![Linux Business Linux Business](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/linuxbusiness_64.png)
Interview With Shawn Gordon of TheKompany 105
Gentu writes "OSNews features an interview with Shawn Gordon, president of TheKompany. Shawn talks about version 1.0 of Aethera and Kapital coming out in September, porting a lot of their Qt apps to MacOSX, the future of Linux on the desktop, how the embedded Linux market was surprisingly successful financially for them, as well as selling well their desktop apps. It is really encouraging to read that a desktop-oriented company actually made real money from Linux this year!"
embedded Linux (Score:1)
Yea, it's cool that people are making money at it. But I don't think that it is as hope-generating as some people might first believe. Wide scale acceptance is where a stable market will come from, not 'sneaking it in when they're not looking'.
Re:embedded Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Sneaking it in when they aren't looking is a pretty safe bet, it's what allowed MS to succeed.
Re:embedded Linux (Score:1)
Re:embedded Linux (Score:1)
Wrong. Just plain wrong. You're assuming (as a home user) that the only front Linux is fighting is on the desktop. It's a huge boon for the industry, that a freely-maintained, open operating system will run a lot of the tech average joe uses at home. Linux is (in most people's opinions) the next big thing® in embedded technology, why make blanket statements about it that only refer to the Desktop war?
Re:embedded Linux (Score:1)
The real issue with linux being accepted on a widescale is that it still is not user friendly enough for most people. I think it would be worth it if linux companies invested in some interface designers with real credentials, as it seems most open-source programmers don't know how to create programs that can be easily used by non computer oriented people. Mandrake and Corel linux have made inroads here (and of course many tech-oriented linux users complained that corel linux wasn't versatile enough, do you expect grandmothers to use slackware???)
Re:embedded Linux (Score:1)
This would be an interesting comment if it weren't completely wrong.
The majority of the "embedded" space from which the Kompany makes its license sales is the Zaurus 5x00 line of PDAs. I'd wager that over 99% of Zaurus users are aware they're running Linux, as it's touted all over the box.
Gordon even mentions the 5500 by name, almost seeming to plug it.
--A happy Zaurus user
Resources taken for these apps (Score:1)
Re:Capatalist pigs! (Score:1)
Yes, and even more encouraging that it is greeted with such amazement - not!
Re:Quality of Programmer (Score:1)
Good article; good news. (Score:3, Interesting)
It is indeed refreshing to see that a Linux-based software company is making quality applications, and more importantly, making money.
The other thing I enjoyed seeing is that they are starting to get their products into retail stores and that Linux and Windows versions are "one box, one price", allowing people to migrate between the two and keep the app they paid for. Nice!
Hopefully they keep up the good work, come out with some very nice apps and make the transition to Linux that much easier.
Maybe they should come up with a QT Office suite (KOffice?) with for-pay MS Word filters and then migrate people over to Linux cause their software will still run.
siri
Re:Good article; good news. (Score:1)
Re:Good article; good news. (Score:1)
Portability to OS X is a "Good Thing"[tm] (Score:1)
This addresses one of my major gripes about switching to OS X; there are few apps to choose from, and they all cost an arm & a leg.
I never knew The Kompany was selling OS X stuff so I am definitely going to have to go check them out. If this allows me to standardize on apps between Linux and OS X then I will be a happy man. Also if I get a good QuickBooks alternative (Lord, I hate how they nickle & dime you to death for simple stuff like emailing invoices to your clients) I would be able to permanently power down my sole remaining Windows box.
META: What does it do? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:META: What does it do? (Score:1)
FWIW, Kapital is a personal finance manager. Aethera is PIM/groupware.
Re:META: What does it do? (Score:2, Troll)
"...and you probably don't care anyway. So why post?" Absolutely untrue. There are thousands of topics that interest me, that I haven't had time to investigate. Basic communication skills are about supplying the extra three words that bridge that gap.
"FWIW, Kapital is a personal finance manager. Aethera is PIM/groupware." Bueno-- you got it now.
Re:META: What does it do? (Score:2)
Re:META: What does it do? (Score:2)
Let's analyse it in terms of economics:
X% of Slashdot readers know what the names refer to. So (100-X)% don't. The X% that do can immediately decide if they want to click for more info. The (100-X)% have no way to decide, because all they see are the names, not what the packages do.
So you're suggesting each one of those (100-X)% of Slashdotters visit Google (or click the links themselves, of course) to discover whether or not the topic is even of interest to them. I'm suggesting the blurb-authors add three words to each blurb to save those (100-X)% the effort.
QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connector!! (Score:3, Interesting)
The number one most useful product they could offer OS X users right now is a port of the Connector [ximian.com]!
Microsoft has stonewalled on delivering a native Exchange client for Mac OS X. In fact, according to a recent posting on Macintouch [macintouch.com] (scroll down to the second or third message), their official recommendation is that you set up a separate PC and use the new Remote Desktop client [microsoft.com] to access it!
Here at NIH, we want to move to OS X soon but the lack of a native Outlook client is really going to hurt us. If Evolution+Connector were available instead, we would likely take a serious look at spending some serious money on it.
Re:QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connecto (Score:1)
Not much of a difference here, it's companies trying to push their own propreitary products (wether it be windows or mac hardware/software)
Re:QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connecto (Score:1)
um,
Apple's iPod site [apple.com]: Pod for Windows
Good news for the millions of Windows users who own PCs with built-in FireWire (also known as i.LINK and IEEE1394): In response to insistent demand from PC users, the world's best MP3 player now does Windows. iPod fully integrated with the award-winning PC media player -- MUSICMATCH Jukebox Plus(TM). So every song you add or playlist you create will automatically transfer to your iPod.
Go troll somewhere else with your "mac in the color of your choice" comments.
-- james
Re:QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connecto (Score:1)
Claiming my post is a troll though is pretty pathetic, the other points I mentioned still stand.
Re:QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connecto (Score:1, Informative)
Nice idea, wrong company. Maybe you didn't notice, but Shawn Gordon works for TheKompany, not Ximian.
Re:QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connecto (Score:1)
mod the Coward up.
I wonder why Ximian does not do any cross platform software. I guess they are more of a consultancey than a retail business and they seem to be doing well enough at it.
Maybe with the move to gtk2 they and other linux only projects will start to do both Gnome2 and GTK2 builds and offer applications for more platforms. (more likely is that people will just get Gnome to run on more platforms).
Re:QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connecto (Score:1)
A Long Hard Road (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A Long Hard Road (Score:2)
Can you say LSB?
Not enough (Score:2)
Re:A Long Hard Road (Score:2)
Pbur
Re:A Long Hard Road (Score:1)
Debian spends a great deal of time getting packages on GNU/Linux to work well. This results in better tar balls which result in better rpms.
RedHat spends a great deal of time getting specific kernals to be very robust. This feeds into Mandrake directly and others indirectly.
Mandrake worked hard on unifying interfaces (like getting the same menus to work) which has migrated to most distributions. They also help with KDE.
I don't see forking I see choice. Supporting so many distributions is hard for software, NQA but this isn't 80's style forking. After all we all agree that "porting" between different versions of Linux is almost always at worst changes to the make files not changes to the C files.
Blackadder (Score:2)
Desktop Linux Viability Study (Score:1, Informative)
Made money? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Made money? (Score:1)
So why would they lie about profits?
Aethera Screenshots... (Score:1)
Re:Aethera Screenshots... (Score:2, Insightful)
The other way we differ is that we didn't set out to make an Outlook clone, as a matter of fact the UI designer has never even seen Outlook.
That's great and all. But how can you be a decent UI designer if you have never seen some of the best examples of User Interfaces. Despite not wanting to make a clone of Outlook, there are wonderful UI elements MS created for Outlook and MS Office in general.
You can't just read a book to develop excellent User Interfaces. You have to experience what is out there and build on that with your own and other's insight.
Re:Aethera Screenshots... (Score:2)
Re:Aethera Screenshots... (Score:1)
Re:Aethera Screenshots... (Score:1)
Re:Aethera Screenshots... (Score:1)
Re:Aethera Screenshots... (Score:2)
Geek uniform? (Score:1)
Re:Geek uniform? (Score:1)
Re:Geek uniform? (Score:1)
Re:Geek uniform? (Score:3, Funny)
You can eat pizza but you can't shave while sat at your keyboard staring at the screen.
Offtopic: Grammar of this post. (Score:1)
I think it should be "how the embedded Linux market was a surprisingly financial success for them" maybe the author intended: "how the embedded Linux market was surprisingly financially successful for them". The latter just doesn't seem fluent.
"... desktop-oriented company actually made real money from Linux this year!" I think it should be "real money with Linux this year".
Aethera UI designer has never seen Outlook ! (Score:2, Interesting)
He is talking about Aethera, and comparing it to Ximian's Evolution. It really strikes me that their User Interface designer has never seen Outlook, the most used email client. He should IMHO. I heartly agree on not having to clone Outlook, but you need to take a look at what people are used to, just as a reference. And a lot of the potential users of Aethera are now using Outlook.
That said, I should probably add that I have never seen Outlook myself but I am not a UI designer for an email client ;-)
Re:Aethera UI designer has never seen Outlook ! (Score:1)
maybe it will be usable for newbies, but if your target market is former outlook users (which they certainly are in Ximians case) then is a really bad idea not to have even looked at it.
From my very limited use i hated the inteface to Outlook but it might have done a few clever things and if you study it carefully at least you can learn from their mistakes.
But what do i know, i am not PIM user and am not likely to change my ways anytime soon.
Windows Aethera? (Score:2)
So does he mean 'will' as in 'in the future' or 'it will run today' on Windows? Native version, or this one of those 'install Cygwin' things?
Re:Windows Aethera? (Score:1)
for some reason QT sucks ass, sucks donkey balls, sucks great big rocks through a hose on windows 95,98,ME.
Kivio hardley runs for a few seconds before it crashes.
Hopefully Trolltech have fixed the problem by now
Re:Windows Aethera? (Score:1)
Enough with the K's... (Score:1)
Enough spelling things wrong. It's not cool. It just looks stupid.
Almost open-source is not open-source... (Score:2)
I tried to make a FreeBSD port of Aethera, and discovered, it is impossible.
The Aethera's supposedly source tarball comes with a few binary libraries. At least one of them, according to the Kompany, is not "open-sourced". Since the binaries available are only for Linux/x86, all other platforms are left out...
Aethera doesn't do IMAP (Score:2)
This much-lauded email/PIM thing is about to become 1.0 - still mostly aimed at geeks - and doesn't support IMAP? I don't get it.