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KDE GUI

Formation of the KDE League 156

Posted by CmdrTaco from the solomon-grundy-want-pants dept.
Several folks noted that the KDE team has announced a collaboration with industry, similiar to the GNOME foundation ... it's called the KDE League. If only they can get Green Lantern and Aquagirl to join existing members like TrollTech, Corel, HP, IBM, MandrakeSoft, and SuSE. (Noticably missing from the official press release are names like Red Hat and VA Linux.)
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Formation of the KDE League More

Formation of the KDE League

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  • CmdrTaco not being able to spell

    Any chance we could make a version of Mozilla with a Word-style system such that it underlines misspelled words? I think this would be a good thing in general. Any site could have a special dictionary file with site-specific terms that wouldn't get so underlined.

    Is there a universally recognized format for Unicode that parallels (but hopefully isn't as inconsistent as -- Mac, Unix, and PC all use different end of line indications) ASCII?

  • If you're tired of the old GNOME vs. KDE flamewar, take out your frustration on a friend in GNOME vs. KDE: Battle of the Desktops [8m.com] for the NES. (Get a GPL'd NES emulator for GNU/Linux86 systems with X11 here [simplenet.com].)

    ObTopic: I've tried both (KDE on a Slack box and GNOME on a Red Hat box); they're both quite nice, and they're both Free. The creation of the KDE League (learn to spell, Rob!) and the GNOME Foundation show that there will be friendly competition. This is a Good Thing.

  • Well, you could say that Oslo, Norway, Trolltech's home base is rural, well, it might be in a global perspective, but I really ROTFLed when I read the press release, because among the rather largish companies, there is Klarälvdalens Datakonsult [klaralvdal...konsult.se]. Well, for those who don't know, Klarälvdalen is really rural Sweden. It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, by Swedish standards. Nevertheless, if you happen to love nature, forests, rivers, hunting, etc., like I happen to do, well, it's not bad at all, it could well be the place to be. My uncle lives not too far away, BTW.
  • A) You were talking about the MS Developer subscription thingy for $2500. No, that is not charged per developer like Trolltech does. It's worse! It's charged per CPU! So you have to pay it all over again if you want to work at home.

    B) You can't compare Qt to dev-studio. They do completely different things! dev-studio is an IDE. Qt is a cross-platform GUI toolkit. How hard is it to understand? If you are uninterested in cross-platform development, then at least make the more rational comparison between Qt and MFC. In terms of Qt/MFC, Qt is filet mignon while MFC is chopped liver.

    C) It's perfectly reasonable for you to want to pay zero dollars for the tools you need to create your for-profit software. But that's not reality. If your sole criteria in selecting your tools is initial monetary outlay then by all means don't use Qt. Don't use any microsoft tools either. Stick to tcl/tk.

    D) It's outrageous that I have to spend $7.99 a pound for beef when the charities are giving away cheese, said the chef.
  • Greetings, coder! You have been recruited by the KDE League to defend the frontier from the Windows Armada....


    --
    Never knock on Death's door.
    Ring the doorbell and run
    (He hates that).
  • Yes I have, and while it is a step in the right direction it has a long way to go. I love Linux, but I tire of these stupid wars. All this in fighting over desktop environment and I still can't get a decent email client.

  • See the League write over GF's configuration files right out of package!
    Watch in amazement as Gnomies flood the field with features!
    Feel the heat of battle at the Slashdot Arena!

    What geeks really miss is sports.

    (*urgh* not quite ;)
  • Actually, that's not the angle I'm coming from. The angle I'm coming from is that the GPL prevents commerical companies from writing commerical KDE apps. The LGPL used for the GNOME libraries allows commerical apps. If those are your choices, and you write commerical apps...

  • Re:What is going on? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    what is wrong with people trying to get money for their work? doh!
  • lol, I just spent a moment translating your name into decimal. Nice work!

    :-)

    Oh, and QT/Embedded looks pretty cool. I just picked up the O'Reilly "Learning QT" book, and I'm sort of excited that I'll be able to code for handhelds/embedded systems pretty soon.

    I'm even considering writing a car stereo system/GPS/wireless mobile internet system with QT Embedded as the GUI, since I'll probably be able to hand select the hardware, and I don't really need super high resolution for it.

  • Well, this is not strange as their latest distro includes both KDE2 and HelixGNOME...

    In fact, Im pretty sure thats one of the reasons of their distro being so popular lately...

    They used to be "RedHat+KDE+bugfixes" but now they've moved on to offer a full-fledged distro, with original software of their own, not just correcting RedHats mistakes.

  • All this talk about tights and masks is turning me on.
  • Mandrakesoft isn't the only member of both. Compaq, HP, IBM, & TurboLinux are also in both.
  • Wow, I hand't heard. This is really big news. When did Microsoft Open-Source windows?

    Seriously, though, what makes you think that this alliance is solely, or even primarily, aimed at out-marketing GNOME? From what (little) I have seen, the KDE folk, or at least the core developers, tend to treat GNOME by ignoring it as much as humanly possible. Basically, they just don't care. This seems to be a very sane approach, especially compared with the vitriol that I have seen from the GNOME core. Serious Open Source users know about KDE/KDE 2 and don't need any more info or propaganda (which is very unlikely to change their viewpoint, anyway). If I were influential in the KDE league, I know I would be aiming squarely at newbies who are still a little lost, to present the options to them more than anything else, and Windows users who would love to escape, but don't know how.
  • TurboLinux is a member, at it is strongest in Asia. Asia is located outside US last I checked.

  • Not so similar to Gnome Foundation (Score:4)

    by jdfox ( 74524 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @06:37AM (#622322)
    The Gnome Foundation [gnome.org] oversees Gnome development, whereas the KDE League is a single point of contact for marketing: it exists to "provide financial, moral and promotional support to KDE", to quote the PR, and promises to leave development as a freely-coordinated effort of the developers. Both groups are useful entities IMO, although ISTM a bit ironic that the one with reportedly larger market share on the desktop is launching a marketing initiative. :) I am curious as to how the League was formed: were there elections, as for Gnome Foundation and FreeBSD Core Team? There is, unfortunately, no further info on the KDE League's website [kdeleague.org] just yet.
  • I feel the same way about the GNOME Foundation. I don't understand why free projects need these silly corporate steering and promotion committees. Why not let people choose on the merits of the system, not the hype surrounding it? I moved away from Windows as my primary desktop OS at home years ago before all the damn hype started. Although Linux is arguably a better and more feature-rich OS today, I liked the community back then a lot better.

    I got involved developing for KDE because of it's technical merits and ease of programming. I think having big name companies with a bottom line handle PR for projects like KDE and GNOME as a bad thing.

    "Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
  • Why does debian not have kde on dselect, but it does have gnome?

    seriously, I have been wondering this.

  • WRONG (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The goals of the KDE League and the GNOME Foundation are quite different. The GNOME Foundation is a "steering committee". It's elected board is responsible for deciding the future of GNOME development, coordinating GNOME releases, deciding which projects are part of GNOME, and more. The KDE League exists solely to promote and educate -- it does not "steer" KDE development in any way.

    Here's another way to think of it: The GNOME Foundation is very similar in goals and structure to the Apache Foundation. KDE League, on the other hand, is much more like Linux International

    So both are different things ...
  • A non-profit IPO? That doesn't even make sense.

    Did you read the release?

    I think it's... cool. It's very different from the GNOME Foundation in that it does not affect development. Development will go on the way it always did, and members can contribute if they wish, but the KDE League is specifically for PR only.

    Also, Ettrich did not set up a company as an attempt to make money from KDE like certain other people...

  • Competition may or may not be a good thing (Score:5)

    by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @06:38AM (#622327) Homepage

    There are two possible ways to compete:

    • Each side tries to excel. Third parties benefit as the available software gets better and better.
    • Each side tries to whack the other side, spread FUD, make the other side look bad. Systems become incompatible with each other and people get locked into one side or the other. Third parties lose.

    This one could go either way. Remember BSD vs System V, then System V vs OSF, and Open Look vs Motif? All these battles just about killed the Unix market in favor of Windows; fortunately Linux and BSD came along to put new life into Unix.

    If the Gnome and KDE folks are interested in way #1, then they will put substantial energy in making sure that KDE apps work well on a Gnome desktop and vice versa, and they will avoid the nasty attacks on the other side we so commonly see Example: when the Gnome Foundation was created it was bitterly attacked by many KDE partisans as something terribly immoral, yet now we see the KDE League, a roughly identical operation. Now, there's nothing wrong with either one, so it was the attacks that were bogus.

  • Yup, but the guy that runs that is a person you should address your word to with a lot of respect, you know? It's the guy that made StarOffice for Linux possible, it's one of the main developers of KDE, it's a person you'd be proud if he addressed your word to you. Well... Poking fun is nicer than thinking a bit.
  • 932 vs 89 - are you guys like old men or something?

    89 is his message ID, not his user ID. In Slashdot terms, I'm definitely a geezer, however.

    A spell-checker would probably be a turn-on, turn-off kind of thing, meant for making it easier for companies to review their sites and find the most egregious errors. Given Slashdot's "creative" spelling, making it easier to do this is a Good Thing.

    I'd like a similar button for displaying/not displaying images. That would have utility not just for webmasters (who could more easily review their site for utility for the blind), but also for speeding up page views.
  • we could care less about our desktop.

    Please do not say "could care less" when you mean "couldn't care less". It just makes you look ideotic.

  • I find it amazing that you Americans can take a message as crystal clear as the KDE League PR announcement and re-cast it as something completely different.

    That's funny, I find it amazing that you can fail to see the parallels between the Gnome Foundation and the KDE League. I mean really, your whole post reminds me of a Monty Python skit. Do you really think that these corporations are going to throw money at the KDE project without getting any control back in return? At the very least the people running these corporations employ the current KDE developers. That implies a certain amount of control right there.

    A talent which is clearly evident when looking at the radically different and facile interpretation of events as portrayed by the two sides of the Presidential election campaign over Florida's' vote. Highly embarrassing for you. Sheer entertainment for the rest of the world. Oh how the mighty fall !!

    Politics in America are fun, and not only for Europeans. However, before you laugh too much at our expense remember that America is not the first country in the world where we have had close election results. Unlike most other countries where something like this happens, however, a close election will not destroy the system. Eventually we will have a President, and that will be the end of the matter (until the next election). In a lot of other countries people would be stockpiling food and making sure that their weapons were loaded and ready.

    Heck, in many parts of Europe there is more trouble after a football match than has been caused by this election. Arguing is part of the American system in much the same way that public arguing is an important part of the Open Source movement.

    You just WANT the KDE League to be like the GNOME Foundation! That way it 1) gets you off the hook, and 2) gives you some ammunition to throw at the KDE folks about U turns and such.

    The fact that the KDE League closely resembles the Gnome Foundation (the differences are semantics) does not get me off the hook, nor does it give me ammunition. I don't happen to think that hypocrisy is not a particularly big deal. When the Gnome Foundation was announced, the KDE folks said some rash things, and made some hasty promises. However, they have now realized that the Gnome Foundation can afford to throw an order of magnitude more firepower at the problem of a Universal Unix desktop than the disparate KDE developers can. In order for KDE to be able to compete they are going to need the sort of corporate support, marketing, and developer help that the Gnome Foundation affords Gnome.

    Now KDE has it, and that's a good thing. I just am not naive enough to pretend that the KDE League isn't exactly what the KDE developers said was bad about the Gnome Foundation. The fact of the matter is that these companies are going to make marketing promises, and the KDE developers are going to have to comply, or these companies are going to hire someone who will comply. In other words, the only difference between this alliance and the Gnome Foundation is that there aren't probably going to be hackers on the board of the KDE League.

  • This not just about crushing Gnome, this is about promoting KDE to all the desktop users which isn't using KDE - most of these are Windows users.

    Greetings Joergen
  • It doesn't seem childish at all to me. It seems more like yet another sign of the Ascendancy of Linux. And even if it was only childish rivalry, well, at least it's the good kind - the kind that gets things done. And it comes with some free positive press too. A no-lose scenario.

  • So where on TrollTech's page can I buy a KDE CD? No T-shirts or stuffed dragons either. (Yes, I know some of these things are available elsewhere, but not through Troll Tech)

    HelixCode sells GNOME and GNOME accesories.

    Trolltech sells QT. KDE is a powerful example of the kind of software you can make under QT. They fund it's development for that reason but does not sell it.

    That's the difference.
  • The fact is that, right now, Qt is QPL/GPL while Gtk+ is LGPL. Eazel's business model doesn't change that. And I see no problem with either Eazel or KDE distributing GPL'ed applications. At issue is the license of the underlying toolkit.

    For many kinds of libraries, assuming that funding is needed at all, I would agree with your statement that Troll Tech's business model is the most plausible one and may represent the best compromise. But for something as central and as well understood as GUI libraries, it seems unnecessary to make that compromise because there are alternatives.

    Big players like Sun and RedHat have an intrinsic interest in seeing a high quality set of GUI libraries available on Linux platforms to make Linux a viable platform and increase its adoption. Those companies make their money from systems sales, not supporting a GUI library. Therefore, they can (and apparently do) afford supporting Gnome/Gtk as a free toolkit even for commercial applications.

    As for all the scenarios you paint, I don't see a problem at all. Gtk is LGPL, and that can't be taken back. Mozilla is MPL. If people build, in accordance with the license, commercial software based on free software and you don't like the commercial software, just don't use it. If Troll Tech released Qt under the MPL and built a commercial browser with lots of banner ads on it, that would be just fine with me.

    I actually also have serious doubts that big commercial funding is really needed at the toolkit level (it may be needed at the application level). There are probably half a dozen well-designed GUI toolkits besides Qt and Gtk out there. The issue is really one of market share and acceptance.

  • Damn, Taco..., (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's what I was thinking!

    "The KDE League of America"--it looks remarkably like the "Evil Legion of Windows", except with cooler costumes. Unfortunately, "The GNOME League of Justice" still has even cooler costumes.

    Where do I sign up???
  • >But the KDE/Qt license (GPL/QPL), while better
    >than a pure GPL, is simply not commercially
    >competitive

    If you look at just the initial investment - sure, nothing beats "no cost" (except subsidies). But with information sciences, you simply do not look at initial investment and then write this off. Information (a class library) is a non-perishable good, so you exploit this - forever. IOW, you *once* have an investment of USD 1500 which can amortized over the whole life-time of of your company (in the extreme).

    Ignoring the assumption of a going concern, let's assume that you benefit from such a licence for two years. That makes the licence costs approximately USD 13 per week. And these USD 13 per week are *easily* offset by cost savings due to quality of the library: spare a single developer 15 minutes of his time per week, and your cost has been amortized.

    It is widely acknowledged that the quality of QT is exceptional, so saving these 15 minutes of developer time per week is peanuts, compared to horrible "no cost" libraries.

    FWIW, if you talk investment, you need to go all the way.
  • I suppose calling it a "league" instead of a "foundation" makes it better...considering the flak the KDE people sent GNOME's way when the GNOME Foundation started, I hope they're eating lots of crow right now. Reading the press release, I see little to differentiate between the GNOME Foundation and the KDE League except, of course, that KDE League members are apparently supposed to abstain from KDE development.
  • Down with the peoples, reform the system.
  • Maybe they want do something new

    Giving there users a choice.
  • Guy Gardner would be just the type of GL to join the KDE Legaue.
  • To the rescue, here comes the KDE League!

    In their headquarters deep within the earth's crust, they debate the future of the world's most windows-like Linux window manager.

    www.ridiculopathy.com [ridiculopathy.com]

  • You mean they weren't talking about Wayne Chrebet?
  • How is this mocking KDE? When I saw the name "KDE League", that's the exact joke *I* thought of too, and I'm a KDE supporter. (If any one cares, I've been using KDE since KDE 1.0beta2) "League" is just so superhero-esque, the joke springs to the American mind.

    As for spelling, it's tue tat Slshdot is bade abut typoes, but this has been pointed out quite enough by now.

    --Lenny
  • I can't believe they called it a Leage and not a Kouncil, a Konfederation, or a Ko-operative.

    BTW, I know this is OT, but am I the only one who's a little bit disappointed with KDE-2.0?
  • I belive im talking about STARTING the software, daily use
    runs fine.


    ETRN x
  • Only TWO large political parties in your country, and you call yourself a democracy ;-?

    Over here we've got FIVE, and I can't remember when any of them had a majority. They have to for m two or three party coalisions to form a government and it seems to work ok.

    Johan V.
  • yet now we see the KDE League, a roughly identical operation

    Not really, the KDE League exists mainly to spread the word and act as a marketing organization, which KDE never really had. The League is not a steering commitee and has no impact on the coding part of KDE (other than the fact that anyone is still welcome to contribute code). I'm not saying that one is better than the other (although I am a happy KDE user), but I think the comparisons are unjustified. GNOME put together a steering commitee and KDE got some extra marketing power.
  • Back in the late eighties, UNIX was a spreaded bunch of various corporate OSes.

    ATT & Sun joined together to create a so-called "standard" UNIX around System V release 4. They took the guts of NeWS out, and used the GUI to create a toolkit for X called OpenLook.

    All other vendors, feeling threatened by this collaboration, created the Open Software Foundation. The OSF response to OpenLook was Motif.

    All of this ended with lots and lots of incompatible OSes and produced nothing but developers disinterest in producing desktop applications either for OpenLook or Motif.

    Now, I wonder what's the agenda of the so-called open source corporate backers. History is repeating guys. Aren't you seeing that, yet?!

    --
  • It's perfectly understandable why Redhat didn't join. Not only were they the first to publicly declare distributors of KDE to be criminals (they have since retracted their allegations), they also fund a good portion of GNOME development. And VA Linux tends to blow in the same breeze as Redhat.

    Who cares if VAL and RH aren't members of a KDE league? What difference would it make?
  • Standards have to be set somewhere. Two political parties and two DE's are not the same. You can switch political parties without totally restructuring the country. Switch DE's and you might as well be running a different OS.
  • the KDE League is nothing at all like the Gnome foundation. At all. We will never create something like the Gnome foundation, ever.

    The KDE League is just a glorified PR department for KDE. I for one know that KDE needs it.
  • When we vote for the President of Linux, are we going to do away with the electoral college?
  • Yes, in open source world any competition is a healthy competition, which leads to better quality and quick development of software (for the sake of competition). In closed source world (aka proprietary world), both the competitors tries to demolish each other; so, here only one survives. I strongly believe that Both Gnome and KDE will not just survive but also develop into one of THE BEST Desktop Environments aiding each other like friends...:-)
  • I use beanix. It's a lesser known *NIX variant. It runs on Coffee.
  • Thanks. Maybe next time I'll troll logged-in, just for you.


    All generalizations are false.

  • Anyone want to join my CTWM republic? I am taking memberships now. The price schedule is as follows:
    • "Right to code" Membership: $1,000,000 US
    • Gold Membership: $100,000 US
    • Silver Membership: $50,000 US
    • Bronze Membership: $10,000 US
    • Regular Membership: $10 Canadian
    • Unfashionable Membership: free
    Sure it sounds like a lot of money, but hey as we all know CTWM is the one true desktop [ctwm.dl.nu]. Those bloated KDE and GNOME products simply don't match the power and speed of a well configured CTWM! So join IBM, Microsoft and Apple in supporting the CTWM REPUBLIC!(*).

    (*) this particular sentence is a lie, the rest is true...mostly... what is definitely true is that I personally prefer CTWM to all those other inferior desktop systems

  • So, basically what you are saying is that somebody sent an email saying that they wouldn't have an elected governing board and now they DON'T have an elected governing board? Excellent investigative reporting there! Yeah, remember when Linus said they were going to have devfs included in 2.4? Guess what, they do! But man, that promise seems fairly disingenuous now, I don't think I can believe another word he says.

  • One Word (Score:3)

    by DAldredge ( 2353 ) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @06:43AM (#622359) Journal
    Amazon.Com

    And you say non-profit IPOs don't make sense!
  • When are we going to see the XFce [xfce.org] Alliance and the Enlightenment [enlightenment.org] Confederacy?
  • The GNOME Foundation is formed with the notable absence of plenty of Linux companies, and Taco says hooray... The KDE League is formed with the notable absence of Red Hat and VA, and Taco poo poos the thing.

    You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth, Malda. But hey, at least you didn't beg people not to flame you this time. I guess you decided after the last "I'm flaming but please don't flame me back" comment you made (I think it was when the Caldera/SCO merger was announced) that you really deserve to be treated the same way you treat others. I'll give you that much credit.
  • If your product is closed source, indeed, you need to pay, but you will have to look for sympathy elsewhere.

    Yeah, they'll look for sympathy elsewhere alright: it's called GNOME. GNOME is under the LGPL, making it perfect for companies that want to develope software - and that's why, even though KDE is nicer and better than GNOME, it is currently doomed to fail as a viable desktop.

    Let's say that Company A wants to write Product B for Linux, so they look at their options: KDE (Qt), GNOME (GTK+), Motif. What are they going to choose? More than likely, they'll go with the free one - GTK+, meaning GNOME. That's why the GNOME Foundation was first - because it is commerically viable to produce programs for that environment.

    To give you some perspective, it costs a third-party application vender around $500 per developer to write programs for Windows - that's assuming they decide to use MS DevStudio (I think you can get just Visual C++ for around $250 - and that is literally everything you need to write for Windows). If you pay around $2500 a year, then MS gives you a damn sweet deal, sending the developer

    • A copy of all MS current operating systems (right now, that's Win98, Win98SE, WinNT4.0 SP6, Win2000, Win ME).
    • A copy of all MS developement software (IE, DevStudio Enterprise Ed.)
    • A copy of all MS Office software (that's right, it includes Office 2000)
    • The entire Knowledge Base on CD/DVD
    • The entire MS library documentation

    In other words, writing commercial software for Microsoft OSes is actually cheaper then writing for Qt!

    Compare: MSDN subscription overview [microsoft.com], Trolltech licencing [trolltech.com].

    If you still think this doesn't matter, think again - it is very important from a commerical software house's point of view.

  • Has anyone else noticed at how much duplication efforts there are going on between kde and GNOME? The panels are starting to look like each others. The filemanger icons are starting to look like each others. What they really need is the KDE to gnome integrationfoundation. Yes you can have different window managers and desktops, but how much code is being duplicated here. The difference is only C or C++ in some cases. Hey kde has 2 editors kwrite and kedit. They are almost identical. I hope that by kde 2.1 they finish merging those two into one. It's silly to have 2 editors that are that much identical in 1 desktop.

    Think about it.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • Ups...that wasn't to well formulated, sorry about that.

    English isn't my native language...

    Greetings Joergen
  • I hope you remember your bold statements when the next /. news come about eazels business model and integration with nautilus and that of this other gnome company, from miguel "can't spell his surname" (really). In fact, Eazels plans reminds me a little bit of the well it's-for-free-so-put-up-with-the-Ads Netscape Navigator.
    You know what? These are companies and they have to make money...

    Inherently every open source business modell is dependent on a more widespread usage of it's target software than closed source companies, because essentially they charge for service.
    So get over it, please, and don't criticize troll as if they had a secret super plan to rip of poor open source developers like yourself.

    Oh, and to get an idea why companies might WANT to pay for a toolkit (let aside troll's excellent,guaranted support - they ain't MS), you should consider the story with enlightenment. Rasterman just wanted the development of his pet peeve to go in another direction as red hat, so he left.
    Would E have been an very essential part (library) of redhats systems, they might have have been in for some trouble.
    With QT borland/inprise are in the position of customers, and they know that troll should better not go into esoteric directions with their development.
    DISCLAIMER: The above shall not be FUD against gtk, but instead decribe that in the viewpoint of a company paying for the toolkit may have positive points.

  • Re:The League is NOT the same as the Foundation!!! (Score:3)

    by drivers ( 45076 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @06:48AM (#622380)
    The GNOME Foundation is governed by a community elected group, which makes decisions over GNOME's direction. The corporations form a separate advisory committee that has no power.

    In the KDE League, the corps have equal power to the developers, but the League has no power over the development direction of KDE. It is more of a P.R. campaign, which is still a good idea considering all the questions that were raised by the appearance of all the corps lining up behind GNOME.

    You are right, they are not alike at all, and neither are something to be concerned about. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding between the two camps. Some people in KDE circles spread a lot of FUD about the GNOME foundation, and I think it's going to come back to haunt them now.

  • > Why does debian not have kde on dselect

    It does (see http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11 /)! [debian.org]
    It's just that it's in the unstable branch since KDE has only recently been packaged up for Debian, since until recently KDE was not Free enough for Debian's policies.

    So, down the line KDE will appear in Debian stable, but only after any emerging package issues are sorted.

    -~ ~- -~ ~-
  • And then there are those of us who continue to use Feeble (fvm), because it works and we could care less about our desktop.

    --

  • OMG (Score:2)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    That's the funniest thing I've seen on Slashdot in a long time!
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • What exactly is the purpose of the KDE foundation?

    The GNOME foundation is easy for me to understand, it is a means for companies with talented teams of developers to contribute to the GNOME project, similar to the way IBM works with Open Source developers on the Apache project and has many members on the Apache Foundation's steering comittee (if it's called that) and Netscape works with Mozilla and has a lot of it's developers guiding Mozilla's development. In fact the GNOME press release [gnome.org] expressly states that it is modelled after the Apache Foundation

    On the other hand, the KDE foundation makes very little sense to me. KDE is an Open Source project, not a commercial endeavour, so why does it need a huge multi-corporation PR-team? Interestingly the KDE press release [kde.org] goes out of its way to state that this is merely a marketing (i.e. propoganda) machine. I'm sorry but I'm a developer, and the idea of an Open Source project forming large ties with commercial entities for the express purpose of out-marketting another Open Source project feels awkward and doesn't sit right with me.

    Am I the only one that is slightly disturbed by this?

    Second Law of Blissful Ignorance

  • Re:Lets not forget the underdogs (Score:3)

    by jfunk ( 33224 ) <jfunk@roadrunner.nf.net> on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @07:18AM (#622392) Homepage
    One of the startup tips in KDE2 recommends trying out UDE [sourceforge.net]. I thought that was pretty cool.

    I highly doubt there will be a UDE Clan, though.
  • "...commercial users..need to pay $1500/developer..."

    No, users don't have to pay to use KDE or Qt. Perhaps you meant proprietary commercial developers. There's a big difference.

    "that's more than people pay for a very complete, industry-standard Microsoft development environment."

    It's also more than a bag of peanuts, and has about the same relevance. The standard MS development environment is a compiler and a non-portable flaky foundation class. On the other hand, Qt is a high quality cross-platform GUI library. It's apples and oranges. A simple recompile and your application works on any Unix and any Windows. If you want to compare prices, compare Qt with other quality cross-platform GUI libraries. Or compare the price of VC++ with g++.

    "Under its current license, I think KDE/Qt will be harmful to both free software and the commercial acceptance of free software."

    I fully agree with you that a LGPL or BSD licensed Qt would be better for the developer. But the typical proprietary commercial developer can easily afford a proprietary license. A commercial developer should be making at *least* $50,000 a year. $1500 for tools on that kind of salary is perfectly reasonable.

    Qt is Free Software for Free Software developers, Open Source for Open Source developers, and proprietary for proprietary developers. Although I think it would be better for them to release under the BSD license, I cannot argue that this is inequitable.
  • If you pay around $2500 a year, then MS gives you a damn sweet deal, sending the developer

    • A copy of all MS current operating systems
    • A copy of all MS developement software
    • A copy of all MS Office software
    • The entire Knowledge Base on CD/DVD
    • The entire MS library documentation


    For $1500 on Qt Professional, plus $2 to $50 for a Linux or BSD distribution, you get
    • A copy of the current operating system
    • A copy of Qt Profession cross-platform GUI toolkit
    • Copies of standard Unix development tools, including gcc/g++, gdb, make, autoconf, cvs and more
    • A complete development environment, including KDevelop, Konqueror, Cervisia and more
    • A complete office environment, include KOffice, Gnumeric, AbiWord, StarOffice, etc.
    • Access to the complete OS documentation
    • Access to the complete development documentation
    • Access to the complete Qt documentation
    • Access to mailing lists devoted to Unix, C++ or Qt
    • Much, much more...


  • I think you are getting the Gnome Foundations advisory board mixed up with the voting members of the Gnome Foundation. The members of the Gnome Foundation are those who are involved in the Gnome project. Anyone who is involved in the Gnome Project can be a member. In other words, the people involved in the Gnome Project decide what direction the project goes in.
    ----
  • GNOME's sole existence is to outmarket KDE. It was started from day one with this purpose.

    That is absolutely incorrect. Gnome's purpose is to deliver an outstanding, free desktop and developent environment and applications for all purposes. Not only is it not Gnome's sole purpose to outmarket KDE, it isn't even in the agenda list.
    ----

  • Imageine:

    The KDE League/GNOME Foundation crossover, where a portal is opened between two parallel developer communities so that they may avvert the Mighty Siesmic Network!

    Preorders availbale now, comic on shelves June 2001.

    -- Crutcher --
    #include <disclaimer.h>

  • KDE is nifty (Score:3)

    by 11223 ( 201561 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @06:54AM (#622406)
    KDE2 is really nice - it no longer looks like a Windows clone, but actually sort of reminds me of the SGI desktop now.

    Speaking of that, anybody from SGI want to comment on why their best piece of software, their desktop environment, is still closed source? I'll do anything to get that on my Linux box!

  • Gnome is alive and well, having founded the GNOME Foundation, which many Linux and Unix manufacturers have joined including Red Hat, VA Linux, Sun, Compaq, and IBM.

    Many users think of these desktops as mutually exclusive but actually KDE and GNOME, when installed, can expose their APIs when the other is running. (It is not about the llok and feel, folks, it is about the API's.)

    With Sun announcing that GNOME will be the desktop in future versions of Solaris, we may see a uniform set of APIs for graphical Unix programming.

  • Does anyone know if any PDA people are involved with this?

    Does KDE have any plans for the QT Embedded environment [trolltech.com]?

    Mirror of QT Embedded is here:
    http://www.flyingbuttmonkeys.com/mirrors/ftp.troll tech.com/qt/embedded/ [flyingbuttmonkeys.com]

    ________________________________________
  • Is it anything like the Justice League? Are they all going to sit in a high-tech building in tights and masks fighting crime?
  • With KDE/Qt, they need to pay $1500/developer; that's more than people pay for a very complete, industry-standard Microsoft development environment.

    You're forgetting the cost of the OS license, the Client Access License, the Office 97 license, the Anti-virus software license, the time wasted on crashes, and the fact that you can only develop for one platform. $1500 is all you'll pay for a true cross-platform toolkit which GTK is not.
  • Well PR is not necessarily promoting KDE against Gnome or Gnome against KDE. It can just promote a Linux desktop.

    For example some smaller countries are very much interested in having a desktop which is available in their language - it's very helpful when people there learn that KDE supports it. (Assuming it does. :^)

    It could also help to promote Linux to people who aren't up to date on the quality of Linux desktops today.
  • It might not be a coincidence that in most democratic countries there are exactly TWO large political parties.

    It is probably not a coincidence that the open source world has TWO major desktop environments.

    2 is the smallest number larger than 1.

    Would you like to live in a country where there is just ONE large political party?


    ----
  • I swear it...doesn't MS own 1/4th of Corel??? So, they are part of this "Legion of Doom"?

    Geez, the damn moderation is ridiculous, and I can believe you don't know this cuz you are all over this site...FUD? I think it's a real concern.

  • Are they planning to capitalize on their efforts and whip out an IPO in short order? I smell consulting fees...

    --

  • ...from /. POV of the world is anything outside the US. SuSE is way more popular in Europe than RedHat is here. And I am sorry, but VA despite being y'all's employer is completely irrelevant. VA could go away tomorrow and with the exception of SourceForge noone would be the wiser.

    The KDE League means that we're back to square 1: competition and flame wars galore. I say that's a good thing --the competition part.


  • This was nice to see. It goes to plenty of businesses automatically...
    http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.c gi?day0/203202285&ticker=
  • What are they going to choose?

    If they're smart, they'll choose whatever will allow them to write the best software the quickest, whichever it may be. If a company isn't willing to invest $1000-2000 in something as crucial to developer productivity as a toolkit, either they have incredibly poor business sense or the product is expected to generate so little revenue they'd be better off GPL'ing it and trying to make money from some Eric Raymond voodoo.

    As an aside, I've long been irritated by the constant assertions that the restrictions of the GPL constitute freedom. I'm happy to see that break down -- I should have realized that only the release of Qt under the GPL could cause Slashbots to change their tune to, "I don't want to use a GPL library! It's not free!

  • SuSE is way more popular in Europe than RedHat is here.

    I'm sorry, but saying that is also a bad generalization. Red Hat, Mandrake and Debian is rather popular in Scandinavia, at least in Sweden, and I think the number of Red Hat users far excels the number of SuSE users here.

    SuSE is incredibly popular in Germany and Austria but I don't think that counts as "whole Europe".

  • Fuck'em all, I want my tw(v)m [x.org] Coalition!
    --
  • I've got the press release afront me and I see the following companies listed:

    Borland, Caldera, Compaq, Corel, Fujitsu-Siemens,
    Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, KDE.com, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult, theKompany.com, Mandrakesoft, SuSE, Trolltech and TurboLinux.

    Now, this organization is with companies that either GET it or ARE it. This org isn't controlling development, but promoting application.

    And YES, I am a KDE partisan. However, this should not degenerate into a contest where KDE gets 48% of the vote, the Gnome gets 47.5%, and Other gets the rest, and everyone bitches about a recount.

    (Besides, I am happy with KDE. I can use the file manager to surf without a) much overhead (useful on a laptop); b) releasing everything about the browser and system; c) no risk of Java; d) complete cookie control. Tee hee hee.)
  • Leaving aside the issues of "free software philosophy", look at what kind of business proposition this comes down to for commercial users of Linux. If they develop for Gnome/Gtk+ (or wxWindows, or any of a number of other free toolkits) all they need is a free copy of Linux to get their developers working. With KDE/Qt, they need to pay $1500/developer; that's more than people pay for a very complete, industry-standard Microsoft development environment.

    And what interest does a commercial vendor have in supporting KDE and Troll Tech? RedHat won't see a dime of Troll Tech's revenue stream; they'd simply be investing a lot of money in marketing someone else's product, and they'd be increasing the cost for their customers to adopt their own product. Everybody who uses or supports Qt ultimately primarily contributes to the commercial interests of Troll Tech: increasing their market share and improving their commercial product.

    I think KDE2 is technically quite well done. But the KDE/Qt license (GPL/QPL), while better than a pure GPL, is simply not commercially competitive when there are half a dozen of reasonable and LGPL or BSD toolkits around. Ideally, RedHat or some other open source company would buy out Troll Tech and put Qt under the LGPL or a BSD license. Under its current license, I think KDE/Qt will be harmful to both free software and the commercial acceptance of free software.

  • okay, someone mod this down because I'm pointing out that Microsoft owns 1/4th of Corel, which is a partner in this and a major player in ms.NET


  • wrongo. you have to buy a pro license for any commercial development, which is, as the author said, $1500+

    not to mention the issues with the qt inlined header code, which many think make qt unusable as an lgpl library.

  • ...when's the first annual KDE Draft? Is this going to be on ESPN? I can see it now: "Live from the illustrious Caesar's Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, it's the 2001 KDE League Draft. Each team has fifteen minutes to make its first selection. The draft order was selected from a hat. TrollTech is on the clock." [thirteen minute pause for effect, airtime filled by Mel Kiper talking about coder's skills in the 40-line dash] "TrollTech selects Matthias Ettrich, library coder from Oslo, Norway." [cheers from the crowd]
    --
  • With the the announcement on Linux Weekly News yesterday that MandrakeSoft had joined the Gnome Foundation, will they be a mediator between the two groups? One could only hope this would help the two groups collaborate more...

  • The rivalry between the GNOME and KDE people is getting even sillier now that a hint of corporate money has entered the equation. Sure, GNOME was originally created because people didn't like that KDE wasn't "free" enough for them, but it had looked like it was all dying down recently, and talk had even begun of more integration between the two desktops.

    And now what happens? GNOME gets some corporate backing and shortly after, KDE follows with this! I can see why KDE felt that they needed to follow this move by GNOME, but at the same time the whole thing stinks of childish rivalry. Are we going to return to the days of sniping and put-downs?

    Sure, more choice is generally a good thing, but the ongoing farce of GNOME vs. KDE (which is what they seem to be making it into) is a joke that makes Linux look rediculous. There is plenty of room out there for both desktops, yet they each spend as much time playing games of oneupmanship as they do promoting their own product.

    At least some companies have the sense to keep their heads down and stand on the sidelines. Nothing good can come of this antagonistic situation.

  • Hmm... wait.. don't forget, that's $1500 per developer - it's not a one-time cost. Compare with: GNOME.

    Cost: nothing. (Maybe $2 for CDs...)

    Grab a Debian CD, install it on a box, and you can write commerical GTK+ apps. That's it. Complete. Compare with KDE - $1500 a developer? For a five-man team, you're at $7500!!!

    Compare with Microsoft's licensing terms - same five-man team with comparitive tools (ie, just the dev-studio, since that's all the $1500 covers) comes in at around $2500.

    All I'm trying to say is that for commerical apps, Qt is worse than Microsoft! And since GTK+ developement is even cheaper (ie, $0 in licensing fees), it stands to reason, from a commerical point of view, that GNOME is a more commerically viable platform to develop for than KDE.

    The other fun point is that products developed for MS platforms are automatically potentially more viable than those developed for any Linux desktop - there's more of a market. By using Qt, KDE is forcing commerical developers to GNOME. What that means in the end is anyone's guess.

  • Yeah, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you if you actually believe that. A PR organization like the KDE League is nothing more than a steering committee with nothing but suits sitting on the board. Either that, or it's a large bag of hot gas, a complete waste of time.

    Honestly, the list of members of the KDE League sounds like the who's who's of the primary KDE developer's employers. These people are looking to sell KDE, and you can bet they are going to use their leverage to get what they want from the developers. In other words the KDE League is going to be exactly like the Gnome Foundation (except for the fact that Miguel de Icaza, a bonafied hacker, sits on the Gnome Foundation board). Otherwise I can see the ad copy now:

    "We don't know what are hackers are doing, but we are fairly sure it will be cool. You should buy it."

    You can bet that the KDE League wasn't formed so that they could share that message with the world.

  • A PR Organization is nothing more that a steering committee without any hackers on it. The KDE League will make promises (like any good marketing department), and the KDE hackers will have to make good on those promises or the companies that have hired them will find someone else to do it for them.

    You did notice that the list looked like a who's who of KDE developer employers, didn't you?

    If you want to believe that there is a huge difference between a bunch of corporations getting together and "marketing" software, and a whole bunch of corporations getting together to "develop" software, well then, I suppose you can live in your little chunk of reality. Say hello to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for me while you are there. I don't get to visit La-La Land very often.

  • Re:What is going on? (Score:5)

    by pointwood ( 14018 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .voksmarj.> on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @07:50AM (#622446) Homepage
    Sure, more choice is generally a good thing, but the ongoing farce of GNOME vs. KDE (which is what they seem to be making it into) is a joke that makes Linux look rediculous. There is plenty of room out there for both desktops, yet they each spend as much time playing games of oneupmanship as they do promoting their own product.

    What farce are you talking about?
    If there is a farce, then it has only been here on /. - the core KDE Team (and the core GNOME Team) has mostly just quietly been hacking away, making the best desktop environment!

    This is not about making GNOME look silly - I bet it is more about promoting KDE to ex. Windows users and others. The more publishty Linux gets, the more KDE (and GNOME) will get - this will give the press a single place to go for information about KDE.

    Greetings Joergen
  • seriously, i think there are only something like 5-6 people on the entire planet that can parse, consider and understand what you wrote without screaming "flame" or "troll".

    There are still very real legal issues with KDE/qt, and a lot of people just want to wish them away.

  • One could only hope this would help the two groups collaborate more...

    That sure would be nice, but it is going to be difficult to archieve. Futhermore, the KDE League has *nothing* to do with the development of KDE, it is only about pr (as stated other places and pretty clearly in the press release!).

    Greetings Joergen
  • There are two possible ways to compete

    Hey, you left out the Microsoft way to "compete". Cut off your competition's oxygen so that they just disappear.

    You also didn't mention lawsuits. :-)
  • God'damn... Can't you read what is said. The KDE League is NOT like the GNOME Foundation. The GNOME Foundation is a steering comittee that decides in which direction GNOME is going. The KDE League has NOTHING to do with KDE Development, that is clearly said in the press-release. The KDE League is for PR ONLY!!! Please do not fall into assumptions that this is the same as the GNOME Foundation... Could you please change your article?
  • We're gonna concentrate on making the best possible desktop for users. Let Gnome have their corporate backing. Look what happened to CDE. We don't need no corporatations giving ---

    -- Oops! I take it back. Corporations are cool!

    --------------------
    satire from arenn who proudly works in a large company

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