reaction to the rediculous whining of the letter to Ximian.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Shawn Gordon - 2001-02-14

James you are still confusing things though. The point of open source and gpl and all that fun stuff is that the source is out there for anyone to do whatever they want with. I didn't need to try to work with magellan, I could have just used the code and hide the fact. It's not like we sell Aethera. No one that complains about what we did with Aethera can point out why it was wrong. This goes on every hour of every day in our community. Why is there even a hint of outrage over this? It would have been a bit different had I taken Magellan, closed it, rebranded it, sold it and pretended it was our original work. However, the Magellan license did not preclude this. We followed courtesy, and we always follow courtesy. We tried to work with the author to help finish something that was stagnating. That didn't work out, so we told him our intentions and we made the situation obvious. I would say the fork has been good for magellan, they seem to be getting more done now that there is a perceived competitor.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - James Morton - 2001-02-14

I was not aware of the project being stagnant:) That does cast things in somewhat of a new light, but here's my point (Bare in mind I don't have first-account knowledge). You are of course free to fork any open source project:) Its not necessarilu a BadThing. But the Magellan developers were not under obligation to give theKompany access to their CVS tree. From what I understand, they did it under the impression that theKompany would develop on the same source tree, working on the same project. So (Again, I am merely an observer) whether or not you made your intentions clear when you first forked the code, the Magellan developers were not aware of your intentions /before/ they granted you access to their source tree. That's the issue. But anyway, it's not a big issue. This is always possible with open source software. And aside from that, they seem calm about it, so who am I to fan the flames. As I said, I was originally just trying to post an analogy. - James

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Shawn Gordon - 2001-02-14

I appreciate that you are making an analogy, and now that I understand your perspective I need to clear up some more misconceptions. The Magellan project source was open and available to anyone who wanted to pull it down. We didn't do anything special to get access to it. What was controlled were CVS commits to the source, but not read access. Magellan was supposed to have a preview release in December '99, it still hadn't happened in August 2000 when we started working on it, and that was only the most recent delay. I'm glad to see Teddy and his crew making progress now, they are sharp guys and I'm sure they will turn out a fine project.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - James Morton - 2001-02-14

If this is indeed the case, then I am just completely wrong and should apologize. So granting you the benefit of doubt, consider some of my words eaten. The Magellan FAQ implies that you, after promising to devote 2-3 developers to the project, were granted access to CVS, period. It didn't clarify whether they were speaking to commits or checkouts. Anywho, I'll take your word for it, so I'm sorry for any added stress I may have caused you:) - James

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - David Johnson - 2001-02-13

The problem is not that Ximian advertised next to KDE links. As far as I'm concerned it would be perfectly okay for Microsoft to have a link next to a GNU or FSF google search. The problem is that Ximian is targeting KDE searches with a link titled "Free Linux Desktop". It doesn't say "Ximian Gnome". To a newbie (or to a lot of people, considering that Ximian is only a month-old word) it seems like a link to a KDE related site. Now take that Microsoft example above and change it to a specific targeting of GNU and FSF with a link titled "modern desktop operating system" leading to www.microsoft.com. Wouldn't you be pissed?

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - James L. Morton - 2001-02-12

Also, I would like Kurt Granroth to explain to me how this could POSSIBLY be construed as "potentially illegal." This is of course absurd, and he can't. Anywho, maybe Kurt would like to search for "Compaq" or Dell on Google:) He would be presented with a link at the top of the page to "uBid.com" with the text "Save 40% or more on Compaq's at uBid.com!"

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Anon - 2001-02-12

I don't know about the situation in the US but it is definitely illegal in Germany and other European countries. As the article mentions it is even considered illegal here to use brand names/trademarks in HTML-Meta-Tags to lead potential customers to a site that does not belong to the owner of the trademark.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Christopher Felton - 2001-02-13

They are not putting HTML-Meta-Tags in their site, they are simply paying Google to place ads, not in the results, but on the side as an advertisement. Do you get mad when you type in linux at google.com and find a Sun ad for dotcombuilder that looks more like a link then anything Ximian has done. Sun program is not open source or even linux.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Christopher Felton - 2001-02-13

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Dre - 2001-02-13

Also, I would like Kurt Granroth to explain to me how this could POSSIBLY be construed as "potentially illegal." It says so quite plainly in the article, that it quite possibly violates trademark law, which is designed to protect consumers from confusion. You might not think anyone would be confused by this, but bear in mind that not everybody looking for KDE is knowledgeable in the area. This may be less of a concern today, but what about in 1-2 years when KDE is mainstream? Not reacting now sanctions what Ximian is doing and it may be too late to complain later. This is of course absurd, and he can't. Anywho, maybe Kurt would like to search for "Compaq" or Dell on Google:) He would be presented with a link at the top of the page to "uBid.com" with the text "Save 40% or more on Compaq's at uBid.com!" This is totally different. If Ximian were in fact offering KDE (like uBid is offering Compaq), it would be another issue. It would also be another issue if the ad were clearly labeled as not a link to KDE (like the uBid ad you quote -- there is no confusion that uBid *is* Compaq). But if you look at the Ximian ad, they deliberately do not include the word Gnome in it (like they do in their ads when you search for Gnome) -- so obviously they intend to confuse people. Maybe you think they will be unsuccessful, but don't overestimate the knowledge of newbies.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - wa - 2001-02-13

Are you really unable to see the difference between a ximian add: "GNOME is 40% better than KDE" and "This is what you are looking for" ???

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - rinse - 2001-02-14

Your missing the point, Ximian is not selling/distributing KDE at all, so you can't compare it to a search with compaq, resulting in links to vendors of compaq. Rinse

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - anonymous - 2001-02-14

Why, is uBid.com trying to take away business from Compaq by confusing potential Compaq customers? No. Ximian on the other hand...

Only in the English version of Google - Kingo - 2001-02-12

If you set your preferences in Google to a non-English language, the Ximian ads are gone.

Re: Only in the English version of Google - Mohammad - 2003-08-17

I get google in Arabic which i don't need. Please help.

Re: Only in the English version of Google - Chubs - 2004-02-19

I dont know, i have the same problem.

Re: Only in the English version of Google - chris hawks - 2006-04-30

Same problem here

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jason Tackaberry - 2001-02-12

I don't see anything wrong with Ximian's actions. They are a company and are using logical demographics for advertising. Those who are searching for KDE and KDE related things might also be interested to know about Ximian. If KDE wants its piece of the pie, perhaps a company with a vested interest in KDE (theKompany, Suse, Mandrake?) can invest in Google's Adwords -- and why not use "gnome" as one of the ad words? Honestly, the tone of this open letter is immature. "See You In Court?" I do agree that there are certain ethical bounds that shouldn't be overstepped in our community, but Ximian's advertising this way with Google doesn't even come close. Jason.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - bastard - 2001-02-12

It's hypocrisy on the part of Ximian. As a "Free Software Company" they hold a higher standard than just, "hey, it's business, all's fair." I don't know about the illegality of it, but it's just not nice.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Roger Larsson - 2001-02-12

If Xamian had not modified their ad specifically for KDE search words. Then I would not have much problem with it... Why couldn't they have kept the word GNOME in their ad when linked to KDE words - are they ashamed of it? Maybe it is Google that should demand unconfusing ads... Hey I found a open spot - search for Microsoft - no ad! Which distributor will dare (and win - or loose in court)? /RogerL

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - ac - 2001-02-13

"Hey I found a open spot - search for Microsoft - no ad! Which distributor will dare (and win - or loose in court)?" Well said! This little sentence brings out important points about the diffence of the Open Source community and the cut-throat tactics of the commercial world. I challenge Ximian to put their ad next to Microsoft keyword searches.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - James L. Morton - 2001-02-13

I must admit you are right about the ad being modified for KDE search terms. That was just a little freaky and weird. But as a whole, this is a non-issue, and the authors are simply trolling:) I may have taken a more open-minded approach had the letter they wrote not been so childish. - James

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Waldo Bastian - 2001-02-13

Hi Jason, Ximian is deliberately trying to mislead users into thinking that Ximian is in some related to KDE. It is not. How do you explain that they don't put "GNOME" in their advertisement when it shows up for 'kde' but that it does contain "GNOME" when it shows up for 'gnome'? Maybe you call this acceptable, I don't. I call this misleading advertising. Cheers, Waldo

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jason Tackaberry - 2001-02-13

The explanation is that people who are searching for GNOME probably know that GNOME is a free desktop environment while people who are searching for KDE may not have heard of GNOME, nor might they know that it is a free desktop environment. I think it makes sense for them to have different ads in different contexts, but I do think they should include "GNOME" in the ad targetted for non-GNOME related searches. Maybe something along the lines of "Ximian is a company that distributes a Free Desktop Environment called GNOME." I will grant you that leaving out the mention of GNOME in this ad could be construed as questionable, but I still maintain that it is not unethical. I think an appropriate response by Ximian would be for them to make this change. The notion of a conspiracy theory makes for juicier headlines, but I believe Ximian never would have anticipated this sort of outlash from the KDE camp. Let's see their response ... Regards, Jason.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - David Johnson - 2001-02-13

I will grant you that leaving out the mention of GNOME in this ad could be construed as questionable More than questionable, it borders on the fraudulent. It should have at least said "Gnome Free Linux Desktop". "Ximian" is a brand new word, less than a month old if I recall. Even the old timers might not know that Ximian sells only Gnome. I certainly don't expect newbies to know. But even given that, the most damaging evidence is that only on the KDE and Qt related searches to the remove the word "Gnome" from their ad.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jamin Gray - 2001-02-13

It makes perfect sense, to me, really. If you're doing a Gnome-related search, you're going to want Gnome related stuff, so it makes sense to have the word "Gnome" in the ad. If you're searching for KDE related things, the point of intersections becomes "free linux desktop" rather than "Gnome." This is basic, 101, extraordinarily simple business demographics. It is done on a daily basis in the advertising industry. I see it all the time in the developers magazines I read. There's no false advertising or fraudulent misconceptions. It's finding a point of intersection with your demographic and marketing your product, and it's perfectly in line with the free software business model.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Andreas Leuner - 2001-02-13

>>It makes perfect sense, to me.<< Well, you're certainly not the only one ;-) I find such advertising tactics "immoral" (just to state my point of view), but... [Another poster wrote that] the Ximian "Free Linux Desktop" ads only appeared in the [I suppose american] english search results version. We can suppose a, e.g., german google visitor _will_ get the german version of the google web page - and won't see these ads. While misleading advertisement, in the way described by Kurt Granroth and Andreas Pour, is in fact illegal in Germany (maybe elsewhere too, but I'm not so familiar with european union laws), the fact that the ads don't appear in the german version makes them legal, because IMHO german law would be unapplicable to a different language version, if there is also an appropriate german one reachable. By the way, testing it I found out that you could not even errantly get a foreign language version if you didn't explicitly choose that language in the google preferences (to be saved with a cookie). This makes the word "illegal" stand on weak legs. Also, the "Free Linux Desktop" ads must have been taken out of the K[...] related search results, which I discovered doing my "tests". There are different ways of interpreting this, but I am not going to judge.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Andreas Leuner - 2001-02-13

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - hetz - 2001-02-13

it's really simple. KDE is a trademark. Ximian is infringing this trademark. pure and simple. Hetz

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Chris Bordeman - 2001-02-13

I agree. I have no problem with the ad placement, but the wording on the link does seem slightly questionable. Something a little more specific like "Another free desktop" or "The other free desktop" or whatever would be better.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Aaron J. Seigo - 2001-02-13

I think the real issue here is that if Gnome was an unafiliated Open Source project standing on its own volunteer developer's legs, this would be seen as a petty move and not very much in the spirit of the Free Software community. However, Ximian is a company and needs to do what is best for the shareholders and corporation. Therefore there is a conflict of interests between the corporate Ximian and the open source Ximian. For a company led by the founders of Gnome, which itself was started due to an ethical issue surrounding Free Software licenses, this puts those individuals in a tight spot. Will they uphold their morals or will they do "what's gotta be done"? If they decide to pick corporate morals over those of the Free Software community, then what are those not affiliated with Ximian, but using and developing on their software to do? Should they also buy into Ximian's best interests? Or should they insist on keeping Free Software what made it so successful thus far and, as their customers and users, demand Ximian do so as well? I don't think the road ahead will be any easier in this regard, in fact I think it will only get stickier. And not just for Ximian, either, but for a lot of Open Source companies. However, the open letter completely missed the mark. Surf over to Linux Today and read the talk backs. You will see it being largely dismissed for what it is: inflamatory, ranting and threatening. It raises serious allegations and tries to convince people that the authors know the intentions of the folks at Ximian. So instead of raising a very real ethical delema facing the Free Software community right now, it downgrades the issue to flamebait, trolling and sour grapes coming from the "Other Guys". Please remember when engaging in advocacy you are not trying to prove something, but rather convince someone of something or at the very least make them think about an issue in ways they perhaps haven't before. This open letter does a lot of the former but almost none of the later.

Why is there no ad when searching for microsoft??? - Anon - 2001-02-13

Or Windows? Or apple? Or any other desktop oriented search? It's not like Linux desktops in general has that big market share... What could it be? Like 1 - 5% of total desktops... Wouldn't it probably be more effective to target on the remaining 95% desktop users... It's a mystery for me...

What will be next, Ximian? - this - 2001-02-13

Will Ximian pay Redhat to make some of their cheesy advertizing appear on my desktop everytime I start my WindowMaker?

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - robert - 2001-02-13

Ximian has a nice installer that you can download and you get GNOME free on your system. It dosen't really matter what desktop people use. This is the same as if I did a search for KDE and found theKompany ads. The kompany's CD comes with GNOME. This is a realy stupid thing to post.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - David Johnson - 2001-02-13

Huh? Ximian does not sell anything related to KDE. Go look. Ximian is Gnome and only Gnome. It matters a great deal what desktop people use, because it only works on one desktop.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - robert - 2001-02-13

What is "it" that only works on one desktop? The installer? If someone is looking for info on a linux desktop on a search engine then they probably don't even have linux yet. What happens if someone uses GNOME rather that KDE, they use GNOME then, that's it, KDE did not lose a customer. They'll probably eventauly find out about KDE and then they might switch. This is a stupid post trying to get people out saying GNOME sucks again, all that will happen is GNOME people will respond back that KDE sucks. Don't respond this isn't about GNOME either, if Be had put up adds that said free desktop no one would say anyting(yes Be dosen't have a free desktop for linux, but they have a free OS with a free desktop). It dosen't really matter what desktop you use, you can run Gtk apps in KDE and Qt apps in GNOME. Why try to divide the people that need to work together the most. There's a ton of work that need to be done for GNOME KDE interopability. BTW I am a KDE/Qt user, though Inti is looking great(I'll probably switch).

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Chris Bordeman - 2001-02-13

what's Inti???

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Anonymous - 2001-02-13

A new C++ development framework for Gnome.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Anonymous - 2001-02-13

At first, I used KDE. But when I found out Gnome I immediately switched to it. So there.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - anonymous - 2001-02-14

kde 2 is way better than gnome if you ask me

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - David Johnson - 2001-02-13

I didn't say that GNOME sucks. Go read my post again.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - robert - 2001-02-13

What I'm trying to say is that the only reason that the KDE people are making a big deal about it is because it's GNOME, if a GNUstep company(there is none, I know) did this no one would have said anything. Not only that but KDE is not a company, if someone uses Ximian GNOME instead of KDE, no one should realy care. If the person is looking up KDE info then they are probably looking for a Linux desktop, if not then they just hit the back button.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Dre - 2001-02-14

If someone is looking for info on a linux desktop on a search engine then they probably don't even have linux yet. What happens if someone uses GNOME rather that KDE, they use GNOME then, that's it, KDE did not lose a customer. They'll probably eventauly find out about KDE and then they might switch. Maybe, maybe not. I guess you've heard the story about flashing VCR clocks? Also, do you know how big a difference the "default desktop" on a distro makes on how much each disto is used? Quite likely you would try both and switch to whichever you prefer, but not everyone would; and most likely those who were confused by the ads would not be the ones trying both. Beyond that, there is a larger point to be made. Under US law, if you don't protect a trademark, you lose it. So if KDE lets people abuse the KDE trademark, and doesn't respond, it loses its trademark; and then anyone can label their product KDE, be it Be-based, Gnome-based or whatever. This is a stupid post trying to get people out saying GNOME sucks again That is not the intent. Even if you look at the linked letter (did you?), it specifically states that it's not a Gnome issue. Don't respond this isn't about GNOME either, if Be had put up adds that said free desktop no one would say anyting(yes Be dosen't have a free desktop for linux, but they have a free OS with a free desktop). Not true either. But I think in the first place Be would not have done this; and even if they had in the second place when they were contacted privately (like Ximian was) they would have stopped, or at least not responded with the "in-your-face" response that Ximian did. As to the divisiveness issue, the point was not to divide. If you look at the post, and the letter, it is directly targeted at Ximian, not Gnome. Unfortunately it was not anticipated that many people would so thoroughly misunderstand that; but if you actually read the letter carefully it almost seems there must be a desire to misconstrue it on the part of the reader. The whole thing talks about Ximian's business ethics, and the only mention of Gnome is in context of showing how the Ximian ad differs when searching for KDE or Gnome. Ximian is not Gnome, it is a company trying to profit from Gnome.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - ac - 2005-04-09

gnome and kde are both a kind of lame user experience. windows has the only desktop most end users can handle and it looks alot better too. and i am an RHCE.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - David Walser - 2001-02-13

Sigh. I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Afterall, what company did the founders of Ximian meet at? I think you get my point.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - me - 2001-02-13

No how stupid is this post? There's absolutely no constructive content in here, only flames. I find this topic interesting, and I think its good somebody mentioned things like this exist. It's very hard for linux - companies to avoid bankruptcy and still remain friends of the community. All they need to do is one little mistake, and the whole community is arguing over them. This has happened to thekompany, and it now happened to Ximian. I think starting these advertisements was either stupid or unfair (or both) from Ximian. They won't gain much from these ads, but it was sure from the beginning on that this would cause troubles. If the ads for 'gnome' and 'kde' would at least have been the same, it could have been regarded as fair.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - David Walser - 2001-02-13

Well I don't trust the leaders of Gnome/Ximian. It's not that I don't trust everybody else working under them. But Miguel's idea of a good Linux desktop is one that's just like Windows, but free software. This is reflected how he models Gnome technologies after Windows (like Bonobo and Evolution). I think we can do better. Not if are MS lovers though.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Anonymous - 2001-02-13

OK, Evolution looks like Outlook. So what? And Bonobo doesn't even come close to Windows' component model. Bonobo is not Gnome-dependend or even Unix-dependend! But KDE... it depends on X and kdelibs, just like OLE depends on Windows.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - David Walser - 2001-02-13

It's a crappy UI and a stupid thing to aim for. WE CAN DO BETTER. They even said they modeled Bonobo after COM, and KDE is dependent on Qt, just like Gnome is dependednt on Gtk+, they are no different in that respect. And KDE "depends on" kdelibs (duh, it's part of KDE!), and Gnome depends on their own libs (which are in several different packages, ugh), they are no different in that respect. And there's an Xparts port of the Kparts component model that doesn't depend on KDE.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Spark - 2001-02-14

> It's a crappy UI and a stupid thing to aim for. WE CAN DO BETTER. hm? sure, and as far as i can see, neither GNOME nor KDE is aiming to copy the windows UI. i used windows for years, than i used KDE for years and now i use GNOME, so i guess i can say that. both GNOME and KDE are far superiour than windows. but i would prefer KDE to a unix newbie coming from windows, cause it comes much closer to it. > They even said they modeled Bonobo after COM, and KDE is dependent on Qt, just like Gnome is dependednt on Gtk+, they are no different in that respect. And KDE "depends on" kdelibs (duh, it's part of KDE!) i'm sure he was talkin about KParts beeing KDE dependent and that's true. =) why do you call bonobo a windows copy if kparts does the same but KDE only? i don't get it. > And there's an Xparts port of the Kparts component model that doesn't depend on KDE. if i got it right, Xparts is just to embed other applications INTO kde, so they are still useless for everyone not using KDE. maybe i'm wrong, would be glad to hear that. and even if Xparts can be used as a plattform independent component model like bonobo, what sense does it make if everyone is using KParts instead? tell me, that i can write a Gtk application embedding the KHTML Kpart using Xparts and i will be quiet...

Whats next? - Anon - 2001-02-13

Linus Torvalds putting up an ad on google for "Free Operating System" when searching for "Free BSD"? Not really, but maybe Redhat should try that... That'll be fun... lol But this brings up an important thought... Is it OK for a company to try to profit on a non profit orginisation as KDE? What will be next? Next time maybe Linux or apache will be the target by Microsoft using the same practices... Sure that wouldn't be OK, but Gnome fans has no problem seeing this done to KDE. In my eyes this makes them as Good as Microsoft supporters...

Re: Whats next? - bla - 2001-02-14

There are BSD ads on linuxtoday.com quite often, what was your point again?

What's wrong with friendly competition? - Jamin P. Gray - 2001-02-13

I don't see how this is deceitful tactics at all. What is wrong with a little friendly competition? It wasn't to long ago that KDE developer, Martin Konol, purchashed the domain name gnome-support.de and redirected traffic to kde.org immediately after Miguel and Nat announced their new company and had registered the gnome-support.com domain. The only thing Ximian should consider is adding the word "Gnome" to the ad to avoid confusion. To me it makes a lot of sense that someone searching for KDE (or related technologies) might be interested in Ximian Gnome technologies also. If not, like all ads, they can ignore it.

Re: What's wrong with friendly competition? - Marco Krohn - 2001-02-13

What is wrong with a little friendly competition? I think that is exactly the point. This actions of Ximian might be normal competition but they are surely not friendly. Setting confusing links in the KDE hemisphere (that is what I would call google if you search for KDE) are not very nice. OTOH the domain grabbing was not nice either. The question is: where does at all end? The real dangerous thing is that frontiers vanish between friendly and normal competition. Friendly/fair behaviour is to point out the advantages of my own products on my or associated web sites. Setting links in the other hemisphere is NOT friendly. Just assume M$ sets a link on the "linux" keyword. Would you say: I don't care? Would you say: ahhh, some friendly competition? Be honest this action would not be friendly and so is Ximian action.

Re: What's wrong with friendly competition? - anonymous - 2001-02-14

and for how long did gnome-support.de redirect traffic to kde.org? it dosen't anymore

Re: What's wrong with friendly competition? - Jamin P. Gray - 2001-02-14

I don't know. It was just another example of agressive ad campaigning that in the end was resolved.

Re: What's wrong with friendly competition? - Macka - 2001-02-14

> I don't see how this is deceitful tactics at all I wonder why. Tell us please, are you a GNOME supporter or a KDE supporter? I suspect the former, in which case you're obviously not going to see this as wrong. As far as I'm concerned it's dirty tactics. With morals like that, Ximan will have to be watched very closely. Macka

Re: What's wrong with friendly competition? - Macka - 2001-02-14

Sorry for the multiple posts - Macka - 2001-02-14

My link froze and I didn't think it had take the first one .. then I realised I'd not selected TEXT and it didn't make much sense.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - John Califf - 2001-02-13

Ethics. Not at all like assholes and opinions. Some people don't have any. This really has little to do with Ximian vs. Kde but with sponsored links in general. As I recall when testing the search from the Linux Weekly News story, the Ximian ad appears separate from the body of the search results. Some search engines insert the sponsored link directly into search results. So, not too bad. Not ideal, but since when did Kde expect ideal behavior from Miguel and company? Come on. Sponsored links, sponsored developers.... Sure, this is bad PR for Ximian but also for Kde. It makes Kde look like whiners. I think the LWN article was more effective than this letter from Kde folks in making Ximian's actions look unscrupulous. The bottom line is that Ximian and Eazel have been getting a lot of venture capital lately. Kde would like some of that too. Well, it won't help for Kde to get venture capital to point out unethical behavior by interests hoping to profit from Gnome. The mixing in of commercial interests behind the scenes with free software in a number of ways is the problem - not commercial interests per se. The commercial interests are here, so how are free software projects like Kde to deal with them? I suggest that Kde League could address this issue in a creative way. Kde seems too proud to ask, yet does accept sponsorship in a number of indirect ways. Why not ask for help in the form of money openly and directly, for the project itself instead of having individual companies "sponsor" people in a way which discourages volunteers from contributing their time. All monies from commercial interests should instead go into a common fund or pool, to be administered by Kde itself or Kde League. Some people might not get paid so well, but more would get something, and/or money would go instead into projects and infrastructure rather than people. Volunteers don't want to get involved with Mozilla to make AOL richer so that project is run mostly by paid AOL people. (And it shows). Likewise, Kde is facing the same danger. And it is starting to show in my opinion in a number of terrible decisions regarding design and usability in Kde, decisions made by a closed group in an elite private club, not by the people who actually do the work on kde. That's taxation without representation. Instead, these decisions should be made by people representing each app or lib in kde cvs, not by "core" developers. Some of the people might not even be coders. It would be up to each project in kde to decide who to represent it. Much better, even though most of the people would probably be the same, it's representative. Sour grapes here? Not at all. I have enough trouble with the regular lists at kde, and would much rather spend my time writing code than petty bickering on mailing lists. To me, Kde is a charitable organization. When you do work for a charitable organization, you don't do is as a "sponsored" employee of General Motores or IBM. Some staff might get paid, mostly support people like secretaries, but this is handled by an organization set up like a charity. Why can't Kde do the same? Then it could truly claim to be doing charitable or at least non-profit work in an open and ethical way. (Not to say that the current situation is necessarily unethical. It is using bad judgement in how to attract and keep people though). Of course, like most other things I write on kde lists and in forums, this will just draw resentment from some people who will lecture me about manners or attitude. But, one must examine the underlying motivations of these actions, and the power that corporations wield in free software throught their ability to hire people (or let them go). If we really want Kde to be able to take the high ground, these issues must be examined. Maybe Kde will never get tens of millions in venture capital. But it could get better financial support and more volunteers. Currently Kde is hurting for volunteers in several important areas. Attacking questionable ethics on the part Ximian, RedHat and Eazel won't help Kde get the support it needs. Kde needs to clean up its own act first! John PS. I work on Kde development. No, I am not a traitor. Kde has never known who its real friends are, sadly. Kde's main strength in the competition with Gnome is Kde's more open development model, but Kde is in danger of losing that advantage and the good will it generates by not playing on that strength more to get needed resources, in money and people - and keeping the people it already has.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Waldo Bastian - 2001-02-13

Hi John, You write: > And it is starting to show in my opinion in a > number of terrible decisions regarding design > and usability in Kde, decisions made by a closed > group in an elite private club, not by the > people who actually do the work on kde. What do you mean? Cheers, Waldo

KDE Development - Navindra Umanee - 2001-02-13

Hi John, I follow the KDE development lists, enough to report on happenings from time to time. I wish I was more involved, but currently I'm not. I can't really see what you're talking about. Has any of your work or ideas been rejected somehow? Or what is it you are trying to say? As far as I can see, whoever does the work is King in the KDE project, but sometimes consensus is needed or obviously bad (for the user and such) decisions may be overturned. As a KDE user myself, I'd like to thank you personally for the work you've been putting in Krayon, and the such. I look forward to the stable versions of your pet projects! Also, if you feel that you have a voice that is somehow getting lost in the crowd regarding KDE development, or KDE design decisions, or KDE ideas, feel free to submit articles to dot.kde.org. Anything interesting and/or stimulating and/or constructive is always gladly accepted! Sometimes we, the reporters, don't notice some of the more interesting happenings in the KDE project, so we can certainly use a little help. Cheers, Navin.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Chris Bordeman - 2001-02-13

Could you be any more vague? Just wondering...

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Uwe - 2001-02-13

A coupla remarks and questions: 1. What were the "terrible decisions" regarding design and usability? If you look at KDE 2.1b2 (or the current CVS code for that matter) you'll notice that design (as in "graphical design as well as in "system desing") has greatly improved. Usability is better than in 2.0.1. Really, please give some specifics. 2. KDE isn't a company (unlike Ximian). What would it gain from venture capital and, for that matter, how would it gain venture capital? There simply is no way. Therefore it's absurd to claim that "KDE would like some of that too". Donations, on the other hand, are always welcome and helpful. Many companies have helped KDE in this regard, donating hardware, sponsoring meetings, sponsoring developers attending conferences. This kind of help is much more suitable for a worldwide network of volunteers. KDE isn't too proud to ask for help if it is needed (ask any of the major Linux distributions, they'll tell you ;-) but it just can't make use of venture capital. 3. In which ways do KDE developers who are full-time employed by companies to work on KDE solely drive away volunteers? Alright, I admit there is a slight chance that full-time developers overtake a project by the sheer amount of code they churn out. KDE consists of hundreds of volunteers around the globe and a handfull (alright, two handfulls ;-) of paid developers. I don't see that KDE has fallen into that trap. Instead, many of the paid developers do a hell of a job to fix bugs, chase nasty little things, get their hands dirty in doing things nobody is really interested in doing. And I'd like to thank them for all that stuff. No, KDE's reaction to Ximians dirty tricks has nothing to do with jealousy. It has to do with Ximian crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed. And apparently, they realised that too. Meanwhile all those sponsored links are gone. Good!

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - David - 2001-02-14

John, What has upset you? Your first paragraph starts off well then you start attacking KDE, your points don't make sense especially regarding money and venture capital. KDE isn't really a charity, think of the charities you know, they help people don't they? They provide items and assistance to people who cannot either afford them or find themselves in a situation where they cannot help them selves. Compare that to an Internet based software project run by people as a hobby. Sure, donations help KDE to become better and developers from companies are just donations but always with motivies. As these motives however compliment your hobby as you both work to make KDE better, this is a real example of a win/win situation. I think we can put this down to a bad day can't we? Maybe a little frustration in not getting your own way with something perhaps? Internet based projects are sometimes like that John, you are not forced to take part in KDE although you are an asset when you are more constructive. If something isn't fun anymore work on the reason behind it, if you have given it some real thought and still can't find a motivator give it up and try something else. Good luck John.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - anonymous - 2001-02-13

Ximian has done NOTHING WRONG. I'm a diehard KDE user, and I'd love to see KDE grow more and more, but this time of complaining is very bad for publicity. Instead of complaining and making us look like fools, we should be doing something similiar... its not deceit, its advertising... of course now if we tried something like that, we would be hippocrites... I think the KDE League should start doing their own advertising as well, as I've heard NOTHING from them since the announcement that they exist... in fact at www.kdeleague.org, the only thing I read in their news is the first post on November 13 2000... pretty sad. The KDE League should needs to be VERY AGRESSIVE... KDE has technical merits that I believe put it above GNOME, but unfortunately thats not what makes a desktop environment (or any software) grow... its marketing... look at microsoft for instance. I keep hearing about companies like HP and Sun using GNOME as their default desktop... KDE needs to start diving into that arena and many others.... Hell.... some of you KDE developers probably go to college... why not pass out KDE CDs or something.... just my two cents....

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Evandro - 2001-02-13

they are trying to fool people looking for KDE not GNOME. they look like fools, not us. it doesn't matter to me that two commercial unix operating systems use gnome as their default desktop. almost every linux distribution uses kde as the default, because their decision is not based on commercial interests. sun only uses gnome to get open office to replace gnome office (see http://www.eazel.com/press/release_00_12_18).

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jamin Gray - 2001-02-13

You've said three incorrect statements here. First you say that Ximian was trying to "fool" people looking for KDE. There is nothing subversive going on here. This is the way advertising works. If you read a linux or open source related ad in a windows developer magazine does it mean the ad placer is trying to "fool" windows developers into thinking the ad is for something it's not? That's an absurd notion. In the business world, which you don't seem all that familiar with, the burden is largely placed on the consumer to make educated decisions, with some laws in place to prevent abuse. Beyond that, it's fair game. Get your product's name out there. A user is searching for KDE in google. Let's present them with the alternative and let them see why it's better. This is nothing new. Secondly, you state that almost every linux distribution uses KDE as the default. Red Hat (which is the largest distributor in the U.S.) uses Gnome. TurboLinux, the largest in Japan, uses Gnome. And whether it matters to you or not that two major Unix players (Sun and HP) are going to ship Gnome as the default, it's very significant. In addition, I might add that Dell and HP are shipping Gnome on their Linux workstations also. Thirdly Sun went with Gnome technologies because the people researching open source technologies felt that Gnome had the best (and most promising) framework from which to work. The unification of Bonobo, UNO (Open Office's component framework), and most promisingly, Mozilla's XP COM architecture, is extremely exciting.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Dre - 2001-02-14

In the business world, which you don't seem all that familiar with, the burden is largely placed on the consumer to make educated decisions, with some laws in place to prevent abuse. Beyond that, it's fair game. One of the laws put in place to protect consumers is trademark law. Read about it. The unification of Bonobo, UNO (Open Office's component framework), and most promisingly, Mozilla's XP COM architecture, is extremely exciting. I haven't seen what's exciting about Bonobo. As to UNO, that could be unified as a KPart as well, probably better; that's certainly not a reason to choose Gnome over KDE. As to Mozilla's XP COM, that by definition is GUI agnostic. If the Mozilla GUI is ported to Qt/KDE, it will exist in KDE as well; in fact reports have it that Corel has worked on this.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jamin P. Gray - 2001-02-14

One of the laws put in place to protect consumers is trademark law. Read about it. I know how trademark law works. Ximian did not in the least infringe on any U.S. trademark laws. If they had claimed that Ximian was KDE, that might be a different story. Instead, Ximian was targeting an audience (people searching for KDE related stuff on google) and marketing their related product. This is done every day in advertising. You target your demographics and push your product to an audience most likely to be looking for products similar to yours. I haven't seen what's exciting about Bonobo. As to UNO, that could be unified as a KPart as well, probably better; that's certainly not a reason to choose Gnome over KDE. As to Mozilla's XP COM, that by definition is GUI agnostic. If the Mozilla GUI is ported to Qt/KDE, it will exist in KDE as well; in fact reports have it that Corel has worked on this. What's exciting is that work is already being done to unify existing component architectures, bonobo, XP COM, and UNO. As someone who is a component programmer for a living, this is extremely exciting to me. A good standard component architecture for Unix/Linux/other platforms would allow more reuse of code and be a tremendous advantage for developers and users alike. Even at the initial stages you can imagine being able to share components (and it's not just about embedding GUI's--there's so much more to components) between apps written in the mozilla platform, the Gnome platform (Evolution, Nautilus, Gimp 2.0, etc.), and Open Office. Granted this is a goal; there is a lot of work to be done, but it would be worth it. Incidentally, Bonobo is toolkit independant. I really hope the major players (including KDE) can get involved in integrating the various existing component architectures.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - anonymous - 2001-02-14

What Ximian did was deceptive. You can't deny that. They "sponsored" KDE search phrases. and since the link only said "free desktop," any newbie would think it is KDE. When they end up at the gnome site, they could easily become confused and choose gnome instead. It was taking the good name of KDE and using it to market gnome. This is wrong, and i'm glad that Ximian corrected it.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Dre - 2001-02-14

I know how trademark law works. Ximian did not in the least infringe on any U.S. trademark laws. If you know about trademark law, please answer these two questions. <OL> <LI TYPE="1">The purpose of trademark law is to prevent confusion. Is it not confusing to place an ad for product A next to a search for product B using language that describes both product A and B? Particulary when searches for product B yield an ad that describes exactly product B? Maybe you, well acquianted with the desktop options, would not be confused, but you don't think there is even a likelihood that someone could be? That is a factual question, and so I cannot prove it to you, except that the case law on stuff like <META> tags -- under U.S. law -- support my conclusion. Did you read about <A HREF="http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/metasuits.html">those cases</A>? In those cases people are directed to the wrong site by search engines b/c a web author placed a trademarked term in the META tags. In each of the cases listed the web author lost. Even though "obviously" when the user got to the site they realized the site was not what they were looking for. Keep in mind: Ximian (and all other people) has a legal duty not to create the likelihood that someone would be confused into even visiting their site.</LI> <LI>Equally disturbing is Google's sale of trademarked names. As you understand trademark law, you know that the general rule is as a third party you are not allowed to use a trademark for any purpose. To use it you must fit into one of the exceptions in the Lanham Act (the most obvious ones being "fair use" and consent of the trademark holder). Please explain which exception in the Lanham Act Google's sale of trademarked names falls into.</LI> </OL> As to your Bonobo comments, yes, CORBA on the surface is exciting; in fact KDE tried using it for quite some time. On planet Earth, however, it doesn't live up to its promise -- most likely b/c CORBA was never meant to be used on a desktop for embedding graphical components. It's performance is poor and it's programming is too complicated. So far Bonobo is vapourware. If it actually succeeds in being efficient and useable, I will be excited with you. In the meantime, I won't lose sleep over vapourware that's been "in the works" for a couple years now.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jamin Gray - 2001-02-14

In answer to your first question, there is a big difference between targeting an audience with a box with an advertisement in it and playing with the data so that ximian comes out on top of the actual KDE search. The one is an advertisement for related technology/products, while the other is directly claiming it's part of the search results. As I've mentioned, The first is done every single day, particularly in the tech industry. It's not illegal. As for your second point, I would say Google's use of the KDE keywords falls under "fair use." They are a search engine. Search engines often target audiences witha ds based on keywords, yes, even trademarked ones. This is nothing new. What's most confusing about this whole thing is that no one seems to realize that this has been going on in the advertising industry for ages, and to the best of my (meager) understanding of business laws, it's not illegal.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Dre - 2001-02-15

The one is an advertisement for related technology/products, while the other is directly claiming it's part of the search results. As I've mentioned, The first is done every single day, particularly in the tech industry. See, here you show you don't understand trademark law very well. The issue is clearly not whether something pretends to be part of the search results -- the issue is whether or not there is a "likelihood of confusion". Sure putting something in the search results is likely to make it confusing -- but that certainly is not the only way. Placing a generic description like "Free Linux Desktop" next to the search results is IMHO also likely to cause confusion. Certainly Ximian could have done a better job of avoiding confusion by using the same ad they used for the other keywords -- which actually featured the name they are trying to brand -- but they did not. As to what other people do at other times, I haven't seen this practice before. Each incidence has to be judged on its own. And I'm sure child abuse is done "every single day" too, that doesn't make it right, or legal. As for your second point, I would say Google's use of the KDE keywords falls under "fair use." Sorry, it doesn't. You seem not to have a clue what "fair use" of a trademark is; this case clearly does not fall under it. If you try to fit it into an exception, please at least quote the definition next time, as evidence that you have read it, and explain how that language applies to Google's practice of "selling" trademarked names to the trademark holder's competitors.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jamin P. Gray - 2001-02-15

See, here you show you don't understand trademark law very well. The issue is clearly not whether something pretends to be part of the search results -- the issue is whether or not there is a "likelihood of confusion". Sure putting something in the search results is likely to make it confusing -- but that certainly is not the only way. Placing a generic description like "Free Linux Desktop" next to the search results is IMHO also likely to cause confusion. Certainly Ximian could have done a better job of avoiding confusion by using the same ad they used for the other keywords -- which actually featured the name they are trying to brand -- but they did not. As to what other people do at other times, I haven't seen this practice before. Each incidence has to be judged on its own. And I'm sure child abuse is done "every single day" too, that doesn't make it right, or legal. If the issue really is confusion, it would never hold up in court, heaven forbid it would actually come to that. a) what Ximian did is no different than what hundreds of ads in magazine or through search engines do every day now. I have seen ads for windows products in Linux magazines, and vice versa where not much information is really given about the ad. Could it be confusing? I suppose technically if you are a complete idiot. Of all the people who have searched for KDE or even clicked on a banner ad for that matter, how many do you really think have been confused by the resultant page once they click on it? If Ximian really was found to be breaking trademark law it would likely set a precident that would cause the entire advertising industry to change. That is not about to happen. At any rate, Ximian removed their ads to avoid conflict in the community, and I'm tired of talking about this, as I'm sure most of us are. /me goes to dinner.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Jamin P. Gray - 2001-02-15

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community - Dre - 2001-02-15

If the issue really is confusion, it would never hold up in court, heaven forbid it would actually come to that. a) what Ximian did is no different than what hundreds of ads in magazine or through search engines do every day now. I have seen ads for windows products in Linux magazines, and vice versa where not much information is really given about the ad. Issues of "likelihood of confusion" are fact-based. Having an ad in a magazine next to an article may or may not be confusing; in most cases not. People expect ads in magazines not to be related to the articles they appear next to. In this case, however, the ad appears right after a particular search, on a search engine that is to provide relevant results for that search. That increases the possibility of confusion above the normal "magazine" example already. Then, on top of that, the wording of the ad was generic, so it quite accurately described what was being searched for. This fact makes it go over the top, IMHO. I think if you look at the cases where trademark infringement has been found you will find quite a number where the likelihood of confusion pales in comparison. Could it be confusing? I suppose technically if you are a complete idiot. Of all the people who have searched for KDE or even clicked on a banner ad for that matter, how many do you really think have been confused by the resultant page once they click on it? Again, it looks as if you have not bothered to read the META tag cases. If you had, you would know that even getting someone to come to the website is a trademark violation, regardless of whether its completely obvious once you get there that that the site is not what you were looking for. (And in the case of the Ximian ads, and Linux newbies, I don't think at all it is obvious.) The point is that a third party is not allowed to profit off a trademarked name at all (and generating traffic to a web site is a profit) -- subject to the "fair use", consent and other exceptions, of course; the name belongs to its owner, period. I'm sorry, but I fear you really do not understand trademark law very well. I don't blame you for that, it's a complicated legal field and unless you have studied it there is no reason you should know this. But if you don't understand something, it is better IMHO not to state that you do and accuse others of being wrong in the process.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Jamin Gray - 2001-02-13

Absolutely. The license and the community gives us freedom and allows us to work together--the companies with funding and resources to give backing are ariving -- let the competition begin! I read linux and open source related ads in windows developer magazines all the time...this is nothing new. It's advertising, getting your name out amongst the competition. It's fair game and perfectly in line with the free software business model.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Jano - 2001-02-13

My two cents - I find it amusing that some people are totally flaming this letter. Let me recreate the situation in another light - imagine doing a search on "linux" or "BSD", and getting the little ad to the left that links to M$. And someone who doesn't know better takes that link to M$, and these other OSs are totally ignored. Most everyone I know would be up in arms over this. Just because Ximian has it's roots in free software doesn't make this any different other than the fact that we expect more of them. To undercut KDE like this is something truly worthy of M$ marketing.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Suomynona - 2001-02-13

IMHO, nobody would care if MS did such a thing. Granted, MS would never pay Google for such an ad-- they'd end up paying big bucks to target only 1% of desktop users. No offense, but none of the Open Source desktops are there yet.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Des Herriott - 2001-02-13

Well, I'd care. I agree I'd be in a small minority of computer users overall (your average Windows user couldn't care less), but that doesn't make Ximian's behaviour any less reprehensible. What Ximian did was pay Google for an advertising placement, and hijack KDE's name to advertise their own product. I don't understand how you can possibly defend them for this. At least they've had the good sense to remove the KDE name from their advertising, but I think they owe the KDE guys an apology for this.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Des Herriott - 2001-02-13

OK, having read Ximian's statement, it looks like they're acting in good faith. Good to see it's been settled amicably.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - not me - 2001-02-13

The ad has been changed! It now reads: Free Linux Desktop Ximian, Inc. Download Ximian GNOME now! www.ximian.com Hooray for Ximian! Hopefully we can put this silly dispute behind us now.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - anonymous - 2001-02-14

the ad is gone now. even better.

What a joke... - Dyna - 2001-02-13

Too bad this confuses a very real issue regarding commercial interests with open source. And the KDE folks that manage to make a great desktop? Just sue instead of running your mouths if you think you have a case. The fact is you don't have a leg to stand on.

Re: What a joke... - bla - 2001-02-13

why didn't anyone sue Trolltech/KDE then in the past for using the GPL/QPL? Ok .. because nobody had a leg to stand on ...

Ad? What ad? - Paul Ahlquist - 2001-02-13

...they're not there now. Perhaps the squeaking wheels have received some oil? -pea

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - caatje - 2001-02-13

The ads appear to be completely gone now from all KDE search terms.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Suomynona - 2001-02-13

Ximian has a legal right to have advertisements appear for whatever keywords they wish. Open Source companies provide their source code not because its ethical, but because it provides extra value to the user. Do free software companies believe they will be taken seriously in the business world when they act like little babies sucking their thumbs? Grow up.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Dre - 2001-02-13

Ximian has a legal right to have advertisements appear for whatever keywords they wish. I am curious, are you an attorney? I have done a good amount of reading on trademark law, and I don't believe you are right. The cases involving META tags would support my conclusion as well. Perhaps you just don't have any idea of the legal issues involved; in which case, please refrain from making claims about them. Do free software companies believe they will be taken seriously in the business world when they act like little babies sucking their thumbs? Grow up. Will the big business world take seriously any business which does not protect its trademarks and which does not protest against someone confusing their users into buying another product using their trademark?

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Suomynona - 2001-02-13

I am curious, are you an attorney? I have done a good amount of reading on trademark law, and I don't believe you are right. The cases involving META tags would support my conclusion as well. Perhaps you just don't have any idea of the legal issues involved; in which case, please refrain from making claims about them. I am not an attorney. KDE should consult an attorney first instead of acting like fools whining about how some company is ethically wrong. From what I understand, Ximian is 1: not using META tags and 2: Neither Google nor Ximian is a Germany company. How KDE plans to use German laws to sue U.S. entities is beyond me. KDE should do their homework first before posting this stuff on their frontpage. It's not news.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Jim - 2001-02-13

I am not an attorney. KDE should consult an attorney first instead of acting like fools whining about how some company is ethically wrong. No they shouldn't. They should consult an attorney if they are claiming that something is illegal, but they are not. They are saying that they think that it's a grey area. This is different from saying that they believe it is ethically wrong. Ethics and law do not have a 1:1 correspondence. Of course, you should consult an attorney before saying things like "they haven't got a leg to stand on in court".

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Alex Hamer - 2001-02-13

> How KDE plans to use German laws to sue > U.S. entities ... Huh? > ... is beyond me. Definitely.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Dre - 2001-02-14

KDE should consult an attorney first instead of acting like fools whining about how some company is ethically wrong. I can assure you that attorneys were consulted. Strange that you would accuse us of jumping to conclusions when in fact we did quite a bit of research and all I see from you is jumping to (wrong) conclusions. Sorry, I can't understand the rest of your comment. To the extent it refers to the areas of international law governing the applicability of German law to Google's and Ximian's conduct, one would have to contact a pretty expensive law firm with expertise in international trademark law (I would note that Google does operate in Germany and I believe Ximian does commerce in Germany as well). However, it is not clear from your comment that you considered the fact that US law also applies to Google and Ximian and that you don't have to be a US citizen to make use of US law. As to your META tag comment, that was an <A HREF="http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=analogy&db=*">analogy</A>

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - anonymous - 2001-02-14

Acting like fools?!?! hiring an attourney when they could have settled it quietly (which they did) would have been foolish and babyish. "Oh, they hurt us, so we have to call on someone bigger to do them justice instead of facing them ourselves." The KDE people did the right thing in confronting Ximian before hiring a lawyer.

Ooops - Navindra Umanee - 2001-02-13

In case you caught it, sorry for the bogus/stupid update on my part. I was out of the loop and should have been more careful. Hindsight is 20/20 as has been said. Situation being rectified. -N.

Everyone's favorite search engine - Ilya Konstantinov - 2001-02-13

I personally don't care about the GNOME-KDE fan fights, as long as they sponsor Google, thus helping keep it banner/portal-free.

Clear up own "skeletons"!! - Gaute Lindkvist - 2001-02-13

I do not like this sort of practise, but there are is a thing the KDE-developers could do, to keep the whole competition between KDE and Gnome friendly. What is it? The "Legacy theme importer". The whole concept is just so truly obnoxious that it irritates me. I use both KDE and Gnome on a regular basis, though now more KDE than Gnome. But GTK+ does have more themes than KDE, and this makes me want to import themes, through a very useful utiliy included with KDE2. But naming it legacy, and having a highly obnoxious text stating what the "theme importer" is for, is not excactly helping the good spirit of competition. KDE2 kan (pun intended) stand on it's own merit, it is a fine product, and does not need this.

I second that - Thomas - 2001-02-13

That's the point. I totally agree with you...

Re: Clear up own "skeletons"!! - David Walser - 2001-02-13

KDE now refers to KDE1 themes as legacy themes too. Get over it.

Gtk+ themes are NOT legacy - Gaute Lindkvist - 2001-02-14

Gtk+ is a competitor, and it's not even a global truth that KDE/Qt -themes are better than Gtk+ ones. If Microsoft had a way of running Linux-binaries, and calling them "legacy applications", a lot of people would be upset.

Re: Gtk+ themes are NOT legacy - David Walser - 2001-02-14

This isn't an aesthetic distinction, it's a technical one. GTK+ themes are pixmap themes, KDE2 ones are gradient themes. Much more flexible, smaller size, better performance, etc.

Re: Gtk+ themes are NOT legacy - bla - 2001-02-14

it all depends on what theme engine they use... some are pixmap engines, some are not...

Re: Clear up own "skeletons"!! - Dre - 2001-02-14

I think the word "legacy" was replaced recently. Maybe it did not make it through because of the message freeze. I think the original authors of that language did not understand that some people might perceive the term "legacy" as derogatory.

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - L Brookes - 2001-02-14

Anybody doing a search for 'kde' or some such thing, will likely be aware of gnome already, and has choosen kde. Or they are doing a bit of research on linux desktops and WM's etc, and will want to try out a range of offerings. And how exactly is someone who uses Linux going to avoid hearing about gnome in the first place, as it is probably included in their distro along with kde anyway? Another thing, how many people even look at banners ads, let alone click on them? To summarise my feelings for Kurt... you are paranoid and need a holiday if this is all it takes to upset you. You have my deepest sympathies. L Brookes

Re: "Business Ethics" in the Open Source Community? - Wally Eckbar - 2001-02-14

This is not exactly a matter of ethics, it is a matter of legality. I'm not sure if "KDE", "KDE Project" or whatever is trademarked. Even if they are not trademarked, it doesn't matter. All trademarking does is officially designate it yours in the eyes of the govt. However, it is NOT concidered fair use to use a competitors trademarked phrase in your advertisement. That is concidered unfair trade practices. If you do not believe me, call a law office and ask a lawyer. This is EXACTLY the same thin my company had to deal with. Another competitor was using the name of our product in their meta tag. Not only that, their product came up first. Since it was a competing product (software) and not some type of dish soap or anything compeltely remote, this is what caused it to be unfair trade practice.

Insights - David - 2001-02-14

Can't anyone see the funny side? Its amazing how time makes people forget.... Gnome was founded because KDE used a non Free toolkit, QT and hence Gnome was given backing by GNU. The shoe is somewhat on the other foot now though. QT is now licensed under the GPL and KDE is still the same as it always was, nobody is directly in the KDE project to make money as KDE is a non comercial entity that does not pay coders for there work. Gnome on the other hand has at least two comercial companies coding on the core infrstutcture of Gnome and intend to make money off this effort. They are comercial, thats what they do and that why the adds were posted. I think the best way to make this point is with a question: If all of the Linux desktop users stopped using KDE tomorrow what would happen to KDE? Maybe the project would stop maybe not but would anyone lose venture capital? Would the stock price fall? What if everybody dropped Gnome? Ximian wouldn't have any users and hence no business model for start. A simple thing that you might have learnt about life, becareful who you trust and be extremely careful if you trust anyone with a vested interest. KDE's motivation is to produce the best Desktop enviroment for Linux, the companies behind Gnome motivation is to make money. It's natrually understandable that a lot of people here have strong feelings about the ads, try for one second to supress them and think about this, keep an open mind please. Ximian's ads were aimed at who? Newbies to linux, nobody else would search for KDE it's self on Google, this was even stated by Ximian and I agree. Now, this is called sucker advertising; the only people that follow your ads are people that don't know better. This says a lot about Ximian's business model and tells you a lot about what they plan to do in the future. Expect the following from Gnome: A desktop that is delivered with ads and intergrated tie in services. An example from History would be Microsoft shipping MSN with windows. This was also a sucker trick, add an icon to the Desktop that said "Connect to the internet" and then bring up MS's own service. Someone that doesn't know any better is just going to enter thier credit card as they want to be on the internet. Expect this theme to get a lot worse with Gnome or Ximian's version at least as services is their whole business model. Two things that will hinder Ximian, one relates to Netscape 6, Netscape 6 is Mozilla except that it comes with a load of ads, does any one use the Netscape 6 version or would you rather use plain Mozilla ? Secondly, most people get Linux via a distribution and I see this trend continuing, do you think Distributions are going to leave Ximians ads in tact? The GPL doesn't force them two and Ximian realize this will happen, this is why the Comercial Gnome companies are writting there own installer as a high priority that downloads the newist software from THEIR site, this enables them to have more control on what they put on your computer. It's a very clever tactic and means they can keep you up to date with their latest services and add the icon back to your desktop. Lets try another one, where is another place where you can sell system services like auto update etc? A system configuration utility. There tactics aren't hard to figure out, of course getting through the zealot nature in most of you will be difficult but all I can say is watch the future. These ads are just the start of some interesting times for Ximian and this trick is very preditory, Ximian are not here to make the world a better place but to make money, you don't get venture capital unless you can provide a return. Ximian's business model is not great, they rely on users and furthermore users that will use their paid services. The more users you have the more potential clients. Some of the hard core GNU/Linux fans will no doubt get more than a bit disgruntled in the future with Ximian and I expect a mini backlash against them at some point. They have to be preditors and they have to get as many users as possible, it will start with "Please sign up for our services as it helps gnome" and then get more desperate when people don't. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, if you like Gnome and like Ximians services please do, but a company is not a charity, the FSF is. Is this good for Open source? I can't answer this but there is little doubt in my mind that the comercial nature of Ximian is already affecting the Gnome project, currently Gnome 2 is being planned around GTK2, many Gnome deveopers are pushing for Gnome 2 to clean out the bad designs and basically start again from scratch much in the same way KDE 2 did over KDE 1. KDE2 took a while as this approach would but now it's here it's design is solid and is a great foundation. Ximian are callign this approach Bluesky, hopefully developers that read this will see that this is the right thing to do. Miguel first proposed bluesky but has since changed his tone, the main reason being that the timescales are too long and it would mean that Sun would not ship version 2 of Gnome (with Ximian tie ins) but version 1.4. Gnome 2 will be hurried out of the door in not as good shape as it could be despite the wishes of a lot of the free developers. There are several replies that could maybe argue these points where as distros pay towards KDE development yada yada yada. This post doesn't really want to split hair over that, all I want to point out is that if you compare the two project 18 months ago the tables have turned a lot. The only desktop enviroment and toolkit that is covered under the real GPL is KDE, there are comercial sponsors that help with some expenses but that's it. You certainly don't see bookmarks to to IBM placed "conviently" for you in Konqueror do you? Distro will no doubt add their own. There was also a point raised by someone else here in an earlier thread that stated that KDE was wrong to pubish the letter while also mentioning that nobody really wants to code on Mozilla as they didn't want to help AOL get richer. Maybe but Mozilla isn't sold for profit. However, with the same reasoning you could also say that giving your time coding on gnome will help make Ximian richer. Ximian, don't actually sell gnome but there business is solely based on selling support for it and tie ins. A note to the KDE PR people, you did the right thing to raise this issue, the letter was correct in most things you stated but was very imflamatory. The posts here prove that, the posts here also prove that you have an army of Zealots to help with these issues. Fighting fire with fire isn't the best way to handle these issues, make people aware of the facts: "Ximian ads.. to KDE sites blah blah, we asked them to remove them, they said no". This states the facts and lets people make up their own minds over the issue, people aren't stupid (mostly) and will reach their own conclusions. Given the current dis-trust that a lot of people involved with Opensource have of comercial interest, this would have been enough. Instead it's now a case of "Ximian are sly Hmm.. but they KDE crowd are a little bit agressive, maybe because Gnome is better technically?". What I'm saying is the orginal issue has been over shadowed by the letter and both KDE and Ximian look as bad as each other. Ximian are going to upset quite a few more people in the future, try not to get too involved and do what the KDE devlopers do best, code.

Re: Insights - Spark - 2001-02-14

GNU is about FREE software, not about uncomercial software. in this way gnome is till "more free" than KDE, cause you can write comercial and unfree software for gnome without paying to trolltech if you want to. you can do whatever you want to do. and it's almost funny that there are more closed source applications for qt/KDE than for gnome (just look at opera, the kompany or yahoo). hopefully people will get the point of "free software" someday...

Re: Insights - David - 2001-02-14

Spark, you're made an an easy mistake. I guess there does seem to be some confusion regarding the word Free and there always has been to some extent. Find out who Richard Stallman is (maybe you know) and why GNU & hence the GPL came about, it's really quite interesting. The history behind it is the important thing, what the GNU goals are. You will then see that why the GPL and comercial software can not get along. Why do you think that QT is dual licenced? For a starter though take 5 seconds and think if you can name one bit of software released *solely* under the GPL that is comcercial? You CANNOT write comercial software with QT when it's licensed under the GPL. As with all licenses the GPL is complex and can't be summarised in one sentence but: the only thing you can charge for under the GPL is the cost of the distribution media. Although the Free does mean freedom, but with the GPL it mutually means Free as in beer as well by the fact that you can only charge for the cost of distribution. My post above refers to this point: Gnome came about and was backed by GNU because of licensing issues with QT, wrongly or rightly I don't care but Richard didn't like it. Now KDE and QT are using the GPL which is a license that impliments Richards ideology. GTK uses the Lesser GPL which means that closed source apps can use it and remain both closed and commercial, not exactly what Richard wanted. You state that someday people will get the idea of Free software meaning that I miss the point of Free, I'm sorry spark but the below will prove that you have indeed mistaken it for free beer: Company A writes an app with GTK and it's closed (not free) and is commercial. The libary costs them nothing but the software they write is not free as in freedom. Company B writes the same app with QT it's closed (not Free) and commercial. They have to pay QT money for a commercial license as they should for such a tool kit. Again not free as in freedom. Company (let call them K) writes the same app with QT, they do not want to pay for the toolkit so they chose to license it under the GPL. Hence there software must also be Licensed under the GPL which means it's Free as in freedom and the world is a better place. So this is why I stated that the shoe is on the other foot, KDE with QT are now more in line with the ideals of the GNU than Gnome is. You said this "gnome is still "more free" than KDE", I hope you understand now that gnome specifcally it's toolkit GTK creates less Freedom code than KDE does, GTK creates one freedom above QT now and that is the freedom for a commercial company to make money from someone elses work without giving anything back (either code or money to the toolkit developers). So, the GTK tool kit costs them nothing. In other words it's free as in cost, which spark, is not what the GNU orginally intended. You mention that there are more commercial applications for QT/KDE than for Gnome, this is a good point given the above, why would a company pay to use a toolkit when they could write software for Gnome and avoid this charge? After all software companies are in business to make money and saving costs on the toolkit would be a nice benifit. I think this should tell you a great deal about the quality QT has over GTK.

Re: Insights - Haakon Nilsen - 2001-02-14

Actually Stallman requests that free software libraries be licensed GPL (like Qt) and <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html">not LGPL</a> (like GTK). That's why the LGPL (formerly "Library GPL") was renamed to "Lesser GPL". So the irony is that while GNU is backing GNOME, KDE is more in line with GNU's own recommendations for free software.

Re: Insights - Spark - 2001-02-15

i never read stallman requesting every library to be GPL. instead he wrote an article (or someone else, i can't remember) stating that you should not use the LGPL for EVERY library. that does NOT mean, that you should use GPL everytime. it has to be decided from case to case. if the library is something that is not available as an closed source alternative, GPL should be used so that everyone that want's to use this great new library, has to write GPL code. but for libraries like toolkits, for which a lot of proprietaere alternatives exist, LGPL should be used, so that it gets used as much as possible. yes, it even encourages to create proprietary software for this toolkit, but this can't be avoided. you can't have ONLY free software but i would those proprietary software rather like to see written for my free toolkit of choice, than for any other proprietary toolkit just because it's not possible with the license. that's why Gtk is NOT against the GNU recommendations. Qt as GPL only would be absoluetly senseless and so would be a GPLed Gtk. Qt is not senseless now because it is dual licensed and because Qt will become BSD code if trolltech dies, but if there would be no trolltech, Qt would be senseless. there is no company behind Gtk so they had just the choice between GPL or LGPL. it would have been just plain stupid to put Gtk+ under the GPL. i hope you got my point, i fear the text above is a bit confusing. ;)

Re: Insights - Spark - 2001-02-15

no, i'm not mistaken. ;) and you didn't tell me anything i didn't know. as i explained in my answer to Haakon, Gtk had no other choice than to be GPL. Qt is a special case, cause they have the backing of a commercial company for commercial applications who provide a alternative license which makes commercial software still possible, although the GPL license forbids it. without this second license and trolltech, that would just not work! but this was not my point. my point was not to bash KDE/Qt in any way. i think they are both great and trolltech is a nice company which hopefully won't bring any harm to the free software community. my point was to defend gnome. you said they forgot their principles and turned from a "free" project into a "commercial" project. and this is wrong. the whole point of the GPL is, to provide great (commercial or not) FREE software. free software is software, that i can modify and give away in any possible way, as long as i don't restrict those rights for new consumers. and that's what gnome is. it is free by every means. just look at all those "commercial" software. nautilus is free. evolution is free. ximian gnome is free. everything is free. commercial? yes. that's why they are able to provide us with great polished and FREE applications. there is nothing wrong with it and nothing inkonsequent. both desktops are doing an outstanding great job, we really shouldn't waste time bashing "the other one" if there is no real need to. maybe i think so because i used KDE for years and currently prefer gnome. i KNOW that both are great and i wouldn't have a lot of fun if one of them wouldn't exist...

Re: Insights - ac - 2001-02-14

Hey nice, that was quite an entertaining read there.

Re: Insights - Joschi - 2001-02-14

You make some very good points. Its true the Ximian and Eazel will be making their cash out of seducing wide eyed newbies like my mom into their branded Gnome, complete with paid product placements and banner adds riddled through the interface like MSN and NS6.... but like Mozilla, those of us who care will go ahead and ignore their branded version and use the less commercially polluted Branch. And this is great. The people who don't care (my mom) fund the development by paying the wages of the developers, which gives back to those of us who do care. Not much to complain about at all. I'm damn happy running my Gnome, KDE and Mozilla, and am very thankful for all the companies paying developers to bring them to me faster. Josh Steiner - http://mp3.com/bluevitriol

Re: Insights - David - 2001-02-14

It's a good point but I can see one issue with it, won't your mum also install Linux from a distribution? What happens when the Distro also uses the "the less commercially polluted Branch" which I think they will and here's why: Their installer is great, it looks good and when it's finished it will add a nice needed feature to the Linux desktop arena. So it's an appealing feature. Lets take this a step futher: Ximian's installer is GPL'ed. The code can be borrowed, changed etc... All Ximian's code will be GPL'ed too and all your paying for is the update service. What would you prefer as an update service, just a service that updates the desktop or a service that can not only update your desktop but your whole distribution? So what if a Linux Distro took the Ximian updater and made it the Redhat updater, that would update your whole distro including the latest Ximian code from one single app. I know what I would chose and as this tool is installed for your mum with her distribution, I'd take a good guess at what she would be using too. Currently the GNU/Linux distributions don't provide this service as they would lose money, Debian has done it for ages with APT but Debian is a non-profit distro but it proves that it can be done. If such an installer shipped with Redhat for example and it kept your distro upto date painlessly, Redhat might percieve their box sales of the dot releases would fall. If Ximian's services do take off however, the distro's will be emulating this in a very short time with their own installer and as it will update your whole system, it adds more value. The time to market is also very short as well as the fact the distro's already, 1, have the code and 2, a mirror's network and high bandwidth links. The GPL or Free software in general does not lend it's self well to a business out for profit if you write code. If you spend money on giving something away you have to be damm sure you will get it back by another means or else your business model doesn't hold water. A better example would be Razor companies who sell the razors cheap and makes the money back on the blades. With the GPL it works this way: Give the razors away and try to make money on the blades expect for the fact that you have given the moulds for the blades away as well, so other companies can make them to fit your razor. As the other companies don't have the cost of the razor to recover, they sell the blades cheaper than you. The best way to make money in Opensource is to 1, be a blade salesman (Distro, consultancy) and feed the Razor maker a donation once in a while to keep the demand up or 2, Control the makers of the blades (e.g. TrollTech) giving the razor away but if a company wants to make money from just the blades they have to buy your blade moulds. Or something like that anyway.

Re: Insights - Joschi - 2001-02-14

The point of your post seemed very much concerned about peoples desktops being polluted, which as i have described is no problem at all. As for the bussiness models of the Gnome supporting companies (SUSE, Redhat, Ximian, Eazel), don't ask me to defend that, they will have to work it out on their own. Though their is a large market for exploiting the fact that Mom's don't want think about their computers for a second, and will follow the most beaten path even though that means paying a small sum to a company to not have to think about it. Look at the huge 800 software tax they pay to play in the Windows world. The Gnome people are starting to partner their services (i can't find the article on slashdot right now, nbut either Ximian or Eazel's updateer is going to be used in one of the main distro's) ... if they asked me i wold tell them to go all the way and merge. buy no one is asking me. In the meantime, we geeks who post long threads on dot.kde.org and new.gnome.org will go ahead and use the less cluttered alternatives, and everyone will be happy. :) Josh Steiner - http://mp3.com/bluevitriol

Re: Insights - Joakim Ziegler - 2001-02-14

A decent post, although you're majorly wrong when you assume that KDE has no companies paying people to code. Troll Tech, SuSE, Mandrake and more pay the core KDE developers to work on KDE full time. So saying that KDE is a non profit group is true, but so is GNOME. Both of them, however, have large companies with lots of money backing them.

Re: Insights - David - 2001-02-15

This is not the point of my post, if you look at the post again you will see this: "There are several replies that could maybe argue these points where as distros pay towards KDE development yada yada yada. This post doesn't really want to split hair over that, all I want to point out is that if you compare the two project 18 months ago the tables have turned a lot. " I agree with what you say both Gnome and KDE are non-profit and both do have backing but the issue is not really Gnome and KDE it's Ximian. Troll Tech, SuSE etc would love KDE to be the #1 Desktop BUT it is not 100% critical to their Business model. Please though Joakim, I'm not really talking about Gnome, I think its a good project and have no religous war between the two desktops, I use them both. I'm more concerned with how Ximian are going to change the friendly competition between the two projects and more importantly how Ximian will affect the Gnome project. I am more concerned with Free software as a whole, that it stays Free and we keep a sense of community instead of worshiping the almighty dollar.

Re: Insights - Spark - 2001-02-15

> I'm more concerned with how Ximian are going to change the friendly competition between the two projects and more importantly how Ximian will affect the Gnome project. yes, we will see. we should just wait and give ximian a chance to show their goodwill, right? and chances are, that there will be a KDE selling company soon. or two... or three... ;) we don't know. at the moment there is no reason to be worried about ximian. btw, i recently tried evolution and i'm really happy that there is a company to make such great free programs. :) also i can't wait for red carpet and ximian setup tools. just look what they do in such a short time. and look what the kompany did for KDE. commercial company's aren't bad at all, just give them a chance. free, commercial software... my dream. :) and yes, i would pay for services...

Tone Down the Rhetoric - Mike M. - 2001-02-15

I see nothing wrong with advertising Ximian during a search for KDE. People who are interested in one free Linux desktop would naturally find information about other free desktops relevant. Ximian and KDE are so obviously different from each other that there is little opportunity for confusion, and KDE doesn't have to fear comparison. Tone down the rhetoric. Shrill reactions like these to perfectly normal advertising practices are no recommendation for KDE or the KDE community. Besides, I have seen a lot of Troll Tech ads on news stories related to Linux, many of which probably talked about Gnome/Ximian/Helix.