“If KDE and GNOME are the Hatfield and McCoy of Open Source graphical desktop environments, then theKompany.com and Ximian are not exactly kissing cousins. But the philosophical beliefs of the two businesses are converging, and the community is settling down to a broader acceptance of commercial software. Assuming computer users choose their desktops before they choose their desktop applications, ostensibly theKompany’s and Ximian’s target markets are non-intersecting sets. But their business practices and philosophies on Open Source have been scrutinized, discussed and compared at length in public.” Read the editorial at NewsForge.
Ximian & theKompany: Converging Doctrines
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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IMO there is nothing wrong with what Ximian is doing. They are selling something they developed from scratch. And I like very much what they did with Gnome – everything still open source.
I cannot speak for KDE because until now I didn’t need to use any KDE/QT based software – that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t however.
The proplem I see in general is that if a company supports/joins an open source project it is easy for them to give it a direction they want because they simply have the manpower. Another issue could be that there is only kind of a demo available open source and one has to buy the real features.
What a pity that there is hardly a way to make a living out of open source (r.i.p. Eazel)
there is no problem with what they are doing. you can get a 100% free (as in freedom) solution if you stick to a total Linux/Unix solution, if you want to integrate into exchange, then you have to pay for the extention. that is it…what is the problem? I see it as a service, nothing more.