Slashback: Humility, Patents. Vapor.com 598
Realism in the midst of hubris. An anonymous reader writes "In a disconcerting e-mail on an interoperability thread Miguel de Icaza affirms that Gnome, is in fact, lagging behind KDE. As stated in the e-mail 'At this point we are not fatally loosing a race for adoption, and a race to see our baby and our work be used by millions, but we are lagging behind. In this area, I agree with Jeff, I personally (because of the emotional component described before), would like to see more work be done on the Gnome desktop and less on replicating infrastructure.'"
More on the ideas that Apple owns. Turquoise Hexagon Sun writes "In a followup to yesterday's 'garbage patent' article, John Kheit has written an interesting piece on software patents where he goes into the history of software patents and the difference between utility and design patents."
Sick of this yet? Speaking of patents, An anonymous reader draws your attention to a point unmentioned in yesterday's book review: "The article Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ gives an excellent introduction to AOP. However, neither the author nor the AspectJ website discloses that AOP is patented (US Patent #6,467,086). It is certainly beneficial to the programming community if the patent holders can clarify the purpose of the patent."
Shipping beats small and / or light. jcarr writes "Seems Lindows can't ship the portables it advertised. I ordered one from GearZoo the day it was reported. The CEO of GearZoo sent the attached email about it. Sounds like an opportunity for another manufacturer.
Dear Customer,Because of recent licensing issues with Lindows.com, our supplier is unable to ship us any Lindows Mobile PC's. Thus, we are unable to fulfill your order for this product. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We would, however, like to offer you the eNote Travel Lite notebook for purchase. The Travel Lite has similar specifications to the Lindows Mobile PC, and comes installed with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition for only $879. You can also purchase the eNote without an operating system installed for only $789. The $10.00 discount I emailed you earlier would also apply to this purchase as well.
We are receiving a shipment of the Travel Lites later this week, and will be shipping them out to customers next week. We will also have the Travel Lite product information up on our Web site on Tuesday, March 4. Please let us know if you would like to replace your Lindows Mobile PC order with an eNote Travel Lite. If you decide to cancel your original order, then please let us know and we will process your request immediately.
Once again, our sincere apologies. We look forward to hearing back from you regarding your order.'"
I'd much rather read Salon than watch the Big Dig get dug. x_man writes "According to Salon, thousands of people have rallied behind the online publication and purchased subscriptions for themselves or their friends."
Lose/Loose? (Score:5, Funny)
Has anyone done a study as to why people who program computers cannot correctly conjugate "to lose"? It really interests me!
Re:Lose/Loose? (Score:5, Funny)
Butt its amazing how many people they're our who don't no how to use the write homophone.
Seriously though, it's not just computer geeks. Most "educated" people in the US don't have adult level grammar skills. My 10th grade English teacher frequently told me that I did "real real good" on tests. (Three words, four grammatical errors, that has to be a record).
Re:Lose/Loose? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lose/Loose? (Score:3, Funny)
Eye halve a spelling chequer,
it came with my pee see.
It plainly marques fore my revue,
missed aches eye ken knot sea.
Re:Lose/Loose? (Score:4, Funny)
The same reason English majors can't find the "any" key? And keep breaking the "cup holder"?
Re:Lose/Loose? (Score:2)
Re:Lose/Loose? (Score:2)
Re:Lose/Loose? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm one of the best spellers I know ("grammar fascist" and all that), and I think almost completely visually. I get along better with drawings and diagrams. I can look at a word and automatically match it with things I've seen before - or not, and then I know it's a misspelling. On the downside, I can hardly remember a person's name unless I see it written down. I can't take vocal driving directions very well at all. (I insist that people tell me to turn north or south rather than left or right - so I can visualize it better with an imagined top-down view.)
My bad-spelling friend, however, remembers names extremely well, recites driving directions perfectly after hearing them once (and can follow them), and can understand new concepts easily without using pictures. (I envy him about that last one.)
It was a big shock when we first figured it out. I had always thought people remembered how to spell the names of library functions by how they looked when they first read them...
Re:Flamebait aside, he has a point. (Score:3, Interesting)
Please note: (Score:2)
Re:Please note: (Score:2)
Re:Please note: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Please note: (Score:2)
Re:Please note: (Score:2)
Apple's trashcan patent (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple's trashcan patent (Score:3, Funny)
Have a good day.
Wow (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Troll)
Thats like saying, how many
Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sigh. (Score:2)
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Qt is under the GPL. GTK+ is under the LGPL. This is important to me in my "commerical software developer" mode. If a Linux desktop is to succeed in the long run, it must allow third party developers to create applications for the desktop. It actually costs more to use Qt in a closed source app then it does to write a closed source app for Windows -- including the OS costs.
Thats $1,079 [microsoft.com] for Visual Studio Professional and $299 for Windows XP Professional [microsoft.com], coming to a total of $1378 for both the operating system and the complete Visual Studio Professional toolset. Qt costs $1550 [trolltech.com] for the developer kit. (That price is only to develop Qt/X11 apps - you do not get portability to Windows and Mac for that price. All three costs $3100 for a single developer.)
So, total cost to develop a GUI application for Windows: $1378. Total cost to develop a GUI application for KDE: $1550 + cost of OS. Cost to develop GTK+ applications: $0 for development kit, which comes with most Linux distributions. All prices come with no vendor support.
So - as a commerical software developer - which platform is the easiest to deal with? I don't know, actually. It depends on the documentation - MS documentation is (mostly) complete, if not totally accurate. I've only tried programming for GTK+ before, and unless things have changed with the 2.2 release since the 1.2 release, the documentation, while there, is very difficult to understand. I would hope that Trolltech's documentation is better, but I don't know...
While most (vocal) Slashdotters seem to be against the idea of closed source applications "poluting" the open sourceity of their desktop (except where games are concerned...), for Linux to actually be even a potential platform for users to use instead of Windows, the cost for the development tools for clsoed source authors must be far lower than the Windows tools. Closed source developers "know" how to write software for Windows. Why pay $1550 to develop for what is basically an unknown?
Also don't forget that the prices listed are for one user - MS and Qt offer bulk licensing, but even $1000 x 5 is still more than $80 x 5 (assuming $76 for the distro + $1 x 4 for CD-R copies of said distro). Don't forget what Stve Balmer said: "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"
He may have looked like a retarded monkey while saying it (and can someone please buy that man some anti-persperant?), but he has a point - without developer backing, a desktop cannot succeed. If developers will create software for your desktop, it will help increase the potential userbase of the desktop. Gtk+ is a much cheaper platform to develop for, simply because of its licensing.
That is my concern with KDE's licensing - that KDE may be forcing the larger developer community away through its use of Qt. Although feel free to prove me wrong :)
Cross-platform is the key (Score:3, Insightful)
That is my concern with KDE's licensing - that KDE may be forcing the larger developer community away through its use of Qt. Although feel free to prove me wrong :)
Ok, imagine you're a commercial software developer. Right now you're employing 8 developers on $60000 a year. 5 of those are working on the main Windows version of your app, written in MFC, the other 3 are keeping your Mac port up-to-date. You spend $1000 per developer per year keeping their tools current.
Total development cost - $488000 per year
You decide you want a Linux port as well, you think the market is ready for it. You take on another 3 developers to do the port. They start porting the app using gtkmm as your toolkit - there's no way in hell you're going to redevelop your apps in C. It's quite easy to port from MFC, and you find that once you port you're a little more productive using gtkmm than MFC. However, you continue to develop the MFC version as your main version, because gtkmm is not acceptable to you under Windows or MacOS. You aren't paying for your Linux developer tools, but you're still paying $1000 per year for tools for your Windows and Mac developers.
Total development cost - $668000 per year
You try a different tack. You use Qt. You dump the 3 developers doing the Mac port, and the 3 developers doing the Linux port because you don't need them any more. The same source tree that produces your Windows app produces perfectly-functioning and native-looking Mac and Linux apps with nothing more than a recompile. It's a fairly short rewrite from MFC to Qt, and once your developers get used to it, they're a little more productive than with MFC. You spend $3000 per developer per year keeping their tools up to date.
Total development cost - $315000 per year
Tell me again why commercial developers shouldn't like Qt? It's a little more capital outlay to begin with, but it gives you essentially free ports to the other two important OSes. GTK's a long way from being able to do that acceptably. GTK/gtkmm is a fine option if you are intending to develop commercially only for Unix/X11, but how many developers do you know who are willing to do that?
P.S. Where can you buy support contracts for GTK+ and gtkmm, and how much do they cost?
Don't, you'll get posted on Slashdot! (Score:3, Interesting)
The follow-up thread... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope your mail won't land on Slashdot or some other web site. Slashdot (= shorthand for all similar sites) is the most evil influence possible if we really want to do what it takes for Linux (or UNIX) to succeed on the desktop.
I would tend to agree with his assessment. Unfortunately the submitter either didn't read the thread or chose to ignore it...
Re:The follow-up thread... (Score:2)
Criticism of Slashdot is not tolerated around... um... Slashdot.
Re:The follow-up thread... (Score:5, Funny)
The first rule of Slashdot is... DO NOT TALK ABOUT SLASHDOT.
The second rule of Slashdot is... DO NOT TALK ABOUT SLASHDOT.
Re:The follow-up thread... (Score:5, Interesting)
do you have any evidence of slashdot editors editing news story text to alter the spin on it, or are you just playing the role of tin foil hat boy?
My initial assumption is that very little editing goes on (considering the number of times in the past anchor tags have had no closing doublequote on the url..) but in the interests of not eating my foot for dinner I'll grant the benefit of the doubt and let you substantiate your insinuations.
Re:The follow-up thread... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, some people have theorized that the "editors" mix and match similar submissions (which I'm sure they get all the time) and then present them as what was originally submitted. Some stories certainly look that way. For example, disjointed sentences or different writing styles from one paragraph to the next. Is that evil? No. Censorship? Nope. A bad idea? Yep. You DO NOT mess with the submissions. They screw up enough already by adding their "editorial" bylines at the end (which usually are there just to fan the flames).
Evidence? I have none. But you can always chuck it to the submitter if you feel insulted by my "insinuations" about Slashdot.
Ohh, Why! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ohh, Why! (Score:4, Funny)
After a quick meeting of the lawyers, Microsoft also obtained copyrights on: "blows", "doze", and "d'ohs".
Code replication (Score:5, Interesting)
I know they're working together, some interesting things in Freedesktop [freedesktop.org], but there are some other things were they could push all OSes too, like the VFS madness. I guess some global trick would be better than the two application level tricks we have now. It would be nice even if this can be pushed to a really more low level place, using user space, network loop or library preload, and I gues I miss one or two more ways.
They're all tricks, but would save time, and the best ways would end being part of "Unix". There are current efforts already, even old, but they need the love and more spread usage, no more bashing, they are as "bad" as the kioslaves or gnome-vfs ideas. I believe MacOSX has WebDAV as the kernel level, so all your apps can use it. You can search for AVFS, Podfuck or LUFS and try yourself.
They, KDE, GNOME and others, are doing lots of things different to typical Unix, and creating new things and standards, so the excuse of this being a change is contradictory with other decissions. It's the time to make new things in the OSS/Free front, right? Full network transarency for all your apps in your machine would be a new thing, at least when talking about lots of people and not just concept operating systems or isolated tests.
Salon and math (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't they wake up and understand that it is time to stop the hemorrhaging?
Re:Salon and math (Score:2)
Re:Salon and math (Score:3, Insightful)
How big of a place costs $200000 per month!? My house cost less than that. It probably goes to cover some really swanky place in the heart of SF or another expensive city. Why? They're an internet magazine. Put the servers in the middle of Nebraska, where rent is cheap, and let all your people telecommute.
Salon is a pretty good magazine with good articles most of the time, but it's not half-a-million a month in expenses good.
Re:Salon and math (Score:4, Informative)
jf
Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:5, Interesting)
Notice that the first one is something that I suggest might be fixed by `jhbuild' or any of the other programs.
And the last one is not the end of the world (as Havoc points out in his reply, Konqueror is confusing to newcomers as well).
It is not the end of the world, because MacOS X people do not seem to have a problem distinguishing file management from web browsing.
Using my e-mail as proof of lagging is not a proof of a very strong point really. Considering I spend most of my time writing Mono [go-mono.com] code, and gloating over how fast [go-mono.com] I can build applications with Gtk# [sf.net] is (I love Gtk#, Pango [pango.org] and all the new and lovely platform in Gnome 2.2 which we get to use with extreme efficiency from C# now).
Btw, my latest toy, 300 lines of C# code, a new list-widget for say a mail program, like maybe, say, evolution: here [ximian.com].
The beauty: it took me four hours to write the whole widget, and it takes a fraction of a second to load and render 10,000 messages from my Inbox.
Mono, Gnome and Gtk# are a very powerful platform.
Love,
Miguel.
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:5, Interesting)
I can look into Lindows green tinted windows from my office next door. The company I admin is as much an all Linux shop as you get these days. But still there are events that happen every day that make give me wonder and amazement at how far Linux has come.
I just recently met a VP of a company that makes over 10M revenue a year. I just found out last night that it uses Mono in a crucial role in its production environment. Actually the first company I've heard of at all that uses Mono in a production environment. According to the VP, they'd use Mono exclusively if it had forms support.
This may not be news to you or anyone else, but I never really considered it was being taken that seriously. I find the news rather encouraging. I really don't see a lapse in Gnome or KDE.
--------------
OnRoad [onlawn.net]: More power!
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
* Configurability - Gnome to me seems to be getting very unconfigurable, and it's configuration has been likened to the windows registry. Is this really Gnome's direction? I find that very disturbing, as customisability and options are an integral part of my Linux experience. I would not be happy with winning over the desktop with Gnome if it meant sacrificing this. I can't help but feel there's some solution to this question, such as hidden options or something.
* Licensing - the fact that Trolltech controls the licensing for any commercial apps I find very disturbing also. I don't think that kind of power should be in the hands of a company - it should be in the hands of the community, or open to all (LGPL). I think the advantage is that it provides a little incentive to produce opensource apps, but I still don't like it. This parts not really a question I suppose
* I haven't done much kde programming, and no gnome programming. Qt and dcop feel very clean and powerful, integrated. Gnome doesn't have the same feel, but this is just a conception on my behalf. What is Gnome like? Kde has kparts, kioslave, etc, which to me seem to make sense. Does Gnome have sensible behind the scenes operations that make sense? I really am ignorant and I don't know what to read to find out.
Ultimately the licensing is enough to turn me off KDE, but everything else seems to be so integrated, powerful, and moving places. I can configure every option I want, upcoming versions are going to have VIM integrated into stuff such as the kmail application, etc. I have no idea where Gnome stands but it seems to be removing all power.
I used to be a Gnome man as far as desktop choice went, but I've recently come to KDE. I would change again - I have major concerns for me with both platforms. I'm hoping maybe you can provide me with some ansers, or useful URL's?
And that list-widget looks pretty nice
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:3, Informative)
It is `registry like' in that there is a unified place where you can make changes, and there is a notification system, but unlike the Windows registry the data is not stored in a single binary file, but in a set of separate XML files (in the default shipment, you could write your SQL-based provider if you want).
Gnome has equivalent components: Bonobo for components, CORBA for RPC, Gnome-VFS for an IO-abstraction and so on.
Anyways, read the quote from Havoc in the main thread, it is I think a very good overview of where GNOME stands today. And all of our libraries are LGPL, which is good as you point out.
Miguel.
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:5, Informative)
But they don't! Go reread the licenses! If you wish to write a proprietary application, you can purchase a license to do so, and license it any damn way you want. If you don't want to pay a fee, then you don't have to and still get a choice of several dozen licenses to use.
The GPL is not as free as the LGPL. I've been saying this for years. But when I say it out of context of Qt versus GTK+, I am shouted down. When GNU releases all of their libraries under the LGPL, then, and only then, will GNOME developers (which operate under the aegis of GNU) have the moral authority to complain about Trolltech's use of the GPL. GNU can't have it both ways and expect people to take them seriously in issue of morality.
p.s. Unlike Miguel's memo, there is no "royalty". It's a per developer license to write proprietary apps.
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
The Qt licensing scheme looks like this:
It's free software if you write free software
It's open source if you write open source
It's closed source if you write closed source
It's proprietary if your write proprietary
How much more fair can you get!!!
But let me quote Richard Stallman, the leader of the organization to which GNOME belongs:
"we are now seeking more libraries to release under the ordinary GPL."
"We free software developers should support one another. By releasing libraries that are limited to free software only, we can help each other's free software packages outdo the proprietary alternatives. The whole free software movement will have more popularity, because free software as a whole will stack up better against the competition."
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't understand that you aren't worried about the software patents Microsoft have on the technology. I wouldn't dare using Mono, simply because of that fact. If Mono gets too popular for Microsoft to like, then I find it likely they'll use their patents against Mono.
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, is this because Mac OS X doesn't have a combination web browser/file manager that users could find confusing? Why do both Gnome and KDE think they should imitate Microsoft on this retarded idea?
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:3, Informative)
* Easy path: gives best desktop integration, but can not emulate 100% correctly Windows.Forms: wrapping Gtk# (you will see this on the Gtk Windows.Forms namespace).
* Hard path: fully compliant Windows.Form binding, using Winelib to implement the Windows.Form event model and allowing for P/Invoking into native code.
Both paths are being pursued by two different teams, but I am sure they could use more contributors.
Miguel.
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:5, Informative)
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/gtk-sha
Miguel.
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:5, Informative)
Let me explain to you:
I can not comment on the other parts, because, for the most part they are entirely peripheral. As I said before, I am involved in another project that I believe stronly in. And I get to choose what I get to work on. If you are unhappy with what I do, and would like to see more work on Gnome, now is your chance to step up and contribute.
Gnome is usable for anyday users. In fact, GNOME the desktop of Linex [linex.org] just received a prize for best end-user distribution (see the news on barrapunto.com). Linex is being used by non-computer savy people on Extremadura, Spain. A very large deployment. See the coverage that the Washington Post did on it.
Love,
Miguel.
Miguel.
Re:Gnome Lagging Behind KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you for clearing up the BONOBO and CORBA issue but seriously how should I know when there are no documentations about the GNOME core components on developer.gnome.org ? It's nice and good to see that you know about it but how do you manage to make others know as well ?
Yes I feel sad about GNOME and yes I did contribute my spare capabilities to GNOME but it doesn't fruit into the changes I like to see. E.g. My contributions didn't made GConf disappear. My contributions didn't gave my correct button order back. And last but not least how do you think I should contribute to GNOME when only the minority of Libraries and Functioncalls are being explained and documented ?
- Api references are incomplete,
- Programmer documentations is NOT existing,
- No documentation about Bonobo, Corba
I mean I feel good for you if YOU know all about this and the few people such as Michael Meeks, Havoc Pennington and maybe a handful others know about that because they learned from each other but seriously how do you expect outstanding people who may get interested into your initial project to seriously contribute to it with new applications when everything is missing.
I recently started some applications for GNOME just to find out some weeks later that many Functions which I used are deprecated. I spent weeks into them to figure out what means they have and how they should be used only to see from one day to another that this is not the common correct way to do it.
Sorry my friend but you don't get me sold with your reply as much I appreciate getting it.
KDE (as you where on the #kde channel on your own for a couple of weeks) is far more mature and better, disciplined maintained than GNOME, people there work in teams together, people there have real people working on unifying the Desktop, people who correct layout widgets to show up pixelexact etc.) all this don't happen in GNOME and everything is really messy right now. Not really pleasing for new people to contribute to it. As somone some days ago wrote correctly. People like to use a Mature desktop TODAY and not in the future. GNOME definately has some advantages for bringing up many things first and I also honour the developers for trying the best but that's almost all then. It stays a technological experiment that never makes it out of development state and mature into something stable, clean, esthetical, good, pleasing.
You are again an illusionist if you think that the word GNOME and the name Miguel de Icaza stands for quality and the right path of the Desktop for Linux. Do you think and still belive this ? KDE aren't sleeping.
- They offer the most consistent and best integrated Desktop. Still some edges and glitches but they are getting towards it. 3.1 is nearly professional and perfect and 3.2 will be well really competetive to WindowsXP while GNOME didn't made it to Windows 3.11 level.
- They are able to work in teams and make some really cool decisions and well think what they are doing. Like not blindly adapting every technological experiment. They are working towards an unified and perfect usable Desktop. They even have a crew of people who only work on their UI stuff by tweaking and esthetical layouting widgets in a Form correclty by changing the *.ui files not like in GNOME where we deal with hardcoded GUI, GLADE and BONOBO-UI xml files.
- They have choosen to program their whole desktop in C++ ONLY but this doesn't mean that other languages are not welcome. They simply decided to use one language across the whole core desktop. Not like in GNOME mixed up C, C++, Python, Perl and soon C# MONO. Why did you choose to write Mono. I recall your messages some years back where you wrote and even you realized that C won't get the speed into rapid application development. Dude I bet you will become hard times with Mono becoming part of GNOME because you need to deal with the resisting GNOME developers first.
- Look I don't want to held you responsible for the blaming failure of GNOME. Since you are a single person but I blame you for not making clear borders and have your helpers more strict in the way they code. The people who work on GNOME these days are still the same hackers than for 5-6 years when the project started, they still hack on it the same way as it was. You need to make these people understand that the terms has changed. They are not hacking on their little baby anymore, they are DEVELOPING a serious desktop which should please many people. Somehow GNOME 2.x horrible failed this target, that's (and you need to agree here) people wander off to KDE. You can verify this movement by watching on all kind of unbiassed places where people may be able to vote their favorite desktop. And the ratio is usually 3-4 times more people prefering KDE than GNOME.
By the way I'm sitting in the #gnome channel for the past couple of years following GNOME with every step so I'm in a good position to make this justification I just made.
Regards.
Lindows laptop was no great deal anyway (Score:2)
It seems odd to me that it was getting any press at all. Underpowered and overpriced would be apt descriptions. The only thing going for it would be the weight, but that is a high price to pay for all the things your money didn't get you such as a CDROM even.
Great news! (Score:5, Insightful)
GNOME license (Score:3, Interesting)
license-wise (Red Hat and Sun seem to be concerned about *this* particular issue).
Considering why GNOME started, isn't it ironic that now KDE/Qt (GPL) is _too_ free for the GNOME partisans who became so addicted to corporate bucks they changed their license to LGPL?
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course...
Re:GNOME license (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting the LGPL onto a widget set means that the widget set and desktop can be more easily adopted by companies. The Gnome developers and users consider that a good thing. The adoption of Gnome by Sun seems to suggest that it's achieving its intended goals. You are free to disagree that those goals are desirable.
KDE made its own, different choice in this regard. We'll simply have to wait and see which one works better in the long run. Each group will have to live with their choices.
Re:GNOME license (Score:3, Interesting)
QT is GPL or Trolltech license only, as they want businesses that intend to profit to be able to do so, they just need to cough up Trolltech's fair share in doing so.
Businesses don't want to share in terms of money if they don't have to, but generally don't mind contributing incidental bugfixes and feature enhancements to the common code, so they can look like good citizens without impacting their bottom line in the least bit. They may fix behavior of a certain widget or even contribute a nice enhanced file selector, and while necessary for their shipping product, the product loses no value by having those trivial bits free and open. This is why businesses love GPL perhaps even better than the BSD license, they can look to be a lot more generous then their true motives. Nothing stops them from doing this with BSD, but people would be more inclined to wonder if they would change their mind one day if they achieved market penetration, as it would be perfectly legal for them to do so.
Less "protected", not less free (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Less "protected", not less free (Score:3, Insightful)
and to everyone else (except, apparently, you) they're equally free
You are misinformed. According to the stated philosophy of _their_own_ organization (the FSF) and the overall project (GNU) of which they are a part, they *are* less free. The L in LGPL stands for lesser.
From the GNU website, arguing why not to use the LGPL
Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising "more users for this library" if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all.
"Proprietary software developers" == Funders of the GNOME foundation
I don't have a problem with their license, just their hypocrisy.
OMG! (Score:2, Insightful)
But woe to the poor soul that even remotely mentions that this is probably not such a good thing.
"Competition" and "choice" are words frequently used in these contexts. And while I agree with that to a certain extent, I think most zealots are blind to the fact that Windows is a stable, unified platform that can be leveraged without fear of one's products becoming obsolete or broken with the next release of Gnome or KDE.
And in the end, I think, it all comes down to X being so "wonderful". Wonderfully outdated and quirky and out of place in a desktop environment. What Linux and BSD need is something like Cocoa (or Carbon or whatever it's called) in OS X. Yes, X is part of the Unix legacy. No, it's not needed anymore except in a server, multi-user environment. Desktops ain't that.
Software vendors will not jump on the bandwagon on technical merit alone. There has to be stability and uniformity.
Re:OMG! (Score:5, Interesting)
The developer exodus to Linux has little to do with the desktop. It's got everything to do with code openness, and stuff behaving predictably in a stable manner. Like you, I doubt either desktop (KDE or Gnome) will become some huge MS-disturbing force, so developers and companies aren't really targeting them.
That said, the architecture of KDE is very nice indeed. Assuming you aren't too much of a MS bigot, read some code and see for yourself
Re:OMG! (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, there's development and then there's development. If you target Office, well, all bets are off. But I'm talking about the OS. Shifty? I have had damn few things break with version changes, much less service packs. But some stuff does break, yes. The sheer volume of software that runs in Windows makes it impossible for everything to be perfect every time the OS needs to be updated. But let's be honest - no software breaks from one version of Linux to another? If you code to the least common denominator, yes. But the same is true about Windows. You take your chances.
That said, the architecture of KDE is very nice indeed. Assuming you aren't too much of a MS bigot, read some code and see for yourself :)
Contrary to popular belief, I do know what I'm talking about =) Yes, KDE is cool. Although I admit to being partial to Gnome. And yes, I've written code for both of them, in C and lately Python (even used Kylix there for a while).
I'm not questioning their technical merits, I'm bitching (I guess) about the fact that it's impossible to target two moving platforms.
Re:OMG! (Score:3, Interesting)
And you're right, it absolutely is impossible to track two moving platforms. If (big, big if) Linux becomes something more than a niche desktop, one of them will win, and will be the target of commercial development.
Finally, ditching X isn't the answer. There's a lot more to each desktop than X. I recently installed GnomeMeeting on my KDE box. As it installed, it dragged in bonobo, Gnome this, Gnome that, and put a bunch of duplicated effort on my machine. That's the real problem, I think - two entirely different application frameworks, desktop services, and support libraries.
Re:OMG! (Score:4, Insightful)
There has to be stability and uniformity.
We need stability in the API, so we should throw out X because it's too old and not needed? Isn't that a little contradictory?
Re:OMG! (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly.
This is only partially true.
I don't like absolutes, but 99% is still better than 60%. For example, the basic Windows "widgets" have not changed since Windows 3.1. In fact, IIRC I changed only two lines of code (from the GUI part) in an application I had back then to convert it to 32-bit. Apps written for Windows 3.1 run today in Windows XP and Server 2003 with no more than a tweak using the compatibility tool. No recompile, no code changes required.
If that isn't stable, I don't know what is.
I HEREBY PATENT (Score:2, Funny)
In Scottish slang the toilet is also known as the kludgie, therefore a wholly appropriate place for files or progs considered a kludge!
The toilet roll icon (Score:2)
Summary of GNOME article misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
The real story is a glimpse at a conversation about the philosophy and direction of GNOME between two of it's most respected personalities. Havoc has positioned himself as the effective authority on usability and the user-experience. Miguel has and continues to be a driving force behind the vision of what GNOME can become.
The points to garner from this discussion are hardly about the GNOME vs. KDE flamewars of late... in traditional fashion, the GNOME developers are quite confident that they're doing the Right Thing and pay only passing regard to the dogmatic flamefests.
1) The goal of GNOME is not only focused around GNOME but about bringing about a revolution in desktop computing where on the x86 platform there are viable and attractive alternatives to Microsoft. KDE's success bolster's GNOME's success and vice versa. Interoperability lets everybody win.
2) GNOME2's infrastructure is well thought out and well designed and in fact needs little more before it hits maturity. It has minimized bloat (Havoc and Miguel highlight some of the redundancies between GTK+ and libbonoboui, but these are known and on their way out the door). And for the most part it has gotten good reviews from the developers using it.
3) GNOME spends a lot of time concerning itself with enterprise customers, whose needs are often very different from those of your local Slashdot user.
4) Much of the desktop development world, including Mac and Windows are moving towards simpler, cleaner interfaces. GNOME is a member of this camp.
To quote Havoc: "In short, my opinion is that we have done many of the hardest tasks very well. We've scaled the devel organization and release process to a large number of people. We've sorted out how to manage corporate participation/contribution. We've addressed usability and simplicity. We have nice HIG. We have years of effort completed for Section 508 compliance. We have best depth of application functionality. We are on course to have the devel platform unified/unbloated by GTK+ 2.4, rather than two duplicating layers. We have the most credible enterprise OS vendors involved. We have clean and maintainable code with strong maintainers for nearly all the key components. We've properly modularized those components so we can spread out release cycles and maintenance."
GNOME feels it's doing things right. It will continue to do things in this manner. Flamefests and Slashdot are the least of its concerns.
-jag
Apple Trash Icon Patent (Score:4, Insightful)
This is NOT a software patent, nor is a utility patent of ANY type. It is merely a design patent covering the appearence of the icon for crying out loud. Notice the D in the patent number??? It is there for a reason,
If slashdot is going to conduct a Jihad against patents, fine. That is their priviledge. But the FACT is that nobody is going to take slashdot seriously until they get somebody to review these articles for their factual content. Until then Slashdot is just a giant joke.
Re:Apple Trash Icon Patent (Score:3, Insightful)
The editor-added "More on the ideas that Apple owns." title is incorrect ("More on the designs that Apple owns." would have been correct), but the submitter and the linked article have the right idea.
Future history of a low-cost notebook (Score:3, Insightful)
- someone who spent $799 on a Lindows.com notebook
- someone who spent $849 on an eNote with MS XP Home
- someone who spent $999 on an Apple iBook
That would be like really seeing where the rubber meets the road in consumer information technology. From my experience the iBook will cost less and do more over the working lives of these machines. The iBook is a top quality motorcycle as opposed to a cheap car.
Salon. (Score:3, Funny)
Lindows machines (Score:3, Interesting)
Where have I heard this before? (Score:4, Interesting)
In WWII, according to the Imperial Radio anyway, the Japanese won an impressive string of "decisive victories" over Allied forces. Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadacanal, Leyte Gulf, Okinawa, Iwo Jima. It seems the war was practically over after each of these victories and Japanese marines would soon be storming into Washington. Of course, savvy listeners eventually noticed these "decisive victories" were getting steadily closer and closer to the home islands.
Good job...you slashdotted Lindows! (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, just after the story was posted on slashdot and all you freaks sprinted (well, waddled) to your boxen to order a shiny new Lindows laptop. Except you slashdotted their frikkin supply chain. Damn nice job.
Just wondering, but is there anything that *can't* be slashdotted? Well, anything that doesn't require social skills, anyway.
But how often do you have to boot with each? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:But how often do you have to boot with each? (Score:4, Informative)
Medieval: Total War and Ghost Recon have bugs that cause blue screens.
The WinNT kernel and its derivatives contain all the code to draw buttons, scrollbars, and other gui widgets (That's why the kernel is 20-30MB). Any sort of oops in the GUI code is an oops at kernel level, which means it can trash any memory and cause a crash.
Re:But how often do you have to boot with each? (Score:2)
Having experienced both though (and I love Linux BTW) as a workstation, running windows, they crash about the same, with Redhat maybe being a bit more stable. As a server, redhat kicks the pants off XP for stability though.
Re:But how often do you have to boot with each? (Score:3, Informative)
Medieval: Total War and Ghost Recon have bugs that cause blue screens."
I've got a Dell Inspiron 8200 running Windows XP since December. I've spent quite a few hours playing Deus Ex, Star Trek Armada II, Master of Orion 3, and Gansters 2 on it. I also do a lot of 3D work in Lightwave. I've had exactly 1 blue screen with XP, and it happened after 6 days of operation using the suspend mode every evening.
Am I a zealot, or am I somebody that's just providing data? I'm no fan of MS, but I've found XP to be pretty reliable. It's definitely reliable enough that I take it for granted. A big part of this equation is that I've got good hardware and good drives. If you're having BSOD's, the first place I'm going to look is at your driver and hardware combination. XP wouldn't be my first assumption.
Salon is great, and there's no alternative (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Boot Times (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, I'll feed the Troll...
Nope, you can't. If the boots did the same things in the same order you could make that assumtion, but then it would be the same OS. Also, you didn't mention if this was a first start up (keygeneration runs), or if fsck ran...
That's a feature. Trust me.
I shouldn't be writing this, but I can't mod you to oblivion, so...
Re:JACKASS (Score:2)
You know, I think I agree. Well, execpt the want to die part.
Re:Boot Times (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Boot Times (Score:5, Informative)
One thing to be aware of, is that once you are presented with a screen, everything in linux is loaded.
XP on the other hand, will present a login prompt long before all of the background services are up and running. Redhat, on the other hand, has a fully running and functioning machine once it goes through its 1.5 minute boot up.
Also, you are shown exactly which services are loading at boot time. If you understand what these services are doing, then you have the ability to stop the services you don't want or need.
for example, in my 1.5 minute boot time, I have 2 database servers starting (postgresql and mysql) 1 web server, 1 dns server, a samba/netbios name server, nfs server, and I can't remember the rest. In order to get the same functionality in Windows, you need to purchase Windows 2000 server (I'm not trying to act as flamebait here, but I teach both linux and Win2k server, and I believe that Win2k server is a good product. My issues are with the pack of jackals that sell and sue over it!).
In other words, my linux box has a similar start time to microsoft's server product. If I wanted quicker boot times, I would configure it more like microsoft's desktop product, windows XP.
Someone else may want to elaborate about other things ms does to make the XP boot quickly. FWIW, my windows 2000 box has approximately the same boot time as my linux box.
Re:Boot Times (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lindows Mobile PCs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Lindows Mobile PCs (Score:3, Funny)
It would be funny if it wasn't so god damn freaking pathetic.
Re:Lindows Mobile PCs (Score:4, Insightful)
And to be honest, I'm not too crazy about Lindows either, they have been shady and don't seem to care about participating in the community as much as other Linux companies are. Not having to pay the 'Lindows' tax is good news to me.
Re:Lindows Mobile PCs (Score:3)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:2, Informative)
Someone who lives in the area can probably do better, but I believe it's this massive construction project in Boston, in which they're massively upgrading their subway system. It's taking a really long time (> a decade?) and a lot of money. I believe the reason is largely the fact that it has to not interfere with the living city above it -- AND work around currently-running existing subway lines.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Informative)
We're moving interstate 93 underground by the financial district and north end (and fleet center) as well as creating some tunnels (now open) to connect the interstates together and provide better access to the airport.
Among other things.
Was 5 years away when i moved here 5 years ago. and it's due to be completed in 5 years.
If you REALLY care, check www.bigdig.com
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Informative)
It aims to bury in a subway a major portion of the Interstate (not sure which one) that runs by Logan (Boston's airport) through downtown Boston. Last I heard, the price tag was <Dr Evil>TEN BILLION DOLLARS</Dr Evil>.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Informative)
The Big Dig is the common nickname for Boston's "Central Artery/Tunnel Project". Its a massive and extremely impressive feat in civil engineering intended to solve all of Boston's traffic woes.
There's plenty of pictures and videos and whatnot on the project's website [bigdig.com]
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Informative)
While I'm sure the prior responses to your question have been well-meaning, they have also been under- or misinformed. Here's what the Big Dig really is, from a Boston-area resident:
Interstate 93 runs directly through downtown Boston, from north to south. This part of I-93, called the Central Artery around here, was built in the 1950s as an elevated highway. Even as construction was completed, the city realized it had made a big mistake in erecting an ugly green eyesore which separated Boston's waterfront neighborhoods, including our analog to Little Italy, the North End, from the rest of the city. Thirty or so years later, this eyesore was still ugly, and was jammed with traffic for the better part of each day.
The Big Dig is, as has been mentioned, the largest public works project in U.S. history, which aims to put the Central Artery in a tunnel under Boston and demolish the elevated Artery, thereby reunifying the downtown area and increasing its ability to carry high volumes of traffic. The other major aim, now almost completed, is to extend Interstate 90, an east-west highway that used to terminate at the Boston waterfront, underwater to Logan Airport in East Boston. Along with these two primary objectives, a lot of supporting work has gone on around the city.
The Big Dig undoubtedly has a huge price tag, one that has only gotten bigger and bigger as the years have gone on, but given the enormity of the task at hand, I can't see how this wasn't to be expected. The end result is going to transform the city for the better, and the project has implemented a ton of cool technologies (check it out at BigDig.com [bigdig.com], actually a fairly cool site).
Offtopic, yes, but hopefully this has been helpful for you.
Re:Salon for Conservative Christians... (Score:4, Informative)
Quite often I find myself at odds with your publication's viewpoints and don't like what you say. But I almost always love how you say it ... The fine team of writers you have assembled is a dream come true to someone who appreciates good, honest, creative prose ... You have my paid subscription as of this evening. Long may your banner wave.
Re:Salon for Conservative Christians... (Score:4, Funny)
ekrout@bucknell.edu
Re:Salon for Conservative Christians... (Score:3, Interesting)
The CC shows us how combative activism (the conservative hate mail) can drive away people that might otherwise be sympathetic, and how it can create a backlash that does more harm than good.
IMHO, the snow-penis incident shows us the same thing. The two women who destroyed the sculpture MIGHT have had a point to make about the Harvard being overwhelmingly male, and about male viewpoints, but destroying the sculpture certainly didn't promote their "cause." It made the entire women's studies (or is it womyn's studies?) look militant, and anti-male. They should have found a creative way to promote their own message instead of just destroying something they think is symbolic. One should try not to be defined by what they are against. Or at the very least they should have found a way to take the high road and make the snow penis look stupid and the sculptors look childish, using humor. More people would understand their point that way.
So perhaps the CC would enjoy the snow-penis article, even if it isn't "important" news.
Re:Salon for Conservative Christians... (Score:5, Insightful)
Christians (even conservative ones) are not ashamed of sexuality.
Let me repeat that for those of you who didn't understand
Christians are not ashamed of sexuality.
We do however have beliefs regarding it (sanctity of marriage, etc) Some believe that it is a private matter that shouldn't be discussed publicly
And for the record I who is probably considered a "conservative Christian" find the snow penis to be quite funny.
saying "Christians are not ashamed of sexuality" (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right but you're just as wrong.
Re:A patent on aspect-oriented programming? (Score:2)
Re:Lindows Mobile PCs...er Laptops (Score:2)
Re:Lindows Mobile PCs...er Laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
Lindows, like the CPU, is designed to be a low-cost alternative to the conventional (Wintel). You get what you pay for; me, I'd sink a little extra cash in given that I'd expect to use it for three or four years, and I'd probably want Windows with it because I wouldn't want to try to solve all those wierd laptop issues that open source products demonstrate... I don't want to waste the first year waiting for proper hardware support.
Re:Lindows Mobile PCs...er Laptops (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lame (Score:3, Funny)
It took RedHat about 2 years to boot Windows off of my box.