KDE-CVS-Digest for November 14, 2003

Saturday, 15 November 2003 | Dkite

In this week's CVS-Digest: A deeper freeze is called for in preparation for release. Kexi, a graphical database application now has GUI and non-GUI parts. Many bug fixes, including searching and sorting fixes in JuK, topmenu fixes in KWin, CSS and JavaScript fixes in Konqueror.

Comments:

Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - E.Ros - 2003-11-15

One year of CVS-Digest and more than 50 issues... ...thanks a lot for providing such a good resource to the community. We all love KDE and we're rocking now! I can't immagine in which way will evolve our favourite desktop environment during next year.. will we touch stars ?? :-P -> Thank you Derek ^_^

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Derek Kite - 2003-11-15

The highlight of this last year has been the maturing of khtml / kjs, making Konqueror into the browser of choice. It is now possible to live without mozilla. In fact, Konqueror could arguably be said to be the better browser. This is a huge step for the KDE project. There will probably be a few other applications that become must-use. Kontact / KMail possibly. A stable and feature rich Kexi would be awesome, not only for a standalone database app, but having database libraries available for use for other applications will open up opportunities. Imagine a powerful scripting library calling the existing modules and parts, with a database engine available. That is the bread and butter of business desktops. We'll know Kopete has made it when everyone on #kde-devel uses it. One challenge I see coming is more and more commercial interests using KDE. This has lead to successes, such as SUSE's contributions, and the Kroupware project. But there has been friction such as Redhat's attempts to define a desktop. This bears watching. I don't think the KDE project would tolerate a commercial interest attempting to become 'the project', such as has happened with Ximian and Gnome. I know that Gnome != Ximian, unless I listen to Ximian. One prediction I will make is someone will purchase Trolltech. Imagine imagining that you own the api for one of the major desktop environments on *nix! Someone could say, and be believed, that they own KDE. I feel my teeth gnashing at such a prospect! Derek

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - lucijan busch - 2003-11-15

actually i am working on a design for a kde and cross-application datasource library. hopefully i'll be able to finish these documents soon. lucijan

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Erik Kjær Pedersen - 2003-11-15

>But there has been friction such as Redhat's attempts to define a desktop That is certainly true. Redhat is a strange company. A lot of what is going on has to do with trust. I have been using their up2date service, and I was so happy with it that I would have signed up if I had trusted them. I kept having this leary feeling that I should not do it even though I wanted to and could easily afford it and now they have proven me right. I am also extremely worried about QT, what is going to happen to them. This recent development may mean we are losing SUSE. At least I think they badly need to convince us this is not the case. I think we need to hit harder on the point that LGPL is supposed to mean the LESSER GPL, and QT is GPL whereas gtk is LGPL. How do the hypocrits around Stallman deal with that. Erik Pedersen (Danish translator of KDE)

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Anonymous - 2003-11-15

> This recent development may mean we are losing SUSE. At least I think they badly need to convince us this is not the case. I think we need to hit harder on the point that LGPL is supposed to mean the LESSER GPL, and QT is GPL whereas gtk is LGPL. Likely SUSE cares more for own commercial than Open Source success if there is a decision to be made between GPL and to be generated income of pleased proprietary ISVs. For the moment they more depend on the income of their customers which are used to and like KDE more. For my part I don't care much about commercial success of KDE including SUSE's. I do much more care if it's the favorite desktop to further develop of enough volunteer developers to continue its development. And there I don't have any concern.

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Gerd - 2003-11-15

That's right. Linux-Desktop means Linux/KDE. I like Gnome as well, but it is not mature yet. KDE needs Usability polishment and very few applications. A better OO integration, better a OO GUI abstraction. Maturity of KOffice. A more stable - distri-independend plattform. PUSH - Thinking: Ximian belongs to Novell, Novell bought SuSe, therefore SuSe has to focus on Gnome and ship Gnome as default desktop. PULL - philosophy: customers request KDE, SuSe is focussed on KDE, and now belongs to Novell, therefore it is likely that Novells Linux-Thinktank Ximian will have to support KDE in the future.

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Shift - 2003-11-15

"In fact, Konqueror could arguably be said to be the better browser" Wrong. Lake some CSS, MathML, XSL, XML support.... khtml is good but not as Opera-engine or gecko but Konqueror is better than Mozilla or Opera :) I want a better CSS2 support in Konqui or I'll kill a cat !!!

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Anonymous - 2003-11-15

I want the khtml regressions compared to khtml 3.1 fixed first! :-)

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - anon - 2003-11-15

> Lake some CSS, MathML, XSL, XML support.... Agreed.. Konqueror has come a __long way__ in the past year to bridge the gap between itself and Mozilla || Opera7. It isn't there (yet), but is good enough to become my browser of choice. Back in 3.1, Firebird was. There are a few things that Konqueror is better than Mozilla at though. Spell checking of forms (I became used to this soooo fast because of Safari), and SVG support.

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Birdy - 2003-11-15

Don't worry about Qt - there is the "KDE Free Qt Foundation": http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Thorsten Schnebeck - 2003-11-15

Yes and this is maybe one of the reasons why noone buys TT up to now :-) OTOH, for a company like Novell is could by quite interesting to acquire the best multiplattform toolkit. Maybe they first have to learn that MS will not tolerate somethink like Mono as a workable multiplattform alternative. Bye Thorsten

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Anonymous - 2003-11-15

> We'll know Kopete has made it when everyone on #kde-devel uses it. Don't judge Kopete by means of its IRC plugin. There are many nice other KDE IRC programs like Konversation.

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Shift - 2003-11-15

For IRC konversation is muche better. Kopete is excellent for Instant Messaging (MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo,...) but konversation is the best KDE application for IRC :)

life without mozilla - Anonymous - 2003-11-15

Does the konqueror from HEAD work properly with http://personals.yahoo.com (can't navigate search results) and http://www.memphisrunners.com (layout bug)? I was just curious.

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - Eric Laffoon - 2003-11-16

> There will probably be a few other applications that become must-use. Kontact / KMail possibly. A stable and feature rich Kexi would be awesome, not only for a standalone database app, but having database libraries available for use for other applications will open up opportunities. Imagine a powerful scripting library calling the existing modules and parts, with a database engine available. That is the bread and butter of business desktops. We'll know Kopete has made it when everyone on #kde-devel uses it. Hey Derek... (don't forget)... :-( ...the one application that has a shot at being substantially better than commercial offerings and is native to KDE? Quanta Plus! However we missed on some features to it will only be in the running for 3.2, better in some areas but not others. It will however be more than good enough for most and will introduce Visual Page Layout which will be a first for a KDE or GNOME web tool and the actual design will enable capabilities that are not possible on other visual tools. It will also write DTD compliant tagging from the get go! Also Kommander, while again not getting everything, does have a development version that allows easy plugins of widgets. Both Kommander and Quanta will see releases outside of KDE schedules in 2004 bringing a number of new features forward. For Kommander this will mean the easiest way to add data access widgets to what you're doing on your desktop with DCOP communication between your apps. We will continue to work on making it the dialog builder for n00bies. Quanta will also be getting some very cool new features, but I'll save those announcements for later. For now I just want to say that even if you don't write web pages you may well find something you like coming from our CVS module.

Re: Happy birthday KDE-CVS-Digest !! - jb - 2003-11-19

> Thank you Derek ^_^ I second that. Without Derek I wouldn't have been able to keep up with the pace of KDE development. Thank you again.

business logic - Charles - 2003-11-15

Kexi is what I look forward to using extensively. But to be widely deployed, application developers need to ba able to add business logic to Kexi easily. What I suggest is pubicize (sp) the scripting language also, so that this logic mentioned above can easily be added. Question is: How how does a newbie start with this Kexi scripting language?

Re: business logic - Jaroslaw Staniek - 2003-11-15

Yeah, easy business logic tools are #1 prior for Kexi. By no means, Kexi will offer/use public, open scripting platform, Python or Java Script. While this is on our (Kexi Team) planned features list, we now still concentrate on core features to have this really stable and polished. Without stable C++ API it is not so clever to adding scripting bindings that can quickly became obsolete. Although, in the meantime, we are pleased to see evolution of KJS and PyQt/PyKDE scripting platforms.

KDE 3.2 shots - Shift - 2003-11-15

Everybody loves screenshots so here are a few of them I made with KDE CVS last week : http://perso.wanadoo.fr/shift/KDE3.2/ There are unclassified and sometimes don't show 3.2 new stuffs but I haven't classified them yet. I will make a KDE3.2 review with this shots when I had time. The shots don't show one of the better new feature : kontact. I will make more later. Good afternoon and thank you very much Derek for your job.

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - Anonymous - 2003-11-15

Thanks for doing these screenshots. Some small notes about the annotations: KMPlayer is not part of KDE 3.2, Konqueror and KHexEdit had tabs already in KDE 3.1, also the "CGI Path" stuff is not new and Konqueror could already block popup windows. And "like Gecko", which is shared as identification string with Safari, only means that some things are interpreted like Gecko does and not like Internet Explorer.

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - Shift - 2003-11-15

Yes that's the work I need to do now : Remember what's new because I use KDE CVS for month now :) That's your fault Derek !! If you didn't made the digest I will never used KDE CVS ;) Does somebody have a CGI example ? I don't know the aim of this. For "like Gecko", I know that Safari do this and it is bad to my mine. A browser is not "like" another one but as the W3C specifies. And khtml has lot's of mistake in CSS and regression in CVS so it is not like gecko. gecko is very different. I have made lot's of test with same and the "like gacko" disturb me. Indeed we can say that khtml is like gecko : "It rocks !!" and not like IE : "It sucks !!!" ;) PS : Moreover Konqueror support lot's of IE specificities "scroolbar-color, document.all,..." It will be cool if we can have an option to told khtml to use only "Standards specifications" (w2c, Ecmascript,...)

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - fault - 2003-11-15

> A browser is not "like" another one but as the W3C specifies. Yes, but in the real world, sites do browser sniffing, and many sites, if they detect gecko in the useragent, will send w3c compliant html/css/JS. This is the kind of code that we want to get sent to Konq, since it handles it much better than non-w3c compliant code. This is why Apple did this in Safari in the first place, and why we do it now.

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - Shift - 2003-11-15

Kill all this stupid web-developers who test user-agent and not features :) if(document.all) { ... } else if(document.layers) { ... } else { // w3c way to do } Yes it is much more difficult to test this for CSS :(

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - anon - 2003-11-15

Using that kind of code, will of course, be impossible to differentiate between IE and Konq.

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - Shift - 2003-11-15

Yes because Konqui support document.all That's why having a way to unactivate "Non standards features" could be very very cool for web-developers

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - anon - 2003-11-15

Perhaps it should automatically turn off document.all support if an IE UA isn't being used, like Safari does.

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - ac - 2003-11-16

> And "like Gecko", which is shared as identification string with Safari, only > means that some things are interpreted like Gecko ... but still is a bad idea... "like MSIE" is as bad, luckily nobody had this idea until now There are only few rendering engines, and it should be left to the webdesigner to decide if he wants to feed the same code to gecko and khtml. IMHO "like gecko" should be removed for 3.2

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - Anonymous - 2003-11-15

Here is a list of new applications which you may have missed: <a href="http://kde.ground.cz/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+3.2+Applications+Difference">http://kde.ground.cz/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+3.2+Applications+Difference</a>

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - Shift - 2003-11-15

Thanks a lot. This wiki rox ! I didn't knew that such a website existed :)

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - cm - 2003-11-16

Well, it has only been announced on 2003-10-01:<br> <a href="http://dot.kde.org/1065000478/">http://dot.kde.org/1065000478/</a>

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - cm - 2003-11-16

I think it would be nice if someone in the know added a reason to each change, especially if an app has been removed (like "unmaintained", "superseded by xxx", ...). And a general remark: Although it is possible to edit the wiki content anonymously (thus keeping the threshold for possible contributors low) I'd appreciate it if you logged in if that's acceptable to you.

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - Anonymous - 2003-11-16

> I think it would be nice if someone in the know added a reason to each change, especially if an app has been removed (like "unmaintained", Done. > And a general remark: Although it is possible to edit the wiki content anonymously (thus keeping the threshold for possible contributors low) I'd appreciate it if you logged in if that's acceptable to you. Why? I don't need f[l]ame[s]. :-)

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - cm - 2003-11-16

Wow, Mr./Mrs. anonymous, you sure are quick. Thanks. > > And a general remark: Although it is possible to edit the wiki content anonymously (thus keeping the threshold for possible contributors low) I'd appreciate it if you logged in if that's acceptable to you. > Why? I don't need f[l]ame[s]. :-) I won't flame you cause there's no reason to. :-) I think it's good to know who changed the content, for example if there are additional questions I'd like to ask. Well, anyway. If you don't want... ...that's why it's been decided to make it possible to edit anonymously. To not lose your and your namesakes' contributions.

Re: KDE 3.2 shots - Gerd - 2003-11-15

Windows ... ois not responding .. blabla window Why don't they use direct speech: It is "frozen".

oh yeah - Marcel Partap - 2003-11-16

I think I just came seriously, those are shocking. I've read the digest and traffic, but I could not have imagined.... Oh damn I hope it will rock christmas business together with 2.6! go KDE go! regards from http://www.synth-worldz.de

Did anyone notice this? - kontakt - 2003-11-15

Did anyone notice this?: "* all non-oneliner commits have to have an "reviewed by" line where another developer, that can be expected to know the topic, is named that gave his ok." And a bit further down: "Hopefully final fixes for topmenus managed by KWin to work (#66152). Written by Schizo, reviewed by Frenia. As it was broken anyway, I don't think this can break it more." Funny.

Happy Birth Day!!! - Alex - 2003-11-15

I really enjoy reading KDE-CVS. I'm also glad that now the desktop shadows actually look like shadows, this is a big + for look and feel. I also think that KDE 3.2 should be delayed 3-4 weeks in order to improve Kontact and kill the major bugs.

Re: Happy Birth Day!!! - jstuart - 2003-11-15

Just an FYI but KDE 3.2 is currently scheduled to be released sometime in January 2004. Email from the RM said week 04 of 2004 but some are pushing for it to be released somewhere around the 19th or so as the Linux/Unix convention occurs in New York City.

Oh that's good news! - Alex - 2003-11-15

Thanks for the information, a late January release is what I want too. Also, hopefully KDE 3.3 will have a release cycle of about 6 months instead of a year as 3.2 will. Qt 4 is also scheduled to be released in mid 2004. =)

February 2nd!!! - Alex - 2003-11-15

Even better, http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-3.2-release-plan.html KDE 3.2 is expected to be released early February. This is a great decision by Stephen, after all KDE will not be incorporated in most distributions until April, so there is no point in rushing the process, best we have a very very strong release than we rush and release a buggy version to meed a set release. After all, the release dates are not written in stone and only serve as suggestions. It all depends on the state of the software. But, again, i hope KDE 3.3 will have a pretty short release cycle, 5-6 months like GNOME so that we can start KDE 4.0 and maybe change alot of the internals for the better. By then KDE will not be in need of constant releases as much as it is now and so developers can afford to spend some more time on the internals, as always it will pay off in the long run.

Re: Happy Birth Day!!! - Rayiner H. - 2003-11-16

Me too. I'm using KDE CVS right now (Nov. 5), and its definately not near release state. Konqueror crashes randomly a couple of times a day, there are lots of icons still missing from Crystal SVG (or worse, not missing, but too small, so it displays scaling artifacts), and there are still bits here and there that need polishing. Its haping up to be truely awesome, but its still a couple of months away.

OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - anon - 2003-11-15

This is a nice article at http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/235 but unfortunately I am not allowed to reply there without selling my soul to the site manager. I have only three comments anyway! :-) > OSNews has a poll and discussion about integrating Mono into Gnome. That's funny. OSNews closed the poll as soon as it looked like the majority would not be in favor of Mono. > Certainly not perfect, and there are many things that I would have done > differently, but it seems to contain less brain damage than Java. They certainly > took a good look at Java and fixed its problems and shortcoming while > designing ? C# and the .Net APIs. What do you mean? Java is very fine and getting better. The API is very good and very powerful. > Unlike Unix, Windows and .Net are under active development Huh. Compare Windows/.Net to Linux/GCC/KDE/Java. They are both under active development! Yes, Java is improving and will be implementing some good features that C# has soon.

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - Datschge - 2003-11-15

> That's funny. OSNews closed the poll as soon as it looked like the majority would not be in favor of Mono. Don't they do that with every of their polls?

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - Robert Guthrie - 2003-11-16

Yes, Eugina is rather bias against KDE.. you need to take that into account in order to make best use of osnews.com

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - Datschge - 2003-11-16

Well, bias is not really a problem as long as one can handle it. But Osnews' selection of 'articles' (most of them really were only quotes and links) as of late as well as the responses on their message boards turned it into a waste of time for me. So I'm now preferring to read sources like slashdot (some interesting comments/links) and ars technica (rather well researched articles) instead.

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - anon - 2003-11-16

agreed- osnews has gone from osnews to linuxbuisnessnews pretty much.

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - Tim Jansen - 2003-11-16

>>Java is very fine and getting better. The API is very good and very powerful.<< The list of things that annoys me is pretty long, but just some things that come to my mind: - the lack of return parameters in methods (like references in C++ and ref/out keywords in C#) is driving me insane, it's often extremely complicated to develop good APIs without braindead 'holder objects' - delegates in C# are a *much* nicer solution for event handlers and similar things than interfaces+inner classes - the lack of a 'default method' in Java prevents smooth integration of remote interfaces without preprocessors - the Java APIs are getting more messy with every release. It started with adding a second set of collections (Vector vs List, Enumeration vs. Iterator etc)... the newest mistake are the java.nio.Buffer classes. Not only because they are completely unintuitive. Did they ever notice that most binary data has mixed types? - the probably biggest result of stupidity is the Date/Calendar/DateFormatter mess. Well, the new solution (since 1.2 I thnk) supports every date format on earth, but in most cases it is just making my life hell. All I want is a simple way to create a gregorian date, but Sun tried to make it as complicated as possible - patterns similar to the Calendar disaster have been spread all over the API since 1.2. They tried to make the APIs as generic and 'perfect' as possible, instead of focussing on making the developer's life easier by making it easy to learn and to reduce the average number of functions that you need to invoke to do a common thing - all shipped XML APIs suck completely. That's why people keep adding even more 3rd XML APIs (JDOM, XOM, xmlpull...), preventing any reusablility of components because each uses different a XML API. And they do not even re-use their own APIs, e.g. the SOAP implementation im JWSDP has its own DOM implementation. I have huge sets of helper functions to make it somewhat usable and reduce my code by ca 66%. These things should be part of the API

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - Richard Dale - 2003-11-17

I agree a lot of java apis are indeed committee designed crap. But I think the basic language has less problems than the apis though, although some of the 1.5 'improvements' like templates look pretty ugly/useless. How do your points change if we were talking about the Qt/KDE apis are wrapped in java (I'm working on regenerating the java bindings for release 3.2 now). "delegates in C# are a *much* nicer solution for event handlers and similar things than interfaces+inner classes" Agreed, but how about a java api that uses slot/signals? I would say they are roughly comparable in power and flexibility to delegates, and both are much better than clunky event listeners. The anonymous delegates in the next version of C# look even better, like lambdas or ruby blocks, rather than a cheap hack like java anonymous classes. "the lack of a 'default method' in Java prevents smooth integration of remote interfaces without preprocessors" How about Dynamic Proxies? I am basing the whole design of the next version of the java bindings around proxies (will be ready for KDE 3.3). The PerlQt and QtRuby bindings are also based on the idea of a default 'catchall' method (method_missing in ruby, autoload in perl). I've found I can do similar stuff pretty well with proxies. But you do need some sort of interface to compile against, so they're not quite as dynamic. It should allow for interesting experiments with Aspect Oriented programming too (see the nanning project for an example of doing that). "the probably biggest result of stupidity is the Date/Calendar/DateFormatter mess" Agreed the Calendar class has an incredibily ugly api, with all those named constants determining what a method does, rather than the method name as is usual. The java bindings convert the Qt date and time equivalents to java Date and Calendar. Possibly a mistake. That could be revised for the next bindings - it might be better to have QDate and QTime as java classes. -- Richard

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - Dawnrider - 2003-11-17

It's true... Java is so over-designed, it's not even funny. New frameworks and concepts with every revision that make it take longer to perform simple tasks, such as reading a line from a file. The naming of methods and classes makes things worse, and things act in some really unintuitive ways. Those are my problems with Java, and they keep on getting worse with every release. Those are also the areas where I love QT. Things just work correctly. They work the way I, as a coder, expect them to and need them to. The naming is good, the right methods exist in the right places, and basic functions require basic commands, nothing more. It all boils down to how long it takes to write code to perform an operation and how likely it is that the code will work first time once compiled. QT is great for this (possibly only PHP is better in my experience!) and Java is truly, utterly horrid. Copying sample code from their docs or free sources online generally takes hours to get to work, if at all, and more often than not, you can't see why. You end up spending time working out why the language is functionally broken, rather than where your logic is broken, and trying to route around the damage. I had an MSc student I was helping out a few weeks ago, who was trying to get a piece of net-sourced complex clickable area code working, a few weeks back. It subclassed one of Java's abstract classes and frameworks about five levels deep and spanned maybe ten classes, all of which were badly named and interacted in very strange ways; he'd been trying to fix update problems in it for over a month. I sat there with him for two hours and had no idea what was going on and where the problems even were. So I told him to sit down, gut the entire thing and start again, doing it himself. I gave him an outline of how to code it from first principles, ignoring the JFC's features for doing it, and just using basic classes, and he had a working version with less than a day of work. Needless to say, we were both happy. This is why I use QT so much these days, why I'm not going to try and get a job using Java, despite the good pay in my area of the world, and why I'm going to quietly rip into it in my thesis :)

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - Richard Dale - 2003-11-17

"This is why I use QT so much these days, why I'm not going to try and get a job using Java" Your critisms of java seem to be more about the apis, rather than the language itself. But I do personally find it easier to write java code, line for line than C++. So, back to my original question. What if you tried Java programming with QtJava (cf kdebindings/qtjava and kdejava)? In what way would the original C++ api be better? You might like to assume any technical limitations in the current bindings have been overcome, such as being able to subclass and override all virtual methods, providing Qt Desiger support etc. -- Richard

Re: OT: Basing the future of free software on Mono - Tim Jansen - 2003-11-17

>>How do your points change if we were talking about the Qt/KDE apis are wrapped in java (I'm working on regenerating the java bindings for release 3.2 now).<< I prefer Qt's over Java's APIs (and any other API), the main problem is that Qt lacks features compared to Java. And for some things exceptions would be nicer though, as it is quite easy to do bad things in Qt without noticing before it is too late, e.g. initialize a QDateTime with an invalid time. (But I would still prefer C# over Java, at least I think so - I don't have enough experience with C# to be sure about that)

Konqueror.org is broken - Shift - 2003-11-15

http://www.konqueror.org/ is broken. It point to "KDE Development Home"

The State of KDE - Wiggle - 2003-11-16

[Mod's note: Banned user. History of abuse since 2002/07 with written admission on FootNotes.]

Re: The State of KDE - CE - 2003-11-16

Is it really that bad? If SuSE changes their default desktop to GNOME (which damages the health of its users ;-), I 'll change my default distribution.

Re: The State of KDE - Anton Velev - 2003-11-16

First to say that this forum seems to be censored, and your message may be will be deleted. I saw several times a mad admin deleting posts. I am reading every day the dot but posting less and less often - may be my last post was more than a month ago. Anyway, you have a point, but seems that these days people like you are never heard (or deleted posts). Your point is good about Qt and TrollTech. It's impossible and forbidden one to write kde apps unless if he is willing to sponsor the development of the Qt. I call this GPL tirany. KDE will not survive for a long time if this policy of GPL tirany over the KDE's underlying toolkit Qt continues. KDE must be free of GPL to survive, KDE must be free of Qt to survive! Give me a LGPL or BSD KDE/QT and I will write apps. And that's what the companies do they prefer GNOME/GTK because of the LGPL. Apple did a good job by freeing KHTML and KJS from GPL, let's start freeing the rest KDE from them, or the other option will be waiting the trolls to free the Qt from GPL (I don't believe this scenario). Let me tell you this: I can write apps for Java (free from GPL), I can write apps for OSX (free from GPL), I can write apps for GNOME and Windows (free from GPL) and I cannot do this for KDE/Qt because of the GPL tirany. These days the only app from KDE I use is Safari because Apple freed it from GPL (thanks Apple, thanks Kdevelopers). About SuSE, being or not KDE supporter will not convince the companies to start writing apps for KDE/QT instead of Gnome/GTK. I agree that GTK is very bad compared to Qt but it's free from GPL, although if I write apps for X I use pure X no QT or GTK.

Re: The State of KDE - Rayiner H. - 2003-11-16

Um, you're using a proprietory platform (thanks Apple!) and you're complaining about GPL being too restrictive? Yikes...

Re: The State of KDE - Derek Kite - 2003-11-16

Time will tell which of the Gnome or KDE licensing models will prevail. The whole purpose of the license isn't to encourage you to use it, but to encourage you to contribute back. Let's repeat that again. The GPL requires that you contribute back to the project. If, as the common wisdom says, people won't use QT because they are required to either purchase or contribute code, then where will gnome get it's contributions? The desktop (both projects) needs applications and libraries that come from people solving problems. If someone has written a library or application that the desktop needs, but aren't required to contribute because of licensing, how does that benefit anyone except the someone who got something for nothing? I'll give an example of the difference. Ximian build an exchange connector, closed source. KDE project is building a whole groupware solution based on GPL. And an exchange connector. Which project will win out in the end? Derek

Re: The State of KDE - Datschge - 2003-11-16

Geeze, you even put the well known wiggle troll to shame with your uninformed wish wash.

Re: The State of KDE - OI - 2003-11-16

> convince the companies to start writing apps for KDE/QT No need to convince them. Anyone with proper understanding of business economics will choose the most productive solution.

Re: The State of KDE - Anon - 2003-11-16

> Anyone with proper understanding of business economics will > choose the most productive solution. Even Microsoft does not charge $3000/developer for the right to sell your applications built using their toolkit. So the George Staikos argument is wrong. QT is ripping businesses off. Any one with a real understanding of business economics knows that Microsoft's development tools are far more sophisticated, faster and even cheaper. And Microsoft's tools directly target >90% of the market while QT (if used under Windows) simply adds another level of bloat and unwanted abstraction. Under *NIX, it's great if it didn't cost so much for businesses. Of course, for developing free software, it's very good.

Re: The State of KDE - Waldo Bastian - 2003-11-16

Funny that, because quite a few businesses seem to be rather happy with Qt: "The fact that we can easily develop and maintain mokey on four platforms has led to additional revenue and allowed us to reach a wider market, without a significant increase in cost" (Allan Jaenicke, Imagineer Systems Ltd.) "Its clear for me, that one of my best decisions in my programming career was to move to Qt after almost 10 years of experience with the Microsoft APIs. Switching to Qt means for me to have a clearer API now while targeting all major computer platforms. That Qt makes this feasible for small companies at reasonable costs makes me indeed happy." (Rainer Goebel, Brain Innovation) "Qt was the best solution for portability. Once we started using it, we said 'Hey, this stuff is really good!' We were able to see how powerful and clean it is, and started to reap a lot of benefits from using it that had nothing to do with portability. We love it now." (Les Engelbrecht, PGS) "Microsoft has created toolkits, but I think Trolltech has beaten them on their own playing field." (Jeremy Todd, iZotope) What was your name again? Cheers, Waldo

Re: The State of KDE - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-11-16

Waldo, you shouldn't waste your time with kids like that. The people who complain about Qt's license are the ones who cannot find good warez servers to steal other toolkits from... Truthfully, is the cost of 1 Qt enterprise license for any software house that makes money for a living less than one months salary for a developer. Now you a) spend that money rolling your own, or b) use Qt and possibly save even more. Truth is man, the only people who have problems with Qt licensing just want to steal software... its not about freedom at that point, its about freeloading. Just my 2c as someone who is making money at this -ian reinhart geiser

Re: The State of KDE - Kevin Krammer - 2003-11-16

<quote> Waldo, you shouldn't waste your time with kids like that. The people who complain about Qt's license are the ones who cannot find good warez servers to steal other toolkits from... </quote> True, but now and then it is fun to show them how wrong they are :) Cheers, Kevin

Re: The State of KDE - Eric Laffoon - 2003-11-16

> Truth is man, the only people who have problems with Qt licensing just want to steal software... its not about freedom at that point, its about freeloading. Well put! I just can't believe how stupid people think everyone else is when they're spouting this garbage. Even worse is the thought that they are not merely deceiving, but actually this clueless. Aside from trying to write code on these platforms, for the clueless I offer these exercises. 1) Price MS .NET tools. 2) Price MSDN (Developer network subscription) 3) Price a top notch commercial editor. 4) Price add in libraries and tools for commercial development packages. 5) Explain how companies will continue to spend money for non monopoly driven software that they do not see acceptable returns on. 6) Explain why companies will buy supplemental libraries and packages in the first place. 7) Compare the cost of tools to the cost of man hours on a yearly basis for a programming seat. Now all one has to do is compare the programming experience and results with various platforms and those most adverse to massochism will lean towards Qt/KDE. Even without coding though the anti Qt argument is so DOA you would think the only thing to do would be bury it quickly to make the smell go away. Note that there is supposedly nothing wrong with giving nothing way or everything away, but giving something that is not everything away is being greedy. The end user shouldn't get software for free, the developer should. I read it like this... "We're all clueless here so you give me everything you haven't already given me and I'll charge everybody else for it and we'll call it even". Come to think of it, this pretty much personifies the SCO position, "Until we can make money off what you gave away for free you are bad people". There's only one response, but this site doesn't need the profanity. ;-)

Re: The State of KDE - Rayiner H. - 2003-11-16

Don't forget stuff like the cost of Rational's tools ($10,000 for Rose), which are almost required in some markets, or version control tools ($4000 for ClearCase, ~$800 for Bitkeeper or Perforce), etc.

Re: The State of KDE - anon - 2003-11-19

> Well put! I just can't believe how stupid people think everyone else is when > they're spouting this garbage. Even worse is the thought that they are not > merely deceiving, but actually this clueless. Judging from the rhetoric, you too must be paid to work on KDE... > Aside from trying to write code on these platforms, for the clueless I offer > these exercises. > 1) Price MS .NET tools. You can get the framework and the compilers (no IDE but) for *free*. That is all Qt offers anyway but at a much higher price. > 2) Price MSDN (Developer network subscription) Microsoft isn't exactly great at pricing either but at least they don't charge for you just choosing to develop a commerical app for their platform. > 4) Price add in libraries and tools for commercial development packages. Use GNU libraries like zlib.

Re: The State of KDE - Datschge - 2003-11-19

> they [Microsoft] don't charge for you just choosing to develop a commerical app for their platform. ...instead everyone (!) has to pay them directly or indirectly alone for using their platform to begin with. I'm not aware of any Microsoft operating system which is completely free of charge.

Re: The State of KDE - anon - 2003-11-21

> I'm not aware of any Microsoft operating system which is completely free of > charge. approx. $300 isn't it? still less than $3000 and gets you more than a toolkit.

Re: The State of KDE - Datschge - 2003-11-21

Keep in mind that with a Qt license you could for example set up a closed source Knoppix alike live CD for customers to use without any additional fee except whatever you charge. With "free" .NET you need your customer to have bought and installed a .NET capable system first which might add quite a lot to the cost you want them to pay you. You are free to discuss the Qt commercial fee with Trolltech, public bitching is hardly changing anything.

Re: The State of KDE - Zoltan Bartko - 2003-11-17

I wish I had a salary like that over here... It would make my life very easy... I know about a company over here in Slovakia where the above sum would be sufficient for a software analyst's half a year's wages... So I really would have troubles starting a business with 4 developers and Qt.

Re: The State of KDE - Dawnrider - 2003-11-17

Hiya Zoltan... Send Trolltech a message and see what they can do for you :) I'm sure they'll help you out.

Re: The State of KDE - Frans Englich - 2003-11-17

I can only agree on this - Trolltech is very polite when it comes to giving discount for startup companies(which from their point is a smart thing to do). I've done some Open Source consulting for software companies, while in contact with QT they told me this: The solution is called the startup program, and trough this program, qualified customers get special terms and conditions. In particular, they get 6 months delayed payment. It is also understood that we, i.e., the customer and TT, at the end of this 6 month period will jointly evaluate how to proceed, at that we will try to find appropriate solutions if money is somehow still a problem. Please note that there is a somewhat high hassle factor for this program, and that you will have to share with us some information that you might consider internal. You will also have to say somewhat more about your company to qualify for this program (business idea, revenue model, annual revenues, no. employees, when company was founded, external funding, and sources of such funding). The ability to tell an interesting story is more important in the qualification process than the fulfilling of some formal requirements. You could for example start with some information about your product and what type of market you are targeting. Simply, send them an mail and discuss your situation - there is surely something to do about it. Hope it helps, Frans

Re: The State of KDE - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-11-17

so what your saying is that since you cannot afford the tools, you should get them for free? ( i know TT has a program for startups, but for a moment lets ignore that) maby you need to rethink your strategy. there are costs for starting a company and if this is the business plan you wish to follow, you have to live within those confines. my advise to you is to build up a business plan, look a the feasability of your idea and get some capital. i mean thats what billy and paul did, thats what steve and the woz did. crying that you cannot afford a tool, so you wont bother, will ensure that you keep the current salary you have, and that someone else will have the one that you want. just my 2c as a business owner and not a programmer... -ian reinhart geiser

Re: The State of KDE - ana - 2003-11-19

> Waldo, you shouldn't waste your time with kids like that. Ok so from the person who (tried to) ruin KWord's HTML filter RTL support _and_ made spell checking even worse than before, comes simple (albeit indirect) personal attacks. > The people who complain about Qt's license are the ones who cannot find good > warez servers to steal other toolkits from... Wrong. I am against software piracy FULL STOP. > Truthfully, is the cost of 1 Qt > enterprise license for any software house that makes money for a living less > than one months salary for a developer. And with dotNET, it's zero months salary for a developer. dotNET = bigger market share, bigger toolkit, modern language choice (C#). Go figure. > Truth is man, the only people who have problems with Qt licensing just want to > steal software... its not about freedom at that point, its about freeloading. I'll tell you what is theft: Trolltech charging so much. > Just my 2c as someone who is making money at this Isn't strange that those who defend "free" software the most loudly and benefit from the backs of hardworking volunteers are those paid to do so? But oops, free means freedom not price...

Re: The State of KDE - Richard - 2003-11-19

> dotNET = bigger market share WRONG. but you probably mean bigger share as in by advertising it as "dotNET enabled" :-)

Re: The State of KDE - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-11-19

>> Waldo, you shouldn't waste your time with kids like that. > Ok so from the person who (tried to) ruin KWord's HTML filter RTL support _and_ > made spell checking even worse than before, comes simple (albeit indirect) personal attacks. Care to back that up? I could ignore the rest of the troll save for the part where I was responsible for breaking two areas of code I've never touched. Sorry kid, you lost this time.

Re: The State of KDE - Anon - 2003-11-21

> Care to back that up? I could ignore the rest of the troll save for the part > where I was responsible for breaking two areas of code I've never touched. My sincere apologies. I confused you with ZR who seems to write in the same way. I still don't appreciate your rhetoric though. > Sorry kid, you lost this time. Lost what?

Re: The State of KDE - Datschge - 2003-11-19

> I'll tell you what is theft: Trolltech charging so much. You mean you paid them too much even though you never thought its worth all the money they request? Your fault. You never worked on a proprietary commercially available application but decided to complain for everyone else? Thanks for the service, but no thanks. You accuse Trolltech of theft for asking for money when you intend to make money using their product, while at the same time you still state you are against software piracy and praises stuff by Microsoft (so you surely paid them for all their stuff to be able to make up your mind)? Go away, troll.

Re: The State of KDE - Anon - 2003-11-21

> > I'll tell you what is theft: Trolltech charging so much. > You mean you paid them too much even though you never thought its worth all > the money they request? Your fault. No, it's a figure of speech. Your fault for not reading properly :P > praises stuff by Microsoft (so you surely paid them for all their stuff to be > able to make up your mind)? I did pay, yes - but only for the operating system and office - not for their compiler and dotNET toolkit. Microsoft charges less for similar products!!! Nothing for dotNET framework (see http://www.microsoft.com/net if you don't believe me) I don't thank MS for selling their products at such high prices or their anti-competitive behaviour. But what I think is outrageous is that the only half-decent toolkit for *NIX costs so much more than even MS. Trolltech essentially holds a monopoly in the *NIX Widget Toolkit market (please don't claim than gtk is a factor...) - now if Linux is really going to be more popular and set to beat Windows, wouldn't you be worried at the cost? > Go away, troll. No, I think trolltech should stay :P But their prices shouldn't.

Re: The State of KDE - Datschge - 2003-11-21

Ok, let me try your kind of "figure of speech" as well. I would pay, yes - but only for the for a toolkit I'm actually using for development - not for the operating system and desktop environment and system integration and everything else. Overall Trolltech charges less for similar products even if I want to make a carbon copy business case!!! Nothing for using their Qt framework and everything below and above it (see http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/freelicense.html if you don't believe me), the only time I actually need to pay some money is when I want something using Qt to be closed source (most likely for making money myself this way, so I'm perfectly fine with that). Those who prefer not to pay anyone even while using their stuff for making themselves money are freeloaders in my eyes. They are welcome to use particular abuse-allowing toolkits instead. - Now the developers who try to make money with open source by wanting to close it first are a tiny minority of all Linux users, and I'm happily spreading Knoppix based live CD's with no cost besides the CDR in my circle of friends, something that is clearly impossible with the "free" .NET. Some notes: *Trolltech welcomes you to discuss the price with you if you actually are a potential customer. All this public bitching about Trolltech's official prices is generally trolling of people who are or want to stay uninformed. *Trolltech's business policy basically boils down to: You are allowed to develope using their Qt for free as long as you contribute your source, and you have to pay the Qt developers for it as soon as you intend to keep your source closed (for whatever reason). This is imo a great way to ensure that everyone who uses Qt profits of others also using Qt. *Since when does Qt "essentially holds a monopoly"? I might actually want that to be the case (for above mentioned reason that everyone could profit of it), but it surely is not at all the case right now. What are we in? An "anon" clones war?

Re: The State of KDE - Anon - 2003-11-24

> Ok, let me try your kind of "figure of speech" as well. Your sarcasm and parody is admirable but you obviously (still) don't understand my comment about "theft" and what "figure of speech" means (search it up somewhere; it's not a term I made up). > I would pay, yes - but only for the for a toolkit I'm actually using for > development - not for the operating system and desktop environment and system > integration and everything else. Troll Tech does not produce operating systems. Your argument is void like SCO's. > Overall Trolltech charges less for similar products even if I want to make a > carbon copy business case!!! Really? I want to sell my latest and greatest version of my program. Microsoft: approx. $300 for Windows OEM (IIRC) per developer/machine + $0 for dotNET framework and compiler GNU: approx. $0 (best case) for Linux per developer/machine + $3000/developer Figure out the maths yourself. For x (where x = number of developers), the Microsoft solution is always cheaper (if x > 0). > Nothing for using their Qt framework and everything below and above it (see > http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/freelicense.html if you don't believe > me), the only time I actually need to pay some money is when I want something > using Qt to be closed source (most likely for making money myself this way, > so I'm perfectly fine with that). Thank you for finally acknowledging the point in dispute. I simply refuse to pay such prices per developer to develop closed source software. $3000 is ridiculous and kills mom-and-dad or teenager startups. I could buy a whole new, damn good computer for $3000. > Those who prefer not to pay anyone even while using their stuff for making > themselves money are freeloaders in my eyes. Then why don't you agree to pay for Windows? I pay for Windows because I think $300 for operating system that can run 90% of the software with eye candy and all and binary compatibility for more than 6 months (unless you like recompiling all your software) and provides a free (in terms of beer) toolkit is worth it. While $3000 gives me just a toolkit that has less functionality? > They are welcome to use particular abuse-allowing toolkits instead. - Now the > developers who try to make money with open source by wanting to close it > first are a tiny minority of all Linux users, and I'm happily spreading > Knoppix based live CD's with no cost besides the CDR in my circle of friends, > something that is clearly impossible with the "free" .NET. Have you heard of GNU's Mono? > Some notes: *Trolltech welcomes you to discuss the price with you if you > actually are a potential customer. So you're a representative of Trolltech? What's your real name? I'd like to make a complaint to your supervisor about your PR skills. > All this public bitching about Trolltech's official prices is generally > trolling of people who are or want to stay uninformed. So you stay with the politically correct answers and accuse anyone that has different views (FreeBSD-style views, in fact) of trolling? > *Trolltech's business policy basically boils down to: ... > and you have to pay the Qt developers for it as soon as you intend to keep > your source closed (for whatever reason). And charges more than Microsoft!!! > *Since when does Qt "essentially holds a monopoly"? It's an effective monopoly like Microsoft. There is simply no competition in the Linux toolkit market. GTK is inferior and all other toolkits are either obsolete or even worse. Qt owns the market and is abusing its position. > What are we in? An "anon" clones war? I have a good reason to try to be anonymous - I'm saying politically incorrect stuff. But why are you anonymous?

Re: The State of KDE - jb - 2003-11-19

> Funny that, because quite a few businesses seem to be rather happy with Qt Of course there are businesses that are happy with Qt. But monopoly or not, it is safe to say that there are more businesses that are happy with Microsoft's offerings (considering they own >94% of the market). Microsoft offers the dotNET Framework and a compilers (C#, VB.Net) for *free*. You can develop under those platforms (and even sell the programs you make) NO STRINGS ATTACHED. You don't have to pay $3000/developer. And with Mono under development, dotNET will be cross-platform and indirectly endorsed by GNU. And even if dotNET never reaches the portability of Qt, remember this: Microsoft owns >94% of the market - a cross-platform toolkit will, at most, only give you access to an extra 6%. It is not worth retraining employees to use another, less powerful, buggy (e.g. Qt 3.2.0) and far more expensive toolkit. Efforts should be invested in solidifying commerical products in more viable markets (try explaining to joe user why they should be using linux - the free argument simply doesn't work anymore especially where in the case of Qt, it is not even free beer).

Re: The State of KDE - Waldo Bastian - 2003-11-19

I fail to understand your reasoning. You seem to be saying that because Microsoft uses illegal means (such as OEM deals) to maintain a monopoly on desktop computer operating systems, this somehow implies that businesses rather use Microsoft development tools than Qt? And that should lead me to disregard evidence to the contrary why exactly? > And with Mono under development, dotNET will be cross-platform and > indirectly endorsed by GNU. Compared to Qt, which is available now already, is cross-platform now already and is directly endorsed by TrollTech who can also provide you with support and on-site training. > Microsoft owns >94% of the market - a cross-platform toolkit will, at most, > only give you access to an extra 6% 6% of the desktop market is a significant number of potential customers, especially if you can enter that market first while your direct competitors are still waiting for dotNET to be released. You may also want to consider the growth in the Linux desktop market that IDC predicts for the next few years. Cheers, Waldo

Re: The State of KDE - jb - 2003-11-21

> I fail to understand your reasoning. You seem to be saying that because > Microsoft uses illegal means (such as OEM deals) to maintain a monopoly on > desktop computer operating systems, this somehow implies that businesses > rather use Microsoft development tools than Qt? I believe this is the reason though. They have used evil tactics to maintain market share and businesses prefer to use Microsoft endorsed tools because: a) they are cheaper or free!!! (this amazed me when I read about Trolltech's licensing scheme). If Linux ever dominates the market, I predict Trolltech will be the new Microsoft but will charge even more! b) it has "big name" backing. If you say that it's a "dotNET application" it will automatically sell - compare that with "Qt application". Has anyone in that 94% heard of Qt? > And that should lead me to > disregard evidence to the contrary why exactly? Listen to the market. That's the unfortunate reality. Microsoft is dominant and businesses are more willing to go with them. > > And with Mono under development, dotNET will be cross-platform and > > indirectly endorsed by GNU. > Compared to Qt, which is available now already, is cross-platform now already > and is directly endorsed by TrollTech who can also provide you with support > and on-site training. True but look at how slow they are at accepting patches. And look at bugs like QString crashes or QDomDocument reports the wrong parent in Qt 3.2.0. These are fatal bugs - did they test properly or did they leave those bugs to be found by the hardworking KDE guinea pigs/developers to find? Imagine if Microsoft released toolkits like that - and MS has a record of unreliability! > > Microsoft owns >94% of the market - a cross-platform toolkit will, at most, > > only give you access to an extra 6% > 6% of the desktop market is a significant number of potential customers, > especially if you can enter that market first while your direct competitors > are still waiting for dotNET to be released. True, I agree with that point but: > You may also want to consider the > growth in the Linux desktop market that IDC predicts for the next few years. I can't agree with this. GNU has being going on about the free operating system rhetoric for maybe at least 20 years. I read Linux articles back in 2000 saying that it was "almost" about to take the desktop. Since then, I have been bitterly disappointed: 0. The most popular UNIX is not Linux. It is actually MacOS X. It has 5 times the market share just because of translucent cases despite the fact that it costs a truckload. 1. The only office suite that can read Word documents is OO, slow as hell and not integrated with KDE. 2. Linux distros (esp. Mandrake) DO NOT TEST their releases. Bugs like floppy-cannot-be-used-without-100-mount-and-umount-commands, screen-mode-cannot-be-changed-without-resetting-X (until very recently), kernel corrupts filesystem (2.4.3), kernel literally "burns" your CD-ROMs (Mandrake 9.2), takes longers to boot than Windows because they couldn't be bothered parallelizing startup, at least 10 different, unrelated apps to configure your system (DrakConf/YaST/linuxconf, KControl, Webmin...). GIMP is unusable. No reasonable, one-stop media player solution (name the formats that noatun can play - I can count them with 1 hand). 3. Contrary to RN's remarks about the remarkable quality of KDE releases: - ark prevents you from accessing files because of "Permission denied" (it was a Qt bug but still, explain that to any user) - annoying selection behaviour (until 3.0/freedesktop.org) - KOffice does not read any useful documents what so ever - KDE is slow (run it even on a 1.6 Ghz CPU - the difference with Windows is shocking even with recent KDE versions) - Konqueror is famous for Javascript not working (and still is) - Konqueror control modules don't update the settings until you restart Konqueror (until recently, apparently) - KMail deletes the temporary file for the attachment when you change email - KMail compact does not work - ARTS sucks all your CPU and non-ARTS aware progs usually block on startup (e.g. RealPlayer) and looks like Linux is unreliable - Kicker crashes about twice every session (reproduceable in 3.2 Beta even) - Backtrace feature in Crash Dialog has never worked (even in debug build) Now probably some of these bugs are already fixed. But think about the release date of the KDE version my users were using - 2002 (3.0). How can you expect users to use that stuff when a rival GUI (Windows XP) has been developed to such a level of refinement that it has a movie editor? And why is it that every time someone mentions the bleeding obvious like KDE is slow or GPL/QPL is not a reasonable license for a toolkit or KOffice sucks, that they get flamed? About the only person who doesn't resort to personal attacks to cover up for the lack of an argument, on this forum, is you.

Re: The State of KDE - Tchak - 2003-11-21

>KOffice does not read any useful documents what so ever I fing It could work beter if microsoft dont change the specifications, on .doc format for exempl, evry relases (word xp document is offen unreadebel with word 2000). This dont help developers... And as for me, I chuse antiword + latex (kile works wery well for my) PS : Sory for a bad englich tchak

Re: The State of KDE - Datschge - 2003-11-21

>> a) they are cheaper or free!!! (this amazed me when I read about Trolltech's licensing scheme). If Linux ever dominates the market, I predict Trolltech will be the new Microsoft but will charge even more! So what? Trolltech charges per developer who want to keep his work closed source (mostly likely for earning money this way), while Microsoft charges per every single desktop/server/client installation. Regardless Qt is ensured to be available to open source software free of charge also in the future, read http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php Microsoft on the other hand does not offer an all free development package, regardless in what combination and regardless how often people state that .NET per se is "free". >> b) it has "big name" backing. If you say that it's a "dotNET application" it will automatically sell - compare that with "Qt application". Has anyone in that 94% heard of Qt? It doesn't matter for Qt being a backend to be popular, actually most user should not have to care about the backend, why should that change with .NET? And I strongly doubt 94% heard of .NET, even after all the marketing after Microsoft unveiling of .NET in 22th June 2000 (so more than 3 years ago). 0. Care to back that with actual reliable data? 1. You mean you are working on it? Besides why do you need support for proprietary Word files? And you do know that KDE is not responsible for OpenOffice.org's integration into KDE, don't you? 2. You were talking about market above, why don't you support other distros with better approaches or offer one yourself? 3. Can't reproduce. If some of them are fixed already then what are you here to complain? That Qt and KDE are not bug free? And XP has a movie editor? How is that an indication of "refinement"? One most likely get flamed for making claims one don't care to back up with actual data while others didn't experience any of the mentioned problems, thus consider the poster a troll. To me it looks like you a) had wrong expectations and b) were making use of some companies service while not sending them your complaints but instead resorting to complaining to some projects instead. I hope you are aware of the fact that project mostly show progress due to contributions, not due to complaints which are mostly ignored.

Re: The State of KDE - anon - 2003-11-24

> > a) they are cheaper or free!!! (this amazed me when I read > > about Trolltech's licensing scheme). If Linux ever dominates the market, > > I predict Trolltech will be the new Microsoft but will charge even more! > So what? Trolltech charges per developer who want to keep his work closed > source (mostly likely for earning money this way), while Microsoft charges > per every single desktop/server/client installation. I would argue that the number of developers >= number of computers. So with the per-developer-toolkit scheme of Trolltech's you pay more than per-computer-operating-system + free toolkit scheme of Microsoft's. > Regardless Qt is ensured > to be available to open source software free of charge also in the future, > read http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php No, what if a company hostile to Qt/opensource buys out Trolltech. They could produce a broken toolkit (to the point that it's unusable) every year and KDE would either have to use it or fork the last good Qt. The KDE 2 Programming book's reasoning about there being pro-KDE developers in Trolltech so that this can't happen is wrong because they could simply be fired by the new management. Think Steve Jobbs. > Microsoft on the other hand does not offer an all free development package, Nor does any GNU + Trolltech combination for producing commerical software. Microsoft just charges less for equivalent or better. > and regardless how often people state that .NET per se is "free". For developing commerical apps: .NET is free in terms of both speech and beer. Qt is free only in terms of speech. > 0. Care to back that with actual reliable data? Seems a bit out of date (they claim only 3x): http://www.computeruser.com/articles/2105,4,43,1,0501,02.html but I'm sure you can google better than I can. > 1. You mean you are working on it? Correct. > Besides why do you need support for proprietary Word files? Oh come on, that is ignorant. The vast majority of people use Microsoft Word. Please don't give me that kind of argument. Trying to win over a majority of users already happy with their documents to opensource formats (that are only supported by either buggy or bloated free office suites) will not work. The GNU free rhetoric hasn't worked for at least 10 or 15 years. > And you do know that KDE is not responsible for > OpenOffice.org's integration into KDE, don't you? Yes but I was making a point about why I doubt Linux will become mainstream any time soon and hence why concentrating efforts on that 6% of the market is a waste of time. > 2. You were talking about market above, why don't you support other distros The only free (as in money) one that isn't misguided appears to be ArkLinux. But I simply haven't found the time to try it. > with better approaches or offer one yourself? Find me 100 developers willing to help someone they've never heard of. > 3. Can't reproduce. - so you weren't using KDE before they fixed the selection behaviour (read the Qt documentation on QClipboard)? - so you believe that KOffice is usable (try reading a more than basic Word document with images, try inputting large roman numerals as counters, try giving it xml with out of range attribute values, try opening any document in KWord (other than KWord format) and saving it back and see how much formatting and content you lose)? - if KDE wasn't slow, there would be a kde optimize list. It is damn obvious it is slow. - write in the Mozilla forums (if they have any), how good Konqueror is compared to Mozilla and they will probably call you a troll. - the KMail temporary file for attachment is a known bug. Ask on the KMail lists. Maybe it's already fixed, don't know but at least it was there in 2002 (when even Microsoft had gotten it right maybe 2 years or more before that). - KMail compact bug I believe is also quite well known - you're telling me you can't reproduce the ARTS glitches? You are either incompetent or ignorant. - Kicker speaks for itself. Just open a fair number of windows and close one after a long time and it will probably crash. Hard to reproduce consistently I admit but IT HAPPENS. Explain this to people you are trying to move over to Linux because it's "free" and "stable". > If some of them are fixed already then what are you here to complain? That Qt > and KDE are not bug free? My point was that Linux is simply not going to be ready for mass market anytime soon. If you can have such disasterous bugs while Windows is actually usable, your operating system will never get to market. > And XP has a movie editor? How is that an indication of "refinement"? Should be obvious. An operating system in its infancy will still be struggling to get what users see as basic apps like word processors, web browsers right; while more mature ones will concentrate on more elaborate features. > One most likely get flamed for making claims one don't care to back up with > actual data No, one gets flamed for speaking political incorrectness. > while others didn't experience any of the mentioned problems There are few KDE users (compared to Windows) and hence the chance of problems appearing is lower, and the chance that someone would have a similar setup to me is even lower and the chance of those bugs being reported is even lower than that. > thus consider the poster a troll. I don't work for "troll"tech, haha :) Look, you can call me a troll, they can call me a troll but this is the price of free speech. > To me it looks like you a) had wrong expectations We are in total agreement here. I am quite disappointed with Linux. > and b) were making use of some companies service while not sending them your > complaints but instead resorting to complaining to some projects instead. So it's bad practice to talk about the problems with the underlying toolkit in a KDE forum? > I hope you are aware of the fact that project mostly show progress due to > contributions, It would be enlightening if I could reveal my relation to KDE but I can't because I'll be persecuted forever. > not due to complaints which are mostly ignored. You can ignore free speech if you want. You ignore the fact that you like being ripped off by a company.

Re: The State of KDE - Rayiner H. - 2003-11-16

Have you ever *used* MFC? And its not another layer of unwanted abstraction. Mac and Linux are up-and-coming, and it would be wise for many companies to take into account the portability of their code-base long term. This is especially true for companies like Adobe, Macromedia, etc, that need Mac compatibility because the market demands it, and need to consider Linux compatibility because Linux is making large gains in parts of the media industry.

Re: The State of KDE - Roberto Alsina - 2003-11-16

You are unfamiliar with capitalism, apparently. In the capitalist theory, as a supplier, you charge whatever you want. As long as you charge below "what the market will bear", you do fine. If you charge more, you do badly, and your competition does better, and in the long term, you die. The exception to that, of course is monopoly pricing, where the threshold to entry of competition is too high, and you can charge higher than expected. Since Troll Tech can hardl be described as having a monopoly of anything, the charge of them being "ripping businesses off" is not only wrong, it's stupid. In addition, saying "QT (if used under Windows) simply adds another level of bloat and unwanted abstraction." is even technically wrong, since Qt in windows doesn't use the native toolkit but replaces it (so the number of layers is identical). We all here are now a little more stupid for reading your post.

Re: The State of KDE - anon - 2003-11-19

> In the capitalist theory, as a supplier, you charge whatever you want. > As long as you charge below "what the market will bear", you do fine. that's right; i'll be writing to the CEO of TT to ask them to charge $12000/developer instead of only $3000/developer as surely the market can bear that. wow, .NET costs $0/developer... > In addition, saying "QT (if used under Windows) simply adds > another level of bloat and unwanted abstraction." is even technically wrong, > since Qt in windows doesn't use the native toolkit but replaces it (so the > number of layers is identical). no, it's a layer of abstraction and it's another one. therefore the original posters statement was correct.

Re: The State of KDE - Roberto Alsina - 2003-11-19

Er... just because you say "charge 12000" that doesn't mean that the market will bear that. You are not the market. And, dear, saying "adds another level of bloat and unwanted abstraction" is not the same as "it's another layer of astraction" and that is not the same as "it's a layer of abstraction" and "it's another one". The details, I leave as homework.

Re: The State of KDE - Anon - 2003-11-21

> Er... just because you say "charge 12000" that doesn't mean that the market will > bear that. You are not the market. So what makes you think the market bears $3000? I repeat, Microsoft charges nothing for the dotNET Framework. Why do you think e.g. Mandrake uses GTK for their tools despite having KDE as their default desktop? If Linux becomes more popular, I assure you that this Qt issue will cause *real* trouble.

Re: The State of KDE - Roberto Alsina - 2003-11-21

What makes me think the market bears $3000: That Troll Tech doesn´t seem to be going under. Yes, it´s flimsy, but it´s pretty much all the evidence anyone has about any price/market relation unless you have inside data. Microsoft charges nothing for dotNET? I don´t care, it doesn´t work on the OS I use. Regarding Mandrake, since their tools are GPL, the license is obviously not the problem. About the reasons, I have no idea, since I have no data. If linux becomes more popular, Qt will cause trouble? For who? Not for me, really, since the stuff I develop has a Qt-compatible license.

Re: The State of KDE - Anon - 2003-11-24

> What makes me think the market bears $3000: That Troll Tech doesn´t seem to > be going under. Yes, it´s flimsy, but it´s pretty much all the evidence > anyone has about any price/market relation unless you have inside data. I'm suggesting that there's massive price elasticity and that Troll Tech (and Linux and KDE) could be gaining a LOT more ground if they charge less (or nothing at all). > Microsoft charges nothing for dotNET? > I don´t care, it doesn´t work on the OS I use. But the point is that this doesn't apply the overwhelming majority of users. I bet someone will eventually start up FreeQt again under a BSD licence when and if Linux becomes more popular. And I hope to see Troll Tech cloned and priced out of the market if they are charging so ridiculously - worse than similar (or better) products from even the worst monopoly (MS).

having a Library under GPL is crime - Anton Velev - 2003-11-16

Hello people, Seems that you are all blind (or pretend to be), and banning out the people who post a different opinion. With all respect even microsoft does not do such censoring as you do. Hell you just deleted (as i expected) the post I replied. Ok, now the conclusion. Do you know why RMS did LGPL - for libraries. GPL for apps, LGPL for libs. And do you know what is truly open? It's BSD! I replaced recently all linuxes with FreeBSD. If something is stated to be a Open Source it must be really open like BSD, everything else is so called GPL tirany or as some guys call it "Dual Licensing". If one is willing to contribute back he must not be forced to do such (because of restrictions of (L)GPL) but because of the good will to help out. Making something "Dual Licensed" is like giving to the community a proprietary software for Free trial. For small or big business decision to rely on not-open standard and proprietary library is a bad choice. That's why companies like Sun and Novel choose LGPL to rely on instead of GPL/QT. I had a lot of discussions with my friends about the future of this industry, and everyone is scared to use GPL to rely on, it wasn't my thought that making a library under GPL is a crime but it's right definition of what GPL and Dual Licensing causes. And let me tell you what is real open standard and open source: it's licenses like X and BSD. X is de facto a standard for UNIXES, Apache is standard too, BSD is the true UNIX and still the best standard (Linux is just a UNIX imitation). real free OPEN SOURCE LIBRARY = free of GPL PS: Apple really freed KHTML of GPL, no one could admit it, KHTML is now free of QT. Apple's toolkit for writing apps may be proprietary but they will not charge anyone for writing apps for their platform, and one should not be scared of being forced to give his source - would do if he wants. PS2: Some of you may be blind, but don't try to blind the community by deleting posts

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - MandrakeUser - 2003-11-16

"And do you know what is truly open? It's BSD!" I hope you don't get censored. But I disagree. Look, the most damaging company for the worldwide computer industry, microsoft, has benefited enormously from the BSD license: they were able to stabilize their horrible OS in early 2000 by using BSD code, and now they are in an even stronger position to abuse of their power. They even have a decent server product line to offer (this was not the case before). Being totally permissive with free software is not necessarilly good. The GPL has done for free/open software much more than the BSD license has. Take a look at how popular is the software produced with one license or the other. I, for one, would never release code written in my spare time, to get used by a monopoly like MS. I also like the LGPL for libraries, but this is another story ...

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Anonymous - 2003-11-16

Don't talk about censoring. Wiggle is a banned user for maybe 2 years now for site abuse. Anton Velev is being a moron and/or is Wiggle under disguise.

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - MandrakeUser - 2003-11-16

Ok, I apologize for talking "censorship". I don't see where Anton is being a moron though, I just disagree with most of what he says, but that doesn't make him (or me for that sake) a moron ...

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - anon - 2003-11-16

perhaps ignorance more than moron =)

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Anonymous - 2003-11-16

He goes around accusing people of being blind or censoring and generally has a bad attitude. He talks about how he uses Safari which is CLOSED SOURCE but which uses KHTML only because it's not GPL. If that's not incoherent nonsense, I don't know what is. Sorry for calling him a moron, but he acts like one and fits the description.

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Anton Velev - 2003-11-16

OK, I don't know who is Wiggle, may be you have a reason to ban him. I know what I am talking about, it's that GPL is free, it forbids. BSD is more free than GPL, LGPL is more free too. Anyway, this seems to turn to a big philosophy, just think about it. Keep the good culture, no need to troll. I know you all would be more happy if Qt was LGPL and even more if it was BSD. However this people have to make money and that's why they use "Dual Licensing". Nothing wrong with it, it's a nice business strategy, and a monopolistic of course because anyone who wants to make a commercial app for KDE must pay exactly to Qt and more than that extremely high amount (no other toolkit costs as much as Qt). This closes KDE to be open only for non-commercial programs, at least I don't know a title that is commercial under KDE. Let's not repeat again that everyone is able to write commercial app for other platforms without being forced to pay to a dominant solution provider - in our case Qt is dominant, even on Windows you can choose from several different vendors and you also have a lot of free libs. Just take a closer look Java, Windows, Mac, Gnome - there is at least one open library that you can use to write a commercial app and of course (at least for windows) you have various library vendors. This is not the case with KDE, only one solution provider and a lot of money - options are two - only GPL apps or pay Qt. Until now I never found app for KDE that is CLOSED SOURCE, yes there are a several Qt apps (all thekompany apps are Qt apps not KDE). This situation making kde to stay away of the corporate desktop. And yes I can agree that KDE would have a future with systems like Kontakt/Kroupware (btw i never used Evolution but from people who have used it I hear very good things), KIOSK, etc on the corporate desktop but what about the thousands more commercial apps? If major software vendors start porting their apps to GTK (instead of KDE/QT) then user will prefer Gnome because of better integration. Currently the industry Linux corporate desktop seems to be OpenOffice+Mozilla+Evolution+GIMP+KDE/Gnome, at least this is the common average opinion. Things are changing, KDE can be easy replaced with Gnome in this configuration, although Konqueror is better than Mozilla/Netscape. But let's not make this as KDE vs Gnome, it's actually GPL vs LGPL. Sun decided that it's "Java Desktop" will be StarOffice+Mozilla+Evolution+Gnome, and they have a reason, Sun cannot base it's future strategy on Qt because of GPL. Similar did RedHat, similar will may be do Novell/SuSE, but still for the desktop user KDE looks best. I envision that in close future KDE will be separated into two big projects: 1) konqueror project for the best browser, which will compete with mozilla 2) KDE window manager - the best window manager for the end user, of course will be bundled with some apps as it is today but at least noone will write apps especially for KDE but instead just use the high configurability of this WindowManager for achieving the best look for his users desktops This are the global trends I envision right now, and the main reason for this is the lack of commercial apps and commercial support for KDE. And for me only the BSD or LGPL KDE+QT can solve this.

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Anonymous - 2003-11-16

> all thekompany apps are Qt apps not KDE This is not true (Kapital, KDE Studio Gold). They changed their strategy for new applications but still offer (and develop?) these.

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Kevin Krammer - 2003-11-17

<quote> BSD is more free than GPL, LGPL is more free too. </quote> So perhaps we should only release Public domain, which doesn't have such cruel restrictions like having to include the other authors name :) <quote> anyone who wants to make a commercial app for KDE must pay exactly to Qt </quote> Just wanted to remind you that "commercial" means you're making money with it and that you really meant "closed source". You will have to pay for a Qt licence even if you release freeware, if you are not willing to release sourcem but you don't have to even if you request some payment for your software as long as the customer can get the source on request as well. <quote> If major software vendors start porting their apps to GTK (instead of KDE/QT) </quote> I suggest you contact Adobe as soon as possible to tell them what a horrible mistake they made in choosing Qt for Photoshop Album because GTK+ is cheaper while being technically equivalent. Those poor people obviously have no idea how to evaluate possible options, but fortunately you're here to do it for them. Cheers, Kevin

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Daniel Brodzik - 2005-06-21

1. Commercial != Proprietary/closed-source. This means that commercial but non-proprietary apps can use QT as much as they want. That's the beauty of the GPL for libraries--encouragement to write open-source software. 2. Nobody who USES proprietary software has to pay for QT unless they write it themself. 3. If Linux itself is open-source, and companies want to use it, what's wrong with using open-source apps with it? I mean, you're saying companies use Gnome only because they need proprietary software. That's pure nonsense because GTK apps work fine under KDE anyway. And isn't the point of Linux supposed to be open-source code? >>> Do you know why RMS did LGPL - for libraries. GPL for apps, LGPL for libs. RMS did not make the LGPL for *all* libraries. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html >>> If something is stated to be a Open Source it must be really open like BSD, everything else is so called GPL tirany or as some guys call it "Dual Licensing". If one is willing to contribute back he must not be forced to do such (because of restrictions of (L)GPL) but because of the good will to help out. Before the GPL, software was becoming proprietary because nothing was there to protect it. GPL has measures to protect software from this. That's what it is for. >>> Making something "Dual Licensed" is like giving to the community a proprietary software for Free trial. For small or big business decision to rely on not-open standard and proprietary library is a bad choice. That's why companies like Sun and Novel choose LGPL to rely on instead of GPL/QT. This makes no sense. The only way you'd be required to pay TrollTech for QT is if you don't release the source to your program. The reason that Sun and Novell stay away from QT is that they often write proprietary/closed-source programs. You do NOT need to pay for QT if you just RUN programs that are proprietary. >>> Keep the good culture, no need to troll. Isn't that what *you're* doing? :-D >>> Let's not repeat again that everyone is able to write commercial app for other platforms without being forced to pay to a dominant solution provider - in our case Qt is dominant, even on Windows you can choose from several different vendors and you also have a lot of free libs. Just take a closer look Java, Windows, Mac, Gnome - there is at least one open library that you can use to write a commercial app and of course (at least for windows) you have various library vendors. This is not the case with KDE, only one solution provider and a lot of money - options are two - only GPL apps or pay Qt. This is not a fair comparison. You're comparing a desktop environment (KDE) to entire operating systems. FYI, you can still use non-QT apps under KDE. There's nothing stopping you from writing a non-free GTK app and running it under KDE. >>> KIOSK, etc on the corporate desktop but what about the thousands more commercial apps? If major software vendors start porting their apps to GTK (instead of KDE/QT) then user will prefer Gnome because of better integration. I don't know of anyone who uses Linux or FreeBSD with only proprietary software. But I'm sure it's possible. The point of Linux and BSD are not to run mostly proprietary software but instead to run open-source software. Also, if you get a GTK theme called "GTK-QT", GTK programs will look and feel like KDE programs because they will use your KDE style. Next you'll be complaining about Wine not using QT... >>> Currently the industry Linux corporate desktop seems to be OpenOffice+Mozilla+Evolution+GIMP+KDE/Gnome, at least this is the common average opinion. Things are changing, KDE can be easy replaced with Gnome in this configuration, although Konqueror is better than Mozilla/Netscape. But let's not make this as KDE vs Gnome, it's actually GPL vs LGPL. OpenOffice, Mozilla, Evolution, GIMP, KDE, and GNOME are all open-source. What's your point? In addition, Linux/Unix is about choice. It's a good thing if the user can choose rather than being forced to use KDE or GNOME. Now, I'm not saying I'm a GNOME fan--I love KDE, and that's the reason I use it. I wouldn't use GNOME just because it looks better with any particular program(s). >>> Sun decided that it's "Java Desktop" will be StarOffice+Mozilla+Evolution+Gnome, and they have a reason, Sun cannot base it's future strategy on Qt because of GPL. Similar did RedHat, similar will may be do Novell/SuSE, but still for the desktop user KDE looks best. 1. Sun has a right to decide what to include and what not to include. That is their business and not yours. I'm sure it wasn't just QT that did it. 2. Red Hat has included KDE with its distro since QT went GPL. They just chose GNOME as the default, but you don't have to use it if you don't want to. 3. Hel-lo! In SuSE, YaST is written for QT, and the default desktop is KDE. Another commercial distro that uses KDE as the default is Mandriva. >>> I envision that in close future KDE will be separated into two big projects: 1) konqueror project for the best browser, which will compete with mozilla 2) KDE window manager - the best window manager for the end user, of course will be bundled with some apps as it is today but at least noone will write apps especially for KDE but instead just use the high configurability of this WindowManager for achieving the best look for his users desktops You just don't get it, do you? KDE is open-source. It will always be that way. KDE itself is under the GPL. Almost every program for it is under the GPL or BSD license, and there are a growing number of programs for it. Your vision of the future will only be true if everybody suddenly stopped writing code under any type of open-source license, including the BSD license. In short: as long as people are willing to write open-source programs (GPL, BSD, LGPL, X11, etc.), KDE can exist. Sorry this was so long, but this was fun. :)

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Anonymous - 2003-11-16

There is a difference between posting a different opinion and repeatedly posting wrong facts to, as this user admitted for similiar stuff e.g. on gnomedesktop.org, "just to see what shit I could stir up by submitting it". You can find his prepared pamphlet on /. (posted off-topic as always) if you miss it.

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Anonymous - 2003-11-16

> Do you know why RMS did LGPL - for libraries. GPL for apps, LGPL for libs. Read for yourself, also why it's called the Lesser GPL now and not encouraged for every library: http://www.fsf.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - MandrakeUser - 2003-11-16

Fantastic read. Recommended for everyone who never read it ... and it fits perfectly in what I said above about my concerns with the BSD type of licensing ...

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - anon - 2003-11-16

> Seems that you are all blind (or pretend to be), and banning out the people who post a different opinion. Erm, different opinions are fine, but Wiggle has been a known troll on this site for a very long time. He is perhaps the only regular troll here. He uses open proxy servers to get around bans. dot.kde.org uses squishdot, which doesn't allow for very advanced moderation facilities, and as such, renaming text in posts is the only thing that can be done pretty much.

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Caleb Tennis - 2003-11-17

I have an idea - why don't you use the product that best works for you? If KDE and Qt don't have licenses you like, don't use them. For other people, like myself, the Qt licensening scheme works out great. Don't assume that your situation is the ONLY situation. I think you're the one with the blinders on.

Re: having a Library under GPL is crime - Hugo - 2003-11-17

With this subject and steadily repeated posting of your radical opinion you should not wonder to be considered as troll soon.

Re: The State of KDE - Cloaked Penguin - 2003-11-16

"Thank you. I hope this has been informative." It was. It informed me not to read your comments again, ever.

Re: The State of KDE - Derek Kite - 2003-11-16

Novell, who has no history of contributing to either Linux or any desktop environments, all of a sudden owns the desktop? Your faith is touching. Openoffice is about 3 releases away from being a bloated huge mess to something reasonable. Same with Mozilla. Or mega-bloat may be the best word. These are two of the foundations of the linux/gnome/evolution/mozilla/openoffice desktop offerings. They work, but are not interoperable, are huge, work off of three gui libraries. At best it is a stopgap let's-get-something-out-there measure of approaching the desktop. Keep the marketing people happy. Novell can't afford to hire enough developers to finish the desktop. They depend on other companies, individuals to produce code. Similar to IBM's contributions to the kernel. Generous and helpful, but they don't own the kernel, not by a long shot. If Novell comes in, waving ownership papers to Ximian and Suse, and tries to tell the developer community what they should work on, they are dead. Plain and simple, they will cease to exist. None of this is their projects. Where would that leave Gnome? Suse knows how to do it right, and if Novell is smart, will listen to them. Remember, Suse has a growing desktop market based on KDE. Sales. Demand. Real money, not some dream. Remember, Novell is on probation. Developers, whether hired or working on their own will contribute if they have confidence. If Novell screws up, they are on their own. Attempting to kill KDE would be a screw up. It is not theirs to kill. Have you ever thought that Novell could kill Gnome if they aren't smart? What reason do we have to trust Novell? What has their contribution to free software been? Have they open sourced any of their core technologies, like IBM and SGI have? Remember, Darl and the boys used to work at Novell. That was their corporate thinking. Have they changed? Derek (who trusts no-one, especially when money is involved)

truth of novell desktop ? - jmk - 2003-11-16

http://www.desktoplinux.com/files/article003/sld018.html

Re: truth of novell desktop ? - Datschge - 2003-11-16

Replace 'Novell' with 'Ximian desktop' and you got what this slide is showing (note that there's Microsoft Exchange in the left top corner, and the Linux OS layer is described as 'partner' even though in both cases Novell has its own in-house solutions now).

Re: truth of novell desktop ? - ac - 2003-11-16

Why the heck does it seem that all the enterprise-targeting distros (RH, Sun, Novell) go for Gnome? Gnome is nice, but Kde is nicer. period.

Re: truth of novell desktop ? - anon - 2003-11-16

Because RH, Sun started off as GNOME shops, and eventually decided to target the enterprise? RH really didn't try to target the enterprise back in 1996, and Sun adopted GNOME just as a replacement for CDE in Solaris. Novell isn't really GNOME company; they were just able to buy Ximian before SuSE, and as such, GNOME/Ximian integration into the company started months before integration of SuSE. Had Novell aquirred SuSE for 140$ Million, as they originally wanted, the situation would be reversed, because apparently Novell tried to aquire SuSE before the Ximian buyout, and failed.

Re: truth of novell desktop ? - Maynard - 2003-11-16

I will say, and its just me parroting the Redhat line here. They probably want to provide other developers with a platform to actually make their own apps, whether open source or proprietary. They prefer not to have hidden costs associated with using their distros as development platforms. A company doesn't have to roll out a Linux desktop, then realise if they want to make closed source apps, they have to pay more money to Qt, with a extra set of licensing terms. Its good logic, and the day there is no good reason to use Qt ahead of GTK, Qt will be in trouble. The thing is if Trolltech made Qt LGPL, then anyone could make and sell development tools. Companies like Redhat would just inclde them in their distros. (RHEL now comes with Eclipse, which if combined with like Qt, could make KDevelop and others look seriously wanting. Plus its compiled and runs pretty speedy. The fastest Eclipse around now) But I digress. Don't get me wrong, the situation was mostly rectified when Qt introduced the free Qt/X Windows license, but there aer some niggles which companies like Redhat like to avoid.

Re: truth of novell desktop ? - jmk - 2003-11-16

To sum up: if KDE is nicer (and as of my opinion, on almost all aspects it is) but GNOME gets chosen on all fronts, there has to be a reason. I'd hate to take take the Qt-licensing stuff here again, but i'm afraid that may not be too far fetched after all. Another good point may be the fact that corporations need to *buy* their free desktop (go figure) from someone. Maybe a business-case for the Trolls? Hope this isn't a goodbye for the KDE support for the enterprises. Personally, i may be really close on getting it into wider use in our company (to development workstations in a company with more than 40 000 desktops), but now if things are starting to break up again this may get tricky (original plan was to use IBM/SuSE/KDE, but now if it turns out so that IBM/Novell/SuSE goes with XD, god only knows what happens).

Re: truth of novell desktop ? - Anonymous - 2003-11-16

The question is who choses it, the users or commercial distributions/enterprise heads? GNOME may end as business desktop and KDE as desktop of users' hearts. Like rumored today's situation inside Sun Europe.

Re: truth of novell desktop ? - Datschge - 2003-11-17

Where is it written that Novell goes for Gnome? It's only their subsidiary Ximian which does so, and that shouldn't be surprising at all.

Re: truth of novell desktop ? - Derek Kite - 2003-11-19

Because right now, the applications that are ready are Mozilla, Evolution and OpenOffice. The list makes obvious the difficulties. Three gui libraries. Two monolithic apps on a foreign graphic framework. How can lgpl libraries make much difference here? Can you call Openoffice Write as a gui part in your application? I can't see it really being anything but a stopgap measure till something else comes along. Derek

Oh dear - cbcbcb - 2003-11-16

If khtml rendering faults are rated normal or below (and all the ones I have reported are) and they are going to wait for 3.2.1, then there's going to be a lot of disappointed users for 3.2.0 :(

Re: Oh dear - Derek Kite - 2003-11-17

It depends what causes the rendering faults. Some are due to unsupported extensions. Others are plain broken. The fixes require new features, ie. building support for IE document models. It's too late in the release schedule to do any more destabilizing in the codebase. Right now the goal is to get what is already there stable for release. Derek

Re: Oh dear - caoilte - 2003-11-17

better than that. why bother reporting the minor little annoying bugs, 'caus they'll just get closed with a terse "fixed already in HEAD".

Re: Oh dear - Anonymous - 2003-11-21

why do you sound so dissapointed? your bug was fixed! w00t