Lazarus can be a good alternative... but it is delphi based (not so fashion). Anyway, very nice IDE :D

TideSDK (formerly Titanium Desktop) has a similar concept than Steam for the Desktop apps, and it is Open Source.

I strongly believe this is a very promising road. Most of the problem is the apps, but Android ecosystem actually have thousands. It's a win - win. Still the power users can use the last stand man in the desktop wars but the consumers can use a very strong linux.
Another road is working more like MacOSX, maybe a ObjectiveC compiler, so we can improve the compatibility.
Other option can be start a Web Desktop project. Something like B2G on Linux, same principles, but I like more the Android way ;)
Finally we have the frameworks for writting Desktop HTML5 apps like appjs or the formerly Titanium Desktop TideSDK.
They are growing but the concept of having Web technologies on desktop can help on grabbing again the developers to Linux. I think this is the red alert. The programmers are choosing MacOSX :/ And having an extra layer for the app can solve the universal installer problem also. Every distribution has a browser, look on this appjs and TideSDK.
like a browser app with desktop access apis. :D

I think this kind of emails are helpful for linux desktop development. I agree with the firefox fonts. It should be out of the box on RHEL. This is the linux distribution most corporations knows. I'm not sure about system settings or desktop customization settings (because they are for power users).
I definitively would want to have an easy way to use an external projector/tv/monitor. And keep working on getting easier to configure wireless, bluetooth, volume settings.

Also, i would advise to think on corporate features for linux. They have been moving to web on last years. A good office+web linux box can be something they can use on some of their workstations, but it's a requirement that it should be easy to maintain. This is the hard part: You need to be able to change the settings from a central place, to change the proxy and other settings on firefox from a central place, to have rsync out of the box, to have samba and its new directory out of the box, to have a GUI for samba that allows to share the user's own files, to have a central way to change samba settings, to have a centralized backup system, to add fonts from central, to have a way to easily do a remote install/uninstall. To have a way to configure an easy menu with the permitted apps and the same on firefox (for webapps). Name it like coporate users want: Fedora Workstation or Ubuntu professional or OpenSuse corporate. If your concern is how linux can go in the corporate world, well corporate is actually one of Linux's strenghts. Corporations uses it on their mission critical services. The hard job (tech approval) is done. It makes sense if it lowers costs, not only licensing ones but maintenance and support.
Many of the tools are there: samba, puppet, bacula, mondo. Some of them requires some polish for the end user (e.g. a way to see which backups are done on your workstation and to recover it, a way to add easily network shares).
I'm sure desktop is a problem on meeting user's need. Ask google and android.

Is it possible to develop applications other than games on Steam? It would be great for developing apps with great graphics.

It's important to check 3 sites: http://community.jboss.org/wiki/SecureTheJmxConsole --> Wiki site on Jboss http://community.jboss.org/wiki/SecureTheJmxConsole/diff?secondVersionNumber=47 --> This is important because the Wiki site has some missing info that you can see in this diff https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-30741 --> Another related security problem Check your Jboss config!!

Dr. Michio Kaku exposed a similar idea on his "The Physics of Extraterrestrial Civilizations"

You can find it here: http://mkaku.org/home/?page_id=246

It's a little science+fiction, but it's anyway a great reading.

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He states that:

"(...) Berkeley astronomer Don Goldsmith reminds us that the earth receives about one billionth of the suns energy, and that humans utilize about one millionth of that. So we consume about one million billionth of the suns total energy. At present, our entire planetary energy production is about 10 billion billion ergs per second."

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and also, he suggests that we have to search for a combination of a star and a planet with great infrared emissions:

"Eventually, after several thousand years, a Type I civilization will exhaust the power of a planet, and will derive their energy by consuming the entire output of their suns energy, or roughly a billion trillion trillion ergs per second. With their energy output comparable to that of a small star, they should be visible from space. Dyson has proposed that a Type II civilization may even build a gigantic sphere around their star to more efficiently utilize its total energy output . Even if they try to conceal their existence, they must, by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, emit waste heat. From outer space, their planet may glow like a Christmas tree ornament. Dyson has even proposed looking specifically for infrared emissions (rather than radio and TV) to identify these Type II civilizations."

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Finally from the original article we see a theory i want to add to this reasoning:

"One possibility is that Wasp-18, a sunlike, medium-sized star, is a thousand times less energetic than would be expected. That would mean it produces much less friction on the planet than normal."

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Why this star has a thousand times less energy than it should have?

In the debate between BSD like licenses and GPL licenses, we have to look a new way to license commercial GPL software: A limited functional GPL version without commercial support plus a full-featured commercial version with support.

Let's remember the most succesful open source database software (and commercial) is GPL: MySQL.

The MySQL model have been changing to a somewhat popular dual-license style, that is been called open core license, you can read an excellent article from Mathew Aslett here: http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/09/01/andrew-lampitt-defines-open-core-licensing/

The described model is used on some open source projects like Hyperic, Zenoss, Groundwork, Mindtouch and more coming.

The original developer is upset because he is not getting revenue for his work while others are. That isn't against the license he decide to use, but we have here an economics issue. The market is awarding the one that has the better sales channel (and the one that has keep the innovation pace). So, my conclusion is that OPEN SOURCE NEEDS BETTER SALES CHANNELS! How do I see it? We don't have to invent anything, we have to analyze the succesful cases: RedHat, Apple, Oracle, EBay, Amazon. We need a OPEN SOURCE STORE (sourceforge? Ibm?), where someone can purchase packaged open source solutions, support services (like RedHat), university to have a learning path on the solutions, AND purchase new features (this is new!). PURCHASING OF FEATURES It's the process of contacting a developer and getting a new feature. Suppose I want to sell an open source project to a customer on Mexico, I did'nt have a efficient way to purchase changes to the original developer. i want to have a place were i can contact in a easy way the developer teams.

Software can be upgraded with no cost to the original developer! I think this shows one of the greatest things that Open Source and GPL offer. The original developer did'nt have to pay a cent to see it's software evolve on a new platform or be up to date. The rules can seem unfair, but the same rules allow him to sell the app also! He can get the new code (for free), and state that he is the original developer in his marketing.

It would be nice to try to contact the former developer when someone will modify their software...

We have to focus on starters, the advanced civilizations would hide themselves. So.. we should analyze the numbers on how many low-technical civilizations could be out there. We have to be more (in quantity) than the advanced ones (like the species in our planet, there are few organized species). And it should be easier to find the ones like us.

It's interesting the attribution clause included on these licenses. We have many discussions about how manage attribution on open source projects. CPAL (https://www.socialtext.net/open/index.cgi?cpal) license gave us some points to consider when talking about attribution. This license allows you to put a limited attribution on the software "copyright notice, short phrase (10 words), graphic image and URL." GPL 3 has it's own clause on attribution resources (see clause 7) The way Ms-RL Ms-PL describes how attribution will be managed has another aproach from the previous licenses: They require you to respect any attribution notices that the original work has. So here we have an OSI approved license which can be used to preserve all your attribution notices...