Couldn't agree more. I think cusco is looking for his prop engine, when he has a jet in front of him

I can't agree with a lot of this. Mostly, there are two or three good options for desktop environments/window managers for the major scenarios: basic/low system resources, Gnome 2 fans, and the avant guard. Sure, what you are advocating would be nice, but it would need resources and consensus. Me, I am just happy there are very good alternatives to the commercial offerings.

You know, you don't have to: a KDE app will run on another desktop, fine,as an example. It will just require the download of the support libraries, behind the scenes. The user need never know. Just build the app once under the environment that is best for it, and it will get use where it makes sense. No problem. But your actual premise is not correct.

For the masses, there is standard Ubuntu: download and install and it will work in almost all circumstances. The Linix UIs and desktops are mostly awesome and innovative: but you can try them out as you like. I currently run Gnome 3 on standard Ubuntu, and that was easy, even across upgrades. That refutes you statement that " Linux on the desktop is pretty much doomed when it comes to any ordinary person just wanting to install it, use it and have it work if the first question they have to deal with is which of 20 UI's and desktops they should pick.", which is your main point, I think.

This original post was talking about SOFEA and SOUI as if they are living things. But a little research shows they are dead as acronyms, anyway. I think really these concepts have become mainstream, at least in relation to SOA. And so they become anonymous concepts. But we do need a way to talk about these details and advance the status quo. So, how about it? Point us to discussions/acronyms/sites that talk about what the state of the art is in building clients for services. At the moment that would be some in depth way to use JSON and JavaScript to render a UI on top of business services, I think. But it's all up for debate! Cheers! The Captn...