Just over a year ago, Tim Butler wrote an article which outlined why he thought the GNOME Project was clearly the free software desktop project with the best vision of the future. KDE's Appeal Project, which has been brewing for some time now, looks to a different set of issues that need solving and has some very smart minds at work on solving those problems. In a few words, KDE's got some of "that vision thing" too, according to Tim.
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Member since:> If I believe Qt has problems that will impact the
> future of KDE, that is very much of interest to my
> readers.
Yeah but there are no problems with Qt, so why did you write your last few articles? If you are telling me to read your articles more carefully then allow me to throw the gloves back to you. I could easily say that if you had spent time reading KDE's pages more carefully then you would have stepped over the Trolltech vs. KDE agreement that in case something happens that Qt is being licensed under BSD, so in any ways it will continue to exist. KDE is is one of the major showpieces for Trolltech and Qt, so why killing this best free marketing argument?
Member since:2005-07-06
OK, I'll humor you. Lots of people reminded me of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, but that has nothing to do with my point. My point was about commercial development, the need KDE has to keep the ability for people to develop commercial software on KDE, and hence the necessary ties to Trolltech. The foundation guarantees the future of the Free Software version of Qt, should it ever be discontinued by Trolltech, but does not guarantee the commercial version will always be reasonably priced, etc., etc. If the GPL'ed version sticks around, but the commercial licenses went up to $20k per developer plus royalties, the Foundation would still fail to kick in.
Hence, KDE is beholden to work with Trolltech, rather than fork the GPL version, etc., etc. Obviously given the length of my argument in the articles, I've omitted a lot of points by summing it up here, but the gist is that the Foundation is great but irrelevant to my point. I could have said that in my column, but I really didn't think so many people would fail to see how the Foundation does not apply to what I said.
Remember: I was a serious KDE user for years, I still follow it closely and I was even involved with some KDE projects for awhile -- until time constrants did not permit that any longer -- so I'm not ignorant on such things.
But, returning to the present article, that doesn't mean I don't think KDE is really great on many fronts. My job is not to be one sided, but to report from all useful angles, hence I am taking the opportunity to give KDE some positive words as well.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Well, that would be true if I was telling Trolltech what to do. If you had read my articles, you'd see that's not the case. My job is to write for system administrators and explain the ups and downs of adopting technologies. In July, I looked at problems with Qt that I believed existed (let's not debate Qt licensing again on this very different post, ok?); if I believe Qt has problems that will impact the future of KDE, that is very much of interest to my readers. Now, this week, I took a look at a different angle -- that of innovation, and how KDE's new ideas could very much help KDE in the future.
Once you understand the role of the media in reporting on any subject (to inform outsiders, not insiders like the Trolltech developers themselves), then my commentaries "purpose" will become clear.