"We want to develop a free and complete set of user friendly applications and desktop tools, similar to CDE and KDE but based entirely on free software." Those were the opening lines of Miguel De Icaza's email announcing the GNU Network Object Model Environment, better known as GNOME, exactly (in my timezone) ten years ago, on 15th August 1997. They have come a long way from this, to this.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-06
Yes it's a free ride. What's wrong with that? If the developers want to give out free rides who are you to argue?
I never claimed that you were bashing GNOME, I claimed that you were misusing the English language in order to score political points. The statements from that old email were incorrect then, and they're still incorrect today:
The Qt licensing at the time was anything but a nonexistent problem. If Qt was the leading (or only) free desktop GUI toolkit today, the licensing would still be a problem. Fortunately, there's GTK+.
GTK caught up with Qt 1.4 a loooong time ago.
Member since:2005-07-07
Best of luck doing this with GTK... it has a long ways to catch up with Qt.
GTK caught up with Qt 1.4 a loooong time ago.
Now YOURE playing language games... I won't go into this, it's silly.
Anyway, I do agree with you that choice is good. It's essential for FOSS and the darwinian way of improvement. Even though it's sometimes annoying to see all the duplication of work... I just wish the political stuff wouldn't lead to (technically) stupid decisions anymore... But vhs/video2000 and other past stuff have shown it's kind'a inevitable, so I'll shut up now and won't respond anymore.
Member since:2005-07-06
The Qt licensing at the time was anything but a nonexistent problem. If Qt was the leading (or only) free desktop GUI toolkit today, the licensing would still be a problem. Fortunately, there's GTK+.
The problem is that the people who thought Gnome was solving a problem then and wasn't, still don't understand that it isn't solving any problem today.
Having an open source desktop was a given so that code code be shared and modified by anyone. As long as the license for that code was clear and understandable by everyone involved, there was no problem. That fulfilled developers needs to get the code and improve it. Any other concerns are basically the political things that ultimately killed Unix and CDE as a desktop, and Gnome still hasn't got them out of its system.
Beyond that, if you want to get people to actually use your desktop then it has to be good enough. Users simply do not give a shit if your desktop is licensed under the QPL, GPL or LGPL. It is judged on its quality, regardless of how favourable your licensing is.
GTK caught up with Qt 1.4 a loooong time ago.
Hmmmmm. Well, GTK was a graphical toolkit then, and it still is now. Qt has always been a complete, general purpose cross-platform programming toolkit with APIs for a multitude of things not GUI related. GTK hasn't become that at all.
Member since:2005-07-11
"Free" is very much subjective when it comes to software licenses. You have to distinguish between "freedoms of the software (source code)" and "freedoms of the user".
The GPL is very much about the freedoms of the software. It places restrictions on how it can be used, and tries to guarantees that the source will always be available.
The BSD license is very much about the freedoms of the user. You can do whatever you want with the source, including incorporating it into proprietary and/or closed source software.
"Free" is also subjective in that it has multiple definitions in English (no cost vs freedom), and both/neither apply when discussing licenses.
Member since:2005-07-15
>The GPL is very much about the freedoms of the software. It places restrictions on how it can be used, and tries to guarantees that the source will always be available.
>The BSD license is very much about the freedoms of the user. You can do whatever you want with the source, including incorporating it into proprietary and/or closed source software.
I disagree.
I would say that GPL (and copyleft in general) is about users freedom and BSD (and non-copyleft in general) is about the freedom of the software.
Let me explain why:
non-copyleft licenses allows the software to merge with non-free software or to become non-free by their own. So that the user will have zero freedom.
On the other hand copyleft guarantees that all users will have the freedom to use the software for every purpose, to modify it and to distribute it.
So copyleft licenses guaranties freedom for every user while non-copyleft allows the maximum freedom for the software even if it will result in non-freedom for the users.
Member since:
2005-07-07
BSD allows you to do more with the code than the GPL or the LGPL. So you consider it more free than the LGPL? I DO think the term free is subjective to a certain extend. And I don't see why someone writing proprietary code (which nobody should be writing) should be allowed to freeride on the hard work of other developers without any obligation to contribute back.
BTW I dont see why this is bashing gnome. They can use whatever license they want. I have no problems with Solaris nor freeBSD either... I just noticed the statement from that old email was today as true as it was then...