Safari Beta 0.64 was given to beta testers and it has some nice additions as ThinkSecret reports. Builder.com invited some current and former CNET developers to weigh in on the C# vs. Java debate. Big Blue is hitting back against SCO’s charges that it misappropriated Unix trade secrets and used them in Linux. SuSE says it’s “greatly disappointed” by SCO’s actions. ‘Browser Innovation, Gecko and the Mozilla Project’ is the article Mitchell Baker of the Mozilla project posted. Blogger installs Lycoris on Dell Latitude CPi D266XT and writes down his experiences. Two new commercial releases for Linux: Moho 4.1 and the TextMaker word processor (works with FreeBSD 4.x when Linux ABI is installed). Update: A SCO editorial, this time from OfB: “Why SCO Needs to Go“. Update 2: Mono 0.23 is out.
News Soup: Safari, Gecko, C# Vs Java, SCO Vs IBM, Linux Releases
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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That guy could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he would have checked out the Lycoris system requirements beforehand. Technically, you can use it on his hardware, but it would be agonizingly slow. The recommended requirements:
“We suggest a 500MHz processor, 128M of RAM, and a 4M video card.”
is KHTML GPL or LGPL? if its GPL wouldn’t safari need to be open source, that mozilla article says its closed source on top of open source, i thought that was only possible with LGPL..
I think GPL allows shared library linking, and this is what Safari does. It links to the khtml shared library (which is modified by Apple, and all changes have returned back to KDE). If GPL wouldn’t allow shared lib linking, closed source/commercial applications for both KDE and Gnome wouldn’t be possible, and we know that we do have a number of such commercial apps.
well all the gnome libraries are LGPL and the KDE ones are mostly GPL because they link against the free version of QT, commercial apps for KDE (such as Opera) have bought a development kit from TrollTech, otherwise they would need to GPL their code.
No, many commercial apps link against the kde-libs as well as the commercial version of Qt.
It’s true.. It took over an hour on a p3-500 w/ 192 megs of ram. For God know why, (I guess) it sticks at 83% and 99%. In addition, hardware compatibility sucks really, really bad in build 46, and the kde is quite slow. Hope the next one does much better.
On an Athlon XP 1.4 GHz, Lycoris takes about ten minutes to install – not even enough time to finish the solataire game, if you have a good one going 🙂
I recently got Lycoris build 46 and I have to agree with his complaints. The install asks questions about your ethernet card, modem, and printer port that the average home user this distro is aimed at wouldn’t have a clue about.
I’m suprised he got it installed at all. Both being a notebook as well as an older model. As for mine, the install went fine, but it won’t run at all. It boots to the point of loading the desktop then I get a blank, black text screen with a dead cursor that won’t accept any input. Bummer.
The interview was much but it did highlight an interesting point. The programmers looking into C# were java programmers but considered themselves more as web developers. In this way, the take the approach that whatver language does the job is fine with them as long as they are more marketable. Makes sense.
is KHTML GPL or LGPL?
The headers say LGPL.
—-
I think GPL allows shared library linking
It doesn’t. The LGPL — originally the Library GPL — exists to work around that. Some GPLed libraries have license exceptions to allow non-free programs to link against them, but the GPL itself does not. IINM, the LGPL was created to avoid the need for those exceptions.
To link to a gpl library your application must also be GPL. If this weren’t true then there would be no need to distinguish between GPL and LGPL. If khtml is GPL, not LGPL (I am not sure which it is) then Apple is indeed in breech of the GPL license.
Khtml is LGPL.
Yup, it is all here:
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/licensing.html
Kdelibs and khtml and other important parts of KDE are LGPL, so Apple is not abusing any licenses.
For this news item the direct link
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=2985
does not work but one with parameters works fine, e.g.,
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=2985&offset=0
Please moderate this down when it is fixed.
What do you mean exactly? The comments look just fine on my browsers, and the “direct link” works fine too, for me.
Sorry, maybe it was Phoenix (Linux). It seems to work after restarting the browser. I use tabbed browsing so I rarely close the browser completely.
I clicked on the link and it just kept spinning and did not load the page. I can only speculate why — perhaps it’s just a phoenix bug, or some interaction with cookies/cache when “Update2:” was added whilst I had the old page displayed.
How can KDE libraries be LGPL when they think against QT, a GPL library?
How can KDE libraries be LGPL when they think against QT, a GPL library?
I’ve been trying to figure that out myself, but the water seems to get awfully murky whenever the GPL is involved. As I read it, the GPL doesn’t require that derivative works (which, arguably, includes things that are linked to GPLed libraries) be GPLed per se, they just have be distributed under the terms of the GPL. The LGPL, BSDL and MITL (which together cover most of the non-GPL KDE code case) all allow such sub-licensing (the LGPL explicitly, the BSDL and MITL implicitly), so you can use them with the understanding that you’ll actually be abiding by the terms of the GPL.
As for closed-source apps, I think this is how it works. If you purchase Qt, then you’re no longer bound by the GPL wrt the Qt libraries. In your case then Qt no longer imposes the terms of the GPL on KDE, so your KDE libraries revert back to their published licenses. Most of these allow closed-source development, so you’re set. I have this image of waves rolling across source code, changing licensing terms 🙂
SCO Needs to Go! would work, but…
Just say No to SCO! would work too. It’s got riddim’ and it gets the word ‘no’ into the chant. Hahahaa. Looking forward to the fallout from this one. Legal wrangling from corps like this is making me consider Debian. You just never know if you can TRUST a corp to stay ‘on the right side of the fence’.
And on another note – it will also be interesting to see what major distros are still alive and kicking in 2 years time. SCO is committing suicide. Mandrake looks like it’s going down the drain, etc ad nauseum. Perhaps there will be Red Hat and SuSE left as ‘big boys’ and a plethora of small fringe distros. Just pray for a quick develpoment of Autopackage. That’s just my two cents worth.
[Hey, I just noticed – now that we have Euro I can actually say stuff like ‘my 2 cents’ and it’s a correct expression. Haha.]
From 20/07/2000
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/12058.html
–snip–
… SCO also owns the rights to the Unix trademark, and sits atop a pile of ye originale AT&T Unix code, some of which it’s been judiciously leaking as open source over the past year.
This is also interesting
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/12338.html
This TextMaker program is interesting. It comes as a tgz that you unextract then run. No dependancies other than on X11 and the C libraries. It appears to be based on Qt, judging by the default theme and cheesy “Look and Feel tab”.
It does indeed start quite quickly, although the window appears instantly, the contents are blank for several seconds until it “pops” into place.
It feels fast and light. It seems like a nice program. Let’s see, how did they remove the dependancies on their widget toolkit etc?
ls -lh | grep tml$
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mike users 5.6M Mar 7 11:15 tml
Waaah! A 5.6mb executable!?! But of course, they statically linked everything. Bugger.
OK, so zero points for that, but who can blame them really? We need to get this sorted. Despite that, this program seems to be a very nice little word processor, certainly lighter and faster than OpenOffice. It reads MS Word docs too, not sure how unless they statically linked in an LGPLd lib, I can’t see them reverse engineering the Word format themselves.
It has some extremely minor copy protection, you get a serial number emailed to you. Not a big deal this, although rather new for Linux. I’m a strong believer in the need for a free (in the gnu sense) platform, but word processing apps don’t concern me as much.
It creates a non-hidden directory in ~! Bad form this, I already get pissed off at ~/evolution, now I have ~/softmaker as well. What is wrong with putting a dot in the name guys? I want my home directory to be for my stuff, not yours, so if you put things there at least hide them away.
The general L&F is a mix between Windows and the “HiColor” KDE theme. Here’s a screenshot:
http://www.theoretic.com/mike/TextMaker.png
Although antialiasing is on in the Prefs panel, the text isn’t AA for some reason, but this is a beta. The fonts seem to work well.
It has a general feel of a Windows port to it. For instance, the default cursor on Linux is a black one with a white border. When you mouse over this app, it becomes the standard Windows cursor. The file dialog doesn’t appear to be the default Qt one, it’s more like the GTK file picker in fact. The icons are of course Windows icons, hopefully once the icon theming stuff has settled down, it’ll pick up the GTK/KDE stock artwork, which is much prettier.
It’s an MDI app. Big minus points for that, the world left MDI behind years ago, why don’t these guys do the same?
Help doesn’t work in this beta.
Overall, a very impressive program, considering it’s only in beta. It has all the features I’d ever want in a word processor. There are no preliminary prices that I can see, however looking at the cost of the other editions I’d guess it’d be about $50. It makes a big deal of its startup speed and memory usage, which is sort of unfortunate considering that it’d even smaller and lower footprint if it actually used dependancies, but that’s more a pet hate of mine than anything else. Hopefully when we have that problem under control they will see the light.
TextMakers closest competition is probably AbiWord 2, which is also a light and fast, yet feature rich word processor. As it is, AbiWord 2 is currently only *half* the size of TextMaker in terms of download, and it integrates wonderfully with my desktop. Being based on GTK2 it also picks up fonts, anti-aliases everything and uses the spiffy GTK artwork and themes.
It’s worth keeping an eye on products like this, although I think I’ll wait for AbiWord 2. In future, I can see open source desktop projects competing with commercial Linux desktop products moe and more often.
“How can KDE libraries be LGPL when they think against QT, a GPL library?”
Part of the reason is historical. The KDE developers argue that the Q Public License, the alternative license that Qt allows and was Qt’s license before it was GPLed, is GPL and lGPL compatible.
That would mean that all of KDE’s lGPL libraries are legal.
Unfortunately the FSF doesn’t agree with them and strangely enough KDE developers claim that the FSF’s legal council is wrong.
This could all be easily solved by adding an exception clause to KDE’s lGPL license allowing the use of the Q Public License.
I don’t think this was ever suggested as the FSF/KDE discussion quickly deteriorated into arguments and namecalling.
But that simple clause would clarify everything and prevent discussions such as these in the future.
Ok, I have erad this, and, well.. you aer all wrong, specially Baldur. Here is how it works:
a) As the oregonian anonymous said, the GPL doesn’t require that you distribute derivative works under the GPL, but “under the terms” of the GPL. Let’s assume that kdelibs is a derivative work of Qt anyway.
b) The terms defined by the GPL are several, but none of them is “give the user these rights and no others”, so you can distribute your own work under any license as long as it doesn’t contradict the GPL
c) The LGPL is one such license as defined in b).
d) What licenses do is give rights. So, the LGPL on kdelibs gives you right to link them to anything dynamically, and the GPL only lets you link to code licensed as in b), and the Qt professional license lets you link t o anything[1]
e) If all the items linked into a program give you the right to link to all the othes, you are set.
f) Proprietary KDE app links kdelibs (ok, LGPL) and Qt (ok if not GPL) and proprietary app code (ok if you own it), thus you can make proprietary KDE apps as long as you buy Qt professional.
I hope this was simple enough for everyone here.
g) The (old, ovbsolete) argument Baldur completely misunderstood is absolutely unrelated to this , since now Qt is (also) under the GPL.
[1] This is pretty much the FSF interpretation, since the LGPL and the GPL are way more vague than this
“Despite that, this program seems to be a very nice little word processor, certainly lighter and faster than OpenOffice. It reads MS Word docs too, not sure how unless they statically linked in an LGPLd lib, I can’t see them reverse engineering the Word format themselves.
…
It has a general feel of a Windows port to it. For instance, the default cursor on Linux is a black one with a white border. When you mouse over this app, it becomes the standard Windows cursor. The file dialog doesn’t appear to be the default Qt one, it’s more like the GTK file picker in fact. The icons are of course Windows icons, hopefully once the icon theming stuff has settled down, it’ll pick up the GTK/KDE stock artwork, which is much prettier.”
TextMaker was originally a HPC/PocketPC word processor, so that’s why it doesn’t follow some conventions – I expect they’ve just changed the wrapper. That also explains the static linking.
They also do their own Word file loading, so it’s not a library.
Mike:
Thank you for posting your insights about TextMaker. I am heading SoftMaker, and TextMaker is our product. I am VERY interested in all kinds of feedback from FreeBSD and Linux users.
A few answers:
1. TextMaker is a port of our Windows, Pocket PC and Handheld PC based word processor. In fact, TextMaker was designed from the start to be multi-platform, but we never before got around to do the actual porting. This has now changed.
2. TextMaker uses its own class libraries that make native X11 calls. It does not link in, or require, QT.
3. Linking everything in was a deliberate decision to avoid library incompatibilities. We don’t want people (not all Linux users are experienced users) hunting around for libraries nor do want subtle incompatibilities. If you have a better solution, I’d be interested in that.
4. We have indeed reverse-engineered (with the help of old MSDN docs) the Microsoft Word format (two man-years of work). Our filter is developed in-house, and many beta testers say that it is better than the one in OpenOffice.
5. Antialiasing: Your PNG file shows antialiasing, so I don’t quite understand that comment. We don’t antialias the bitmapped dialog and menu fonts, however (wouldn’t make sense).
6. We can change ~/softmaker to ~/.softmaker in the next beta if this is the general consensus. Is it?
7. MDI will go away over time. In fact, it will probably be user-switchable (separate windows | MDI | tabs).
Send me your bug reports and suggestions or post them here.
Martin Kotulla
Hi Martin,
Thanks for your reply
I’m still a bit confused, does it use Qt? It looks a lot like some Qt apps I’ve seen. I know it’s statically linked, I’m just curious.
As for 3, I’m aware of why you do it. As of today, no, there isn’t a better solution, we just blow goats at managing dependancies. It’s a pet hate of mine, ‘cos I’m working on autopackage, which is designed to let you do distro neutral packages with dependancies. But of course it’s not ready yet, and won’t be for some time.
Just a quick question, if in future there was a way for you to build installers that would do apt-get style dependancy resolution in a nearly bulletproof manner, and that worked on most distros, would you use it? Or would you continue to ship a statically linked binary? I’m busy canvassing opinions from commercial developers on this.
4) Wow, I eat my words. Much respect, I know how hard this is.
5) I meant AA in the GUI. I didn’t realise it only toggled the content area.
6) That’d be good, thanks. In general the de facto standard is that apps store their data in dotfiles or dotdirs, and the only directories the user sees are ones they’ve made themselves. A few apps break this, like evolution, but they tend to get a lot of people shouting at them for it
I’ll definately try this app again when it releases. If it was a straight run between KWord and OpenOffice, I’d probably buy this app in a heartbeat. As it is, it very much depends on how well AbiWord 2 turns out, that should be coming out in a month or two. The competition is strong, but I like your product a lot! Keep up the good work, and good luck!
thanks -mike
How about “SCO Away”?
I realize that the suggested minimum hardware requirements for Lycoris was 500Mhz, 128M RAM, and 4M Video RAM. But, I am posting from the laptop right now; and it is not altogether unresponsive. The hardest thing with it is the keyboard. I am used to ergonomic keyboards, so this laptop keyboard makes my hands feel very cramped.
So, I would say that their suggested hardware requirements is an overkill, and Lycoris provides a very usable desktop environment even on a 266 with 64M memory and a 2M video card.
J$
Thank you for posting your insights about TextMaker. I am heading SoftMaker, and TextMaker is our product. I am VERY interested in all kinds of feedback from FreeBSD and Linux users.
If you want the feedback from many FreeBSD users (include me), just create a native FreeBSD for 4.x and 5.x.
I agree. Recompiling the app for FreeBSD natively is about an afternoon of work (plus the testing time). If you want feedback for it, port it natively. Not everyone has the Linux ABI installed.
Actually, FreeBSD just “happened” on us. Some beta testers reported that TextMaker works with the Linux ABI installed, so we added it to the list of supported systems. But a true FreeBSD port is a very real possibility as we have nearly no operating system dependencies in TextMaker.
TextMaker does not use any third-party UI libraries. Everything is homegrown. In fact, what we do is create an app window on launch and then use it basically as a frame buffer. If it looks like Qt, that’s fake …
TextMaker has been designed this way because the desktop version of TextMaker is also an intermediate step to our client/server version of TextMaker and SoftMaker Office.
Where can I read more about Abiword 2? I was a bit underwhelmed by what I’ve seen so far of Abiword 1.x, so I’d be interested to find out what they have changed.
-Martin
TextMaker does not use any third-party UI libraries. Everything is homegrown.
<rant>
Doh, and here i thought TextMaker looked interesting 🙁 Sorry, but it would have to be A LOT better than any competing product to make me install anything not using either a QT or GTK interface. (one example is Emacs, but it seems like a GTK interface is under development. And it seems like there is a kde frontend for mplayer, and a new music organizer in kde too so i can ditch xmms. Soon my desktop will only have KDE programs, with a few GTK programs as well. Wee)
</rant>
The program itself does look interesting though. I would be quite interested in how well it stacks up against abiword2 (whenever that is released) or kword. IMO kword has a huge advantage though, in that it is tightly integrated with both a spreadsheet, presentation program, and others in the koffice office suite. But i guess a lot of people doesnt need the extra features that gives you.
It is quite impossible to really get an impression of TextMaker from the website though as it is not too informative, and the linux section only has one lowres screenshot.
As to abiword 2, i do share your view upon abiword 1, but it does seem to get better with version 2, once it gets released. I found this mail by doing a google search:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/2003/Jan/0249.htm…
So, looking around a little more i actually managed to find a highres of the screenshot, as well as a screenshot of something named PlanMaker, and it seems like there are other programs underway as well.
So now it already looks a lot more interesting to me
It would have been helpful if this info was at least linked to from the textmaker linux page. (the info is quite hidden in the “office anywhere” section.
My UI suggestions:
– use a better font for the UI (Verdana is actually ugly), let the user chose
– use only one color for the UI (not that shadow stuff), let the user chose
– let the user also chose which icon set should be used. i prefer everaldo’s crystal icons set: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=2539
– create a better “File/Save” and “File/Open” dialog. the one now is not user-friendly. a MS-Windows-like dialog would be better.
…which makes it universally usable. It’s also a very beautiful font.
Hmmm seems like most of the page was taken up with a XP add, and the comments were mostly take up with Visual Studio .PIT add. Seems to me that languages should be free… can you imagine being charged to use English, French, etc… or not being able to invent your own words.
Changing the dialog font is already possible, though there is no dialog for that yet. Place something like the following in the [TML] section of the ofl.ini file:
DlgFont=Times
DlgFontSize=8
Regarding the file dialogs, they are the fallback dialogs that we make work first on a new platform. Later on, we tailor for the specific platform.
The dialogs and controls will look less KDEish if you go to Extras/Preferences and set the dialog style to something else, like (ahem) Windows 95, 98, or even OS/2.
-Martin
I’ll see if I can get some screenies for you. AW2 is a bitch to compile from CVS though. Basically yeah AbiWord 1.2 isn’t so great, but AbiWord 2 has many more features, and a pretty GTK2 GUI.
Anyway, I’ve made some more notes on TextMaker, I’ll send them to you sometime this week.
1. It was pointed out that we should call the directory ~/.softmaker instead of ~/softmaker. As our lead developer pointed out, we save both config files and documents to directories below ~/softmaker (~/softmaker/Config, ~/softmaker/Documents, ~/softmaker/Templates).
Is it really a good idea to dot-hide this directory from users, even though they stored their documents and templates there?
2. I’d be very interested in a library packaging system that allowed me to not statically link libraries, but at the same time force certain versions of the libraries and give the user a way to find these libraries.
3. Yes, screenshots of Abiword 2 would be very nice.
-Martin