TheKompany is one of the very few companies creating truly multi-platform products, even if they are mostly a Linux/KDE company. Among their products you will find Aethera, Kapital, BlackAdder and a whole lot of apps for embedded Linux, mostly for the Sharp Zaurus PDA. Today we are happy to host an interview with the company’s president, Shawn Gordon. Dive in and read our interesting chat with Shawn about their products, Linux’s future, Qt and KDE, porting to OSX, their embbeded apps etc.1. Please tell us more about Aethera. When do you expect version 1.0 to be released, and how does it compare to Ximian’s Evolution?
Shawn Gordon: Well, Aethera has been a long path, unlike many companies we have no outside funding, so at times things can go slower than we want them to. A couple of months ago we made a strategic decision to port the mail portion of Aethera onto Embedded Linux to round out our suite of applications that are PIM related on that platform. We had been getting numerous requests, so we decided to bite the bullet and put off the 1.0 release of Aethera for a couple months, this did have the advantage of working going in to tighten the engine code that Aethera uses, so we expect it probably by early October at the latest.
In terms of comparing it to Evolution, they both are at the heart email/PIM applications. We differ initially in the fact that ours will run on Linux and Windows and we might possibly do a Mac OS X port for the 1.0 release. The other way we differ is that we didn’t set out to make an
Outlook clone, as a matter of fact the UI designer has never even seen Outlook. Some things in a UI just make sense, and certain functions are common to this type of application. Aethera, as it evolves, has a structure that is designed to allow you to communicate and manage your personal data in a much more intuitive fashion than anything I’ve seen to date. We developed some really amazing technology to allow for cross platform dynamic loaders and embedding of parts, these are KORE and TINO, and we use them extensively in our applications. Kore is available on our website, but we haven’t put Tino up yet.
2. Will you move your application’s codebase over to QT 3.x? Which one of your products gets more attention from your coders these days?
Shawn Gordon: We were selling applications based on Qt 3.x beta2 over a year ago. Trolltech was shocked to find out we had jumped onto Qt3 so hard and so fast. We are way ahead of the curve in that regard.
As far as what get’s attention, it’s a rotating kind of thing. We have guys who work on certain products full time, then we have other guys that jump from product to product (mostly writing new ones), and we recently hired some more people to go through the backlog of feature requests and
bug reports and start making a concerted effort to get those finished.
What has a real hard push going right now is to wrap up Kapital 1.0 for the first week of September. Kapital is our Quicken type application and it is strictly for KDE and has recently been updated to KDE 3. While we’ve converted to Qt for most of our apps for various reasons, it is certainly a joy to be able to use pure KDE and especially KDE 3 for Kapital, it’s just
super super slick, the downside is the lack of portability across platforms (yes, you can do it, but it’s not near as straight forward as a pure Qt app) but for Kapital it only needs to be a KDE app, so we get to enjoy that wonderful environment.
The beta for Kapital went on much longer than we wanted, and this was mostly due to distractions, so a few months ago I put some really top notch programmers on it full time to wrap it up and they’ve been burning through it. The 1.0 release is going to be very nice and we are already queuing up what will be in 1.1 by the end of the year. The price of the product goes up when the beta is over, so there is a limited window to still take advantage of the lower price.
3. What kind of full featured applications do you feel that the Linux desktop still lacks?
Shawn Gordon: Well, speaking for myself, a real good Quickbooks type app. I know there are some things out there, but nothing like the ease of use of Quickbooks. We get asked about writing one of these all the time because of our Kapital product, but I’m not sure if we want to take that on at this stage.
Then there is project management software. I know there are a number of initiatives out there, but none of them really grab me. For me that is about it other than some really kick ass sequencing software. I’ve not had a chance to really try Brahms or Rosegarden, so those might actually fit the bill for me, I’ll have to try when I get some free time :). There are some cool things you can do in the corporate/enterprise desktop space, some of which we are working on and I’m not going to talk about yet.
4. Are you planning on porting more of your applications to MacOSX and Windows?
Shawn Gordon: We just finished porting QuantaGold to OS X and will be releasing it next week I hope. DataArchitect 2.1 will be on OS X next month. We are working on Rekall and Kivio mp to see how they do on OS X as well. The lions share of requests have been for QuantaGold on OS X so far.
5. Which market was more favorable for TheKompany’s sales so far? Linux, Embedded or Windows?
Shawn Gordon: This has been a fantastic year for us so far, I’ve really been pleased. We’ve been getting into more and more stores lately, notably in Fry’s and Microcenter, and the sales are real solid out of those locations, we get re-orders constantly, and that is for the desktop apps. We don’t know if people are using our stuff for Linux or Windows because one box and one price gets you both. We could have put some ‘phone home’ software in there to count it, but we are against that kind of thing.
The embedded spaces has been a real nice surprise, we have been selling that software like hotcakes, and there are more and more devices based on embedded linux and Qtopia coming out, so I really see this being a huge revenue generator for us in the long term, it is very exciting. If you haven’t tried out a Sharp Zaurus 5500, they are really cool devices.
6. Do you see that Embedded, Server or Desktop market will be more successful for Linux in the future?
Shawn Gordon: I think Server without a doubt, that one is pretty much a no-brainer. For the desktop and embedded, that is going to take big names making sales calls. I’m trying to ride those coattails because I don’t have the resources to go to HP and make them listen to me that they should use KDE for example. Speaking of which, we are looking for a solid sales/marketing person that can start to really help grow our business into major markets, this is something that we haven’t been pursuing and need to start. We’ve been focused on the retail channel, and we’ve got customers at just about every Fortune 500 company you care to name, but it’s just some guy or girl at the organization, not like a corporate sale.
7. In your opinion, what can bring Linux closer to the “desktop”?
Shawn Gordon: Talk about it, promote it, take it to work, install it for your mom, just get people to use it. Advocacy is all we have, there is no big corporation to really make it happen, so write to magazines, do talkbacks, write articles, just get the word out as much as you can.
8. Is TheKompany preparing new products? If yes, what is the nature of these products?
Shawn Gordon: On the desktop we are working on updates and upgrades of all our products, there is also some more blending and re-use of technology that is going to take place, a good example is our QuantaGold and Kobol products which use the exact same IDE code. We want to do more of that in the future.
For embedded systems we have about another dozen products we are working on at the moment. I dislike naming things because I don’t want to pre-announce anything, sometimes I get stuck because someone says “You guys should do ‘x'” and I say “well we are and it’s almost done”, but overall we
try very hard to avoid it.
I own several of TheKompany’s programs. Their ogg vorbis player alone makes me glad I bought a Zaurus. All of their products that I own are great (the other ones probably are too). I think the thing I like most about them is how well supported they are. If you run into a problem you can post to TheKompany’s mailing list and often times Shawn himself will promptly answer.
From what I have seen in their products and on their mailing list, I have a lot of respect for Shawn and TheKompany and probably will continue buying products from them.
Thanks for the interview.
I see some mention on the porting of apps to OSX. Since I haven’t really had an opportunity to mess around in OSX development (I only got my mac a few days ago), how similar are Qt and Carbon/Cocoa? Being able to develop apps which port easily to OSX *and* KDE would be cool, indeed. I might even start using KDE again. 🙂 (dons flame-retardant suit…I use either gnome or blackbox most of the time)
>how similar are Qt and Carbon/Cocoa
If you want multi-platfromness, then the choice is Qt. Your Qt app would look exactly as a Carbon/Cocoa one, native that is. And a Qt app can actually be easily recompiled on Unix and Windows, which is handy if you want to sell the same product on many platforms. However, the license of Qt for all platforms is more than $2000 I think. It doesn’t come cheap..
IFightMIBs: I see some mention on the porting of apps to OSX. Since I haven’t really had an opportunity to mess around in OSX development (I only got my mac a few days ago), how similar are Qt and Carbon/Cocoa?
If it is written in pure (and I mean pure) Qt, a recompile with Qt 3 for Mac OS X would be all that is needed. But for a more complete port, doing icons, help files etc. would take some time….
“But for a more complete port, doing icons, help files etc. would take some time….”
What about stock icons. Can’t they use native stock icons automatically? Or is there no such thing as stock icons in Qt?
Well another problem might be that every system has different styleguides. For example Windows apps use “Ok | Cancel”, while Apple suggests “Cancel | Ok” just to name an easy example.
Maybe Linus was right and portability is really only for people who are too lazy to write new code.
Without Shawn Gordon and the kompany, my zaurus would be a sad sad pda. Shawn’s a great guy to converse with on irc and he does answer a lot of questions about their applications and encourage the users to submit bugs and feature requests.
What about stock icons. Can’t they use native stock icons automatically? Or is there no such thing as stock icons in Qt?
IIRC, there isn’t. And even if there is, the icons would look completely out of place in Mac OS X. And if it looks right at home in Mac OS X, it would look completely out of place in other OS. Mac OS X provides some stock icons, but that’s about it. Unless you are building a really basic application, you probably have to make your own icons.
Well another problem might be that every system has different styleguides. For example Windows apps use “Ok | Cancel”, while Apple suggests “Cancel | Ok” just to name an easy example.
This example Qt handles perfectly. It all depends on the system UI.
Besides, when is theKompany gonna be renamed as theQompany?
I don’t use any products from the Kompany but it’s always nice to hear Open Source company doing well.
keep it up
I do think it’s good that The Kompany is succeeding, but it’s important to note that they’re not an Open Source company, they just make commercial products designed to run on an Open Source operating system among others.
Micah, we do a lot of Open Source work, less now than we use to do to limited resources, but if you look at http://www.thekompany.com/projects you will see a lot of Open Source work.
Shawn Gordon
Why do you say they are not an open source company? If you take a look at their products more then half are GPL/LGPL or some other Open Source license. Athera, KDE Studio, kamera, korelib, kugar etc.
And you get the source for most of their comercial produkts when you buy them, not the embeded ones I think.
Well, tkc maybe a good company but this is anything BUT an Open Source company.
They use Open Source tools, right, but they develop and sell proprietary software.
If Mr. Gordon is following these posts, it would be nice to know when if ever – Black Adder will get out of the beta stage.
Shawn,
That’s cool, I didn’t see those projects. I guess that makes tkc more similar to Loki in how they worked with Open Source software.
The Wonderland,
WRT BlackAdder, we had a massive delay due to contractual issues with Trolltech that have recently been worked out. This then left us the task of updating to Qt3 and the latest PyQt, which we’ve now done. However the way PyQt is now structured it created issues in packaging which we are now working on. BlackAdder is essentially done other than documentation at this stage, which is close, we just need to build this new beta and release it with support for all the new bits, and that should be coming up soon.
Great place to make my Zaurus or “Z” as I call it usable. The support is fantastic. I almost want to program seeing them develop these products so quickly with such great support. I wish the company I worked for had as strong a developer group as TheKompany does. Great work Shawn, you deserve the recoginition.
I for one am really looking forward to Aethera. I work at a small software company with a mixed environment. The sales and support folk are windows, most of the geeks are linux. We would like a central repository for contact information, calendar, and many other functions, currently we use the intranet which is cumbersome. If we could standardize on a single email client/PIM, that would be a big first step.
I notice in the interview that 2.1 of DA is being released next month. I’m wondering if this means that DA 2.1 for Linux and Windows is finally being scheduled for release as well? It’s been a long wait, but well worth it I’m sure, as DA is one of the best DB apps I’ve ever used.
It will be available for all platforms next month.
Shawn,
first, it’s absolutely great that you’re taking the time to post in the forums of the websites that interview you. I’ve noticed that before and it really says a lot about your dedication to your company. I also think that you’re trying to find the best possible balance between open source / proprietary software, as you always seem to be trying to give back to the community (without much visible benefit to your company — in fact there are always ungrateful whiners ..). I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that you don’t rely on “vulture capitalists” to fund your projects.
When you look at the successful campaign to “free Blender” (www.blender3d.com), whose goal it is to release the source code for an already free product and who have almost successfully raised their goal of 100,000 $ in a few weeks already, would you consider putting similar “price tags” on your proprietary software where you would GPL the product if a certain number of customers / subscribers are reached? I think this is a promising business model that needs to be explored further, and I’d really love to see a product like Kapital in the “public domain”, but not if you can’t recoup your costs and also make some money with it.
thanks for the kind words, we are very interested in staying deep in the trenches and not getting into ivory towers, so we stay close to ground level as much as possible.
You know, I’ve only been periphierally aware of what has been going on with Blender since I don’t use it and I have limited time to stay on top of everything that goes on.
The idea is interesting but I don’t know that GPL is really needed. Almost all of our applications have our restricted use license which gives the source code to the customer for their personal, non-redistributable use. By making something GPL then we just loose our own protection on our IP. I think our license protects us and our customers, and I don’t know that enough people want DataArchitect as a GPL product that would be willing to cough up the needed money
.
Thanks for the idea though. The concept might work for something else for us.
Shawn,
Why is Kapital so wedded to KDE and how easy is it for a Gnome user to use it? I’m running RH null and will use 8.0 with the Ximian desktop when it releases (Oct?) and the only thing I feel the absence of is a good Quicken-like manager. It isn’t quite worth dumping all the Gnome apps just to get Kapital but life would be better if I could have both….
D
Because we decided to make it a KDE application. I’m told if you have the KDE libraries installed then it will work, but we don’t support that configuration, meaning if you run into problems with that environment, we can’t help you. You can try it out with the demo to see how it does. We are just right now working on building with gcc 3.2 so that it will work on the new RH version.
I own a couple of products from TheKompany for my Zaurus. I have lots of other software installed from various vendors and there is no comparison to a product from TheKompany. It is clear that they not only take the time to ensure product performance but also go the extra mile in giving the product an appearance that is Un-surpassed. So far all of the TKC products I have seen do not fall short to the graphics quality of a Ximian product for the desktop. I am anxious to see what TKC has in store for my desktop.
Well done TKC.
One question I have to ask is when Aethera builds will be released for Windows and MacOS? I’d love to move over to it (from Eudora), and I know several companies that would greatly benefit from using such a wonderful product on all their platforms (about 1/4 Windows, 3/4 Mac, with a few Linux systems for good measure).
When we have the 1.0 code finalized for Linux then we will work on the Windows and OS X builds. We were trying to do Windows in parallel, but it was too distracting, so we decided to just wait till it was done. This worked well when we went through the same process with Rekall.
Thanks for replying to my question, I’m really grateful to you for taking the time. I await Aethera 1.0’s launch with baited breath!
Another solution would be to have X11+Gnome and X11+KDE run in adjacent virtual consoles.
You wouldn’t have cut&paste between them, though. And you need enough memory.