David Faure Interview

[vmlinuz] writes: "Linux UK has got an interview with one of the key KDE developers - David Faure. Interesting reading, particularly with all the press that KDE/Debian is getting."

Is this different from Microsoft?

Oooh, this is going to cost me karma as trolling, but...

How is this all-inclusive, single-source applications/OS environment any different than, say, Windows and Office?

I know, I know: it's not monopolistic, you are able to run other GUIs, it isn't tied into the OS, etcetera.

On the other hand, there are a *LOT* of Linux supporters who really get off on flaming Microsoft for packaging Office with Windows, for the way Office buggers with the GUI, for their scripting support, for bloatware, and so on.

All accusations that could be made toward KDE, and probably Gnome. Like, when Linux finally rules the common man's desktop, is an installation package that by default installs KDE and KOffice really any different than what MS does? Isn't there a parallel with Office's non-standard dialogs and widgets, and KDE's different-from-other-GUIs dialogs and widgets (there being a complete lack of standard for Linux GUIs)? Is KDE scripting going to be any less a security risk than VBA? Isn't X-Windows+KDE+KOffice not abhorrently oversized, just like Office?

Yes, I'm fully aware that it's a different situation... but not so different that it's not more than a little ironic that what KDE is praised for, MS is condemned for.

Ouch.


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Thinking right about KDE2.0

I've noticed several wrong impressions of KDE2.0 here. First of all, throw out all notions of KDE1.1 and whatever you think of it. Secondly, go download Konfucious (the 1.9 beta) from the KDE site. Here's what's different:

• QT2.1x is a different beast than QT1.x or even QT2.0. It's faster, more stable, and less ugly. The theming support is great. It's just a more capable toolkit.
  
• KDE is now structured differently. There is no more kpanel (RIP). It's been replaced with kicker. There is no more kfm. Half of its functionality was inhereited by kdesktop (which puts icons on the desktop and sets the background), and the other half by konqueror.
  
• Konqueror is not just a file manager. It's a file viewer, as well as a file viewer for the network. The combination of these two functionalities means that it's also a web browser, but it does other cool things like embed a KOffice part to be a KOffice file viewer.
  
• KDE is no longer just a library that you need to run. While there are kde libraries, there is also a dcop server that handles interconnections between programs. Running a KDE2.0 program requires you to have an active instance of the dcop server, or else the application will bomb.
  
• The KParts technology is a beautiful thing. While it may be superficially similar to M$ technology, in reality it's much more cleaner and useful. Microsoft's technology starts to look like a horrible kludge compared to the elegance of KDE2.0. KDE2.0 also implements enough of the M$-like ideas (KOM, etc.) that major commercial ports of traditionally windows-centric applications (e.g. project Kylix) can start to happen.
  
• KDE2.0 does not look anything like KDE1.1. KDE1.1 may have looked like the illegitimate offspring of CDE and Win 9x, but KDE2.0 has an elagance of its own, particuarly with the System theme, though you can theme it any way you want.
  
• Best of all, it's modular, so you can replace any single component with another and have it work fine.
  

Re:Is this different from Microsoft?

Oooh, this is going to cost me karma as trolling, but...

How is this all-inclusive, single-source applications/OS environment any different than, say, Windows and Office?

You may be surprised at how much support you get. Disclaimer: I *use* KDE every day and I think it's great. I use lots of KDE mainline applications and lots of what I'd have to call "3rd party" applications. (though I probably use even more Gnome/GTK applications, running them from the KDE desktop.)

I have some experience compiling KDE out of CVS, have done a small amount of KDE/QT development and have participated in the KDE mailing list. My intention was to become a regular KDE contributor.

This was short lived, however, as I quickly found that the KDE mailing list, was being run as a sort of private fiefdom by this same David Faure. Any comments of the form "KDE mainline applications development should be opened up to more developers" i.e., not just be restricted to the main CVS tree, were met extremely aggressively. I didn't want to press the point because I thought "maybe he's right" and all the core applications *do* have to be tightly controlled by the core developers in order to have the highest possible quality.

But now, 6 months later, I know he's wrong. KDE development has slowed down *a lot*, and especially KDE core applications development. I've been putting up with the same bugs in kmail for almost a year now - it hasn't changed a bit, because kmail development has been inextricably bound into the main KDE CVS tree, and it's all oriented towards KDE 2 now. So if you're not compiling out of CVS, you're out of luck. The bottom line is that KDE users have to wait and wait and wait for bug fixes.

Now, I'm a developer and I should just be able to download the code, make the fixes and send them in. But in the case of kmail, you have to download practically the whole tree, and let me tell you, it isn't that easy to get it to build. I would have done that anyway, except for the agressive reception I got on the KDE mailing list. Anyway, I'd still have a problem with it, because suppose I put in a bunch of great features - It would still be months and months before anybody gets to use them, because they have to wait for the official release of KDE 2. One of the reasons developers develop for free is to see their stuff get used *immediately*, and this just doesn't happen with KDE development.

I did what open-source developers are famous for doing - I moved on to other projects that are more to my taste (e.g., Freenet [sourceforge.net]!!). Now, I'm not bitter - why should I be, I'm still getting KDE for free and it's still darn good - but I am concerned that a certain prima-donna mentality is hurting the KDE development, and because of that, hurting the entire open-source movement. I wonder how much of this is due to the fact that some fulltime, paid developers (Faure is one) don't feel compelled to play by the traditional, unspoken rules of the community. OK, I've said my piece, and I'm posting this without my +1 bonus because I'm not sure whether this is a flame or a troll or constructive criticism.
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Re:Is this different from Microsoft?

I am very sorry to hear that :(
You wish that KDE core applications were developed out of CVS ? With the changes that happen in kdelibs quite often - to build a better API, and because of all the new stuff in KDE 2.0 (KParts, DCOP, XMLGUI, etc.) - this is almost impossible. What you gain from having apps in CVS is that they can be fixed by many people, especially those who change kdelibs.
Out of CVS, it's up to the author to fix his app to cope with the changes, and _that_ can be piss him off a lot, obviously. This is not about "controlling", this is effectively about helping....

To answer the more personal comments, KDE is definitely nobody's fiefdom. My answer (which I can't remember) may have sounded not nice and I apologize for that, but the idea of developing core apps out of CVS really doesn't make much sense. You want to "open more" the development by making it private ? About KDE 2 apps that are not in CVS : from 1.91 onwards, they should be able to compile and run on top of KDE. The API shouldn't change anymore. No need to wait for the official 2.0. Finally, I'm not a paid fulltime developer... yet.

Re:Is this different from Microsoft?

To answer your question:

Not everyone thinks the same way as the usual /. crowd about these technologies. I happen to believe that Microsoft had (I'm not going to argue over whether they thought of them first) quite a few good ideas about integration of components, COM, ActiveX, scripting, but horribly botched the implementation (as always).

What the KDE project is the vision of a true integrated desktop in a clean, non-bloated implementation. I've run KDE1.89 and 1.9, as well as from CVS on a variety of systems, and it never seemed slow or bloated. Instead, it was clean and easy to use. I enjoyed using it because of the integration, unlike Windows where I hate using it because of the botched implementation.

To put it simply, KDE2.0 is the ideas of integration and usability done right. It's a different beast than KDE1.1. KDE2.0 is actually more usable than windows, and easier to program, while implementing the ideas that Microsoft used.

Re:Why make kde specific apps?

but wouldn't the Linux/UNIX community be better served if these apps ran in any X windows environment?

They do. Let's take your questions one by one:

What is I want to use an app while I'm at my Solaris machine, or at an NT machine?

Well, you can run KDE on BSD, Solaris and quite a few other OSes. NT is not included - nobody has really expressed an interest, but I'm not sure how large the technical hurdles would be. That means running native on the system (Note that it's periodically broken for OSes other than the core developers during alpha/beta testing. The core devels use Linux, BSD and something else I can't remember, but might be Solaris).

What if I'm enamored with an older windowmanager?

Use it. KWM is nice, and has *quite* a few new features, many of which are integrated into KDE, but are not necessary. I've run KDE 1.x with E with no problem, and 2.0 is supposed to work (dunno what features you lose, though. Themeability woul be my first guess).

What if I have a hacked i-opener and I don't want to run kde on it?

X Windows is network transparent. There are a handful of NFS and "running apps remotely" bugs that cross the lists. They are addressed as valid concerns, so I would imagine that they will be addressed. The lightweight KDE communication mechanism DCOP (used instead of Corba where appropriate, although Corba is still used where *it* makes more sense (like the multimedia subsystem)) operates over a X Windows standard communication system. To quote the developer site: "DCOP is built on top of the Inter Client Exchange (ICE) protocol, which comes standard as a part of X11R6 and later."

In short, it is an X system that is portable to many platforms. Some of this I've verified myself, the rest I know from the mailing lists, where KDE 2.0 beta is already in use.

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Evan

Re:Interesting point.

No, I disagree. The scripting system should not be crippled. We should look specifically at how ILOVEYOU (and Melissa et al) worked.

First, it was stupid users, apparently. I've heard that MS Outlook will automatically run the script if the e-mail is viewed in the preview panel; I've heard some Outlook users say that that's false. I've used Outlook all of about twice in my life, so I can't say. If the script is run automatically from the preview panel, then I would say that's bad engineering (and hence bad Microsoft), but it sounds like they've at least fixed the problem.

There's also the question as to whether scripts should be executed automatically by default (e.g. when you double-click or otherwise "activate" them). Personally, I don't care. Turn it off by default, sure, sounds good.

Most importantly, though, I think the users need more control over their scripting. This is one area where KDE and Gnome have been falling down (gently). By far the most annoying thing about Windows and MacOS is that the user has almost no control, either over the OS or the applications. A few years ago I would have almost literally killed for the ability to put some scripting into Netscape that said "yes, Mr. Javascript, you can open a new window, but not when I am viewing a page from Geocities". You can argue that I could have just disabled Javascript (which I did), or made something similar to Junkbuster which would automatically parse and change all Javascript, thereby eliminating the pop-up windows (hah!), but this would have been such a nice solution.

So anyway, back on topic. I think the user should be able to do some metascripting, scripting exactly how the script should behave in certain situations. This is not the same as clicking checkboxes (especially vague ones like "Run untrusted scripts"); I want some actual *control*. If KDE (and Gnome, but they're not important in this article) do not do this, then they're just going to end up as Yet Another Inferior MacOS. I think it's time for Something Actually Different From MacOS.