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GNOME GUI

Eazel On The Ropes 217

Posted by timothy from the righteous-eye-candy-in-danger dept.
update() writes: "The SFGate has an article on Eazel. It's the usual color-by-numbers piece (embedded MP3 playing; Andy Hertzfeld is a genius) but with one new piece -- without new funding, the company has a month to go before running out of money." Particularly given that Eazel's beautiful desktop is in the new Mandrake 8.0, and scheduled to appear on several other companies' desktops, it would be a shame if the company should dissolve now. I wonder if some of the big names (Red Hat, VA, Mandrake, SuSE) could invest together to keep Eazel going at least for now -- they all stand to benefit. And would a PayPal account for donations be unreasonable?
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Eazel On The Ropes More

Eazel On The Ropes

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  • I've been using Galeon for a while. The page loading and rendering speed is just like Mozilla because it uses the same code. It's far from snappy though (it's slower than IE, NS 4.x, Konq, and Opera). Rendering quality though is as good as it gets (just like Mozilla).

    The menus, dialogs, navigation buttons, etc. are GTK+ widgets, so at least they're snappy. Startup time and memory usage are slightly better than Mozilla, but worse than the other alternatives.

    I wouldn't choose Galeon if you're looking for a leaner, faster browser. Stick with NS 4 or try Konqueror or Opera instead. Choose Galeon if you want the rendering quality and standards compliance of Mozilla but you want the look and feel to match the rest of your GNOME desktop.

  • Re:Missing the niche (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try: http://www.webmin.com/webmin/ (Don't be put off by the .com ending, the main package, webmin, is owned and funded by Caldera and is BSD licensed). I've used it for a long time and it's absolutely brilliant.

  • Re:KDE (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't necessarily agree with your comparison.

    Ximian has primarily been spending their money on two things - Red Carpet and Evolution. The KDE project has no real equivalent for either one.

    Eazel did develop Nautilus. But that's only one contribution to a much, much larger project. Just because Ximian and Eazel get all the press doesn't mean they're the only ones doing work on GNOME.

    In reality, Red Hat has been quietly paying people to move GNOME forward just as Troll Tech has been paying key KDE developers. And both projects have far more volunteer developers than paid developers.
  • Personally I don't care if users would rather shoot themselves in the head

    Which was exactly his point. None of you who consider yourself ubergeeks will ever be able to design a good GUI because you think the CLI is awesome and end users suck. That's why it takes a company with the direction and organization the OSS community lacks to make something like Eazel.
  • The "magical touch" is that they are selling proprieraty software...

    /mill

  • the new PSM2 (in the nightly builds, will be in next milestone) actually *works* for https sites.
  • The old one works fine in some cases, but not consistantly or reliably. Some pages just don't load properly, and other times the page loads, but about 5 minutes later you notice your computer is realllly slow, and discover that there's half a dozen PSM processes all using as much CPU as they can.

    As far as I can tell, the new one fixes both of these problems.
  • OSX is a GOOD OS...

    It's just that nobody's written native commercial apps for it yet. Or native drivers.

    It's where Linux was at 1.0.. Limited driver support, no commercial app support.

    It'll build almost everything that runs on FreeBSD, though its linker and object utilities are kinda, well, strange.

    Oh, and the built-in management utils are nonexistent. If you don't mind hacking around in netinfo manager (which is how I got NFS to mount at boot, since appletalk isn't there yet) it works, but Apple really needs to provide more system control tools as a wrapper to the netinfo system in the Preferences app..

    And it needs smbfs. Badly.

    But I'm running it native most of the time, and it's not too bad..

    ps: if anyone from Apple is reading, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make an option to BLOCK loading the classic environment, returning an error!! Classic really pisses me off and I'd like to disable it...

    Your Working Boy,
    - Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
  • However, as something in their favour, the most 'vocal' critics of KDE shut up and started refining Gtk, which also runs on both platforms. I believe those people had and have the right to criticize KDE for their choices. Thankfully, as I perceive it, these are the most pragmatic people, and the ones now working the hardest on interoperability.

    That's fair enough :) and something I didn't know. thx

    I didn't know if the GPL is specific to Free Operating Systems, or that proprietary Unix vendors (eg Sun) can use Qt under the GPL as well. I understand from your words that this is the case?

    "yes". Trolltech's website, if you'll look for "free edition", specifically mentions it being a Unix/X11 solution. (sorry for the marketspeak) ..there's nothing in qt's license that prevents that, or the gpl for that matter. There is in fact a binary package for tru64 up at kde's website [kde.org] (no idea how well it works tho).

  • That's an easy one. Most of the core KDE team is employed by Trolltech nowadays, so KDE is being massively funded on the sale of proprietary software (Qt/Windows and Qt/Embedded).

    Right and wrong. Right in the sense that kde gets a free toolkit funded by proprietary sales. In fact the only 'free software' companies I know turning a tidy profit today are companies that combine supporting free software with proprietary sales, namely Trolltech and Cygnus (probably a good reason RH just broke even). I heard Suse might be doing well but I'm going to guess that's because their customers don't generally have fat internet pipes.

    Wrong in the sense that the kde core team is not employed by trolltech. 1) Many of the best kde people work for other companies (ex. dfaure/mandrakesoft) 2) Most of the trolltech guys, with the possible exception of the ghost of ettrich (kwin), are less active in the kde scene than they used to be. Which is not a slam, btw. 3) There are *way* too many important developers for you to lump them into a group like that. It's like saying that all the core gnome developers work for Ximian.. uh..

    In fact some of the more fanatic anti-KDE crowd may have a point in continuously bringing up Qt's licensing issues (although the real pain is past now, with Qt/Linux being GPL).

    Bah. They have no point. They are only showing that it's easier to bitch than to port qt to windows themselves. Which *can* be done, it took one guy (hi tor) to do the gtk/windows port! And you should have said Qt/Unix.

    The practical difference between Trolltech and Eazel (as regards Linux) is, Trolltech's not currently going down the crapper, so they'll have a lot more opportunity to support free software.

  • Are Linux user that UI starved that they think Eazel is the next greatest thing to swiss cheese. My god, the 1.0 release was very underwhelming. I have used their products. They don't strike me as being anything ground breaking or easy to use as the original Mac. (I owned a 128K in 1984) What is all the flap about? I know it was just 1.0. So it was bound to get better with time. How did they expect to make money. UI consultants? Aqua on Mac OS X is ground breaking. Barring, that the underlying engine of the OS definitley needs some work. Cheers, Thomas
    Cheers,
    Tomas
    ===========
  • Don't equate stock price to company stability. Especially when the market has been in a downturn for as long as it has. A company with a high stock price and rapidly shrinking margins is worse off than a company with a low stock price and stable or improving margins, all else being equal.

    but then again, all things being equal, all things are never equal.
  • Go ahead - contact Sun, HP or Redhat - do you really think that they are so interested in the Desktop market? hint - the answer is NO.

    Sure, Mandrake does, but do you think that they have the money to invest in Eazel? I would be surprised if they do..

  • Really?

    Check KDE - it only missed few months when the 2.0 version was out (and even MS misses few months with their products), but other then that - the KDE project is very focused, developed very fast and it could be a good example of how a project should be managed.
  • I think it's sort of a given in management at both companies that both are sinking ships..there's no reason for either to take on more weight. I haven't heard of either being even in the same continent as profitability and I doubt either's burn rate will get them there before a folding or acquisition. If anything, Ximian needs to get by on fewer employees, not more. A growth spurt will just put them in Eazel's position.

    As always, if you're looking for mindless URL fun I suggest http://news.getschooled.com/ [getschooled.com]
  • The two are no where nearly the same.

    If you want to compare CueCat to anything, compare it to MSIE. It's free, as long as you use it the way they designed. The CC C&D letters were sent because people were using those devices for purposes other than the manufacturer intended.

    With Eazel, Ximian, Red Hat, and the other Linux software companies, not only do you get a free, usable product, but you get the license to use it as YOU see fit, not how they decide it should be used. Want to hack a new feature into Nautilus, go for it (Ximian hackers are already doing this to make it play nicer with the existing GNOME components).
  • Oh come on, you're just mad because you haven't had hot sweaty man sex with ESR yet. Keep at it.
  • You know, you should go to your local newsstand and look at the selection of magazines on the stand. A magazine is considered to be successful if it makes money after four years of operation.
  • Hello, just pointing out that the previous two comments (the essay, and the first comment) were originally posted on kuro5hin.org [kuro5hin.org] and are, unless posted by the original authors or with the original authors' permission, posted here illegally. I look forward to seeing the administrators removing the offending comments.

    Oh wait, Big & Tough Slashdot doesn't remove copyright violations. My bad.
  • Very good point.

    As I recall my Linux indoctrination you're supposed to give money to Eazel so that they can afford to hire programmers.

    But then when Bill Gates said the same thing 25 years ago, he get's ridiculed.

    I don't think that Linux zealots really have a very mature set of beliefs. That they contradict one another is pretty much par for the course.

  • I understand your argument completely, and it is a very valid one, but one may argue that it is this specific 'benefit' of Free Software (giving away your program open-source for free) that might make them go under. So it is a benefit to whom? Not to poor eazel I think...

    It isn't a benefit that they go under. I'm not sure that doing free software makes you go under any more or less often the closed software.

    The benefit is as a user of open source software you aren't totally screwed if the vender goes bankrupt. It may be hard to find support, but if you are willing to pay enough, it can be had. The benefit an OSS vender has is they can go in and tell potential customers that in the off chance that they don't make it, the customer is safe.

    If you had your choice of two small bisnesses that made exactly the product you needed, and one was OSS and one wasn't, you should pick the OSS one because even if they go bankrupt you can still get some support. If there is one small OSS bisness and one huge closed source one, then it might work out different (like based on the quality of the existing code, or how you think the future will play out, or prices, or...).

  • What text editor do you use?

    I find it hard to believe that the pain of saving in that editor, telling Emacs to run (or reload) the file, running whatever fancy Emacs thing you want, saving it again, and telling your editor to reload, is less than the pain of learning the Emacs key bindings.

    There are certainly people that never use Emacs, but I've never heard of any editor so superior that it is worth it to do this when you still want some Emacs functionality.

    PS: I use Emacs and I think it is a bloated mess. And I never use those fancy lisp programs. But I can't give it up because all the other editors seem intent on copying MicroSoft's stupid control key bindings (ie ^P prints: I believe most people move up one line much more often than they print!). I have deleted way to much stuff because ^A selects all the text rather than move to the start of line.

    Comon, designers, it is not hard to make intelligent key bindings, the only important MicroSoft/Mac bindings are the ZXCV keys, which fortunately don't intersect anything of value in Emacs, so keep those and make all the rest be Emacs. (I'm sure somebody will point out that ^X is important in Emacs, but that is also the obvious user-unfriendly key and thus it should be replaced).

  • This is only true if your business plan includes software sales. There are many ways to make money with free software. Take Ada Core Technologies, for example. They produce free software, and then do consulting with it. Why do people pay them for consulting? Because they _developed_ the technology. That's almost always a safe bet. It's the same reason that companies pay millions to Oracle consulting when they could have _hired_ twice as many people or more for the same price.

    With Eazel, they planned on making money with the services that Nautilus made available. They planned on selling shared web space and upgrade services.

    I think Ximian has a better method up their sleeve. With Red Carpet, where you have "channels", this can be ideal for distributing all kinds of software, both proprietary and free. Think of it, you would have IBM paying Ximian for providing their users access to the latest Domino for Linux or whatever. The would only need to add an authentication method to do this, and they would be good to go. This coul be worth a _lot_ of money.
  • I think the idea behind Ximian is to have the companies producing the software pay Ximian to have the software packaged for them. For example, Sun might pay Ximian a few million to have a Sun GNOME channel, or a Sun kernel channel. Other companies will pay to have their software available through Red Carpet. They'll need to add an authentication method for use with proprietary software, but it could make them a lot of money, and they wouldn't have to charge the users a dime, just the suppliers.
  • There's a big difference. In this case, if you make donations, you get more code. In the case of Bill Gates, he gets more code.

    Now, Eazel should realize that they need to make money, but users might feel that they want to support Eazel because the users get more benefits. They get just as many rights to the code as Eazel does.

    Also, as far as maturity of belief, you act as if Slashdot had one set of beliefs. Here you will find many beliefs from many different angles, most of which will contradict each other because they are coming from different people.

    What people miss about free software is that when you buy free software, you get _additional_ value - you get freedom to do what you want with it, which makes it more, not less, valuable. Now, this usually means that the software is available at no cost, and people start getting into the "you must give me handouts for free" mentality. This is the biggest problem. It's also the one that RMS has been trying to beat into people's minds - FREE DOES NOT MEAN "NO COST" BUT FREEDOM!

    If you want to look at people who have gotten this concept successfully, have a look at Ada Core Technologies, Cygnus Solutions, and RedHat. Yes, I know Cygnus is now part of RedHat, they are also giving RedHat its profitability.

    Anyway, the fundamental point of free software is to not have your freedoms taken away. Freedom is important in life, whether personal or business. Freedom is valuable and costly, but it is also vital, and worth its costs. So, to those looking for a hand-out, I say "grow up", and to those who think freedom is worth less that non-freedom, I say "go to China".
  • The company who actually ran it is called SourceGear. They also are the developers of CVS (well, they bought Cyclic Software, who was the developer of CVS). They still provide server space, but they don't provide full-time developers anymore. I live in Champaign, and actually had a friend doing QA on AbiWord at one point in time, so I'm pretty familiar with the situation. If this has changed, it has been so recently. It used to say so on either AbiSource or SourceGear's site, but I can't find it. The only good references to this I have found are:

    http://gnotices.gnome.org/gnome-news/966342954/9 66 358018/966372740/966389964/index_html

    and

    http://gnotices.gnome.org/gnome-news/966342954/9 66 358018/966372740/966389964/index_html

    Yes, that is an underscore before html, but slashdot also may put in spaces in the URL that you should take out.
  • And those developing code can provide something that noone else provides - experience with the code. Just having access to it means nothing. It takes time and energy to get involved and learn how it works. If I have a kernel question, would I rather ask a kid next door or Alan Cox?
  • Or, more simply, you could just donate to the Free Software Foundation.
  • The problem with Eazel is that they only had enough cash to get them _to_ the 1.0 release. How did they expect to make money before that? It was stupid, really. This is the same way AbiSource died. They cut funding _before_ the 1.0 release. How did they expect to make money before the 1.0 release? This is either a matter of

    a) poor scheduling by the programmers

    b) poor planning by the administrators

    You should be able to sustain for a few months with no sales off the bat, or have another way to make money. You shouldn't expect customers to beat down your door with the first release of anything.

    Bad business, open source or not, is what causes companies to fail.
  • ... so that everybody knows that comercial driven open source not works - at least using this way.

    Oh come on. With this line of reasoning nothing software-related would work, and certainly not proprietary-software based businesses, given last year's fall-outs.

    I have not used or downloaded Nautilus myself, but IMHO they have a sound business plan: Invest in a software that grows popular and people use for free to have them hooked on services you charge for. Not unreasonable. What magical touch does theKompany use to make them so superior?

    Lars
    __

  • I tried out Mozilla on my 486 (yeah, yeah, you spend your money on hardware, I have a life, okay?) last year, and was dumbfounded at the slowness of the thing. It was just wretched, really unbelievably slow. I didn't and still don't understand why. This is not rocket science. OK, so the machine was only a 486 with 24Mb RAM and a similarly-aged m/b; but netscape can run decently well on the same platform, why not mozilla? Granted, I'm comparing netscape "pre-bloat" (3.04) to what is in effect the end-product of years of bloatware (netscape 4 et seq). Whatever, that's history. Now, I have a Pentium 166 with 128Mb of RAM and a less obsolete m/b. And you know what? Mozilla is usable. It doesn't fly, but it does well enough for sites that I can't see properly in lynx. And it works, it doesn't crash -- I've *never* had netscape stay up under intensive use for long, and while I haven't pushed mozilla as hard, so far it seems much more stable. So, here's one nay-sayer who's halfway-converted, at least. And that's good, because mozilla is in many ways the test case of free software. At present, it has reached the point that Richard Stallman refers to when he says he'd rather use an inferior free application than a super-duper bells and whistles non-free one. That's mozilla now: usable but inferior; and maybe it can reach the point of being a true netscape (or, dare I say it, IE) replacement. This is very necessary; it's all very well saying, "hey! just use lynx" (and I often do say it), but if users of free software don't want to be cut off from large swathes of the web, they need a modern browser, and right now it's mozilla or bust. By comparison, Gnome and KDE and Eazel and all this stuff is just iceing on the cake.

  • Congratulations, you have seen the light of vi ;-)

    I was the same way... I hated that thing until I decided to learn it. Now the first thing I do on a Windows box is install Vim and drop a link in the 'Send To...' menu.

  • I use vi myself, but surely you are aware that emacs is fully customizable, right down to the keybindings? There is even a vi mode.

  • KDE really has made huge improvements in themeing, I downloaded Eazel-blue kde theme and I think it beats the pants off the original gtk version.

    However, even though I've tried very hard I just can't get use to the feel of kde. It has a very bright crayon-colored look. Even if I change themes it still has this look and feel, mostly in the icons (which as I understand can also be changed, although I haven't found any).

    As for the feel though, it'd be nice if the kpanel had the same amount of configurability as the gnome panel. Right now I have the menubar type gnome-panel and then a normal gnome-panel at the bottom (which has a pixmap to give a translucent like effect). Looks very nice and I'd like it if I could do similar things with KDE.

    GNOME just has a very organic pleasing color pallete in my opinion. It could just be because I've gotten use to GNOME but I have tried very hard to just use KDE as I view it as a technically superior product to GNOME. Konqueror is just amazing, as is the level of integration the KDE programs have with the all of KDE.

    So hopefully I can get some nicer icon sets (mostly for the menus, those ones are just god awful ugly to me, the desktop ones are pretty nice) and the kpanel will get more configurability and I think I'll become a new KDE users.

  • Mr St Law Sir - step out of your image mongering world of advertising and get real for a moment. How many computer system networks have YOU administered lately?

    Specifically, in my office of 50+ machines I have a Linux mail server that runs flawlessly, day in, day out, it's perfect. Not very sexy but it gets our business done reliably and pays the bills w/o a lot of pain. However, while I'm trying to find time to put together a cluster out of old parts for future database growth, I'm constantly interrupted by the Windows desktops user having this problem, having that problem - and Windows is full of 'issues' - that's how they keep people on the upgrade treadmill. As a systems engineer I find the Msft products woefully lacking and have become a definite liability for career progress - unless I hire someone (more "cost of ownership") to run around plugging up holes in the dike so I can get on with progressive projects, w/o having to run like the red queen just to maintain the status quo. Other admins, I imagine, rely on Msft flakiness and constant need for attention to justify their existance, keeps them busy, a faux appearance of productivity.

    Maybe I'm being an unrealistic cunt but I like *quality* well built, finely tuned machines like German automobiles - however we seem to be stuck with using broken down Yugo's just to keep the Yugo company's cash flow going with incessant service problems - just because investors mistakenly think Msft is a "leading technology company" - what utter bullcrap. Take your fool 'em all consumer mind games and shove it - I just want to work with and sell quality information systems to appreciative customers, w/o Mr vaporware spoiling everything with his crud.

    Anyway, the point of this thread was the companies may come and go, but the ideal lives on - just look at the cp/m days - lots of small business stepped up and failed before IBM created the PC mkt with an *open* hw platform and handed Msft a lucrative market on a silver platter. I'm expecting the same thing to happen here. At the end of the day, the paying customer must benefit, otherwise it's a bullshit job.
  • Guru uberhacker? Nope, but I am competent developer that has had enough to exposure to engineering and software development efforts to know the difference. Since I live in this world, I have to make certain judgements based on imperfect information. Time will prove me wrong if you are correct. In fact, it should have already, it's been long enough. Think about it for a minute, here we have a major piece of the Free Software world missing, the non-existent or often crappy User Interfaces for Linux and kin. Ask yourself why.

    I think the reason is two-prong: lack of proper desire [as in desire to accomplish what the user needs in the way that the user needs it--not the way that some geeks are momentallarily inspired to create a toy that amuses them] and lack of direction/organization of skill. A half million programmers of assorted skills working part time towards whatever interests them at the moment is simply insufficient for oh so many projects.
  • Unfinish, crappy, and missing are all quite appropriate terms to describe the same problem. There is not and will NOT be a decent UI for non-technical Linux users made by Linux-style development efforts.

    Both Apple and Microsoft allow the non-technical user to do what they need to get done. While both have far more bugs than they should and have less than perfect design (although I do think Apple's interface is quite a lot better), that does not mean that any other attempts by the linux-style development efforts will ever be as good of an option. Say what you will, but even when Windows must be rebooted 5x a day by the average user, the average user is better off than with any existing Linux system in the home environment.
  • My disapproval is with the end-result, KDE (it sucks), not TrollTech workers themselves.
  • I don't exactly mean to say that it must be a commercial organization. It could also theoretically be a non-profit or a government agency (although I have my doubts), my problem with "open" development efforts is one of organization, motivation, direction, and skill. All of these elements CAN and HAVE been succesfully fit under the tent of for-profit companies developing proprietary software. It may be possible for open-source companies as well (though that remains to be seen in my opinion--in terms of their financial success). I just don't think they're remotely probable when they're developed like Linux. e.g., mostly everyone working part time at best, when there is no clear heirarchy, when the objectives are unclear, when motivation is in doubt [as in, developers may want features X,Y,Z...when users want/need features A,B,C, ...quite the opposite], and even when the number of skilled developers is limited.
  • Yes, I am extropolating, but such is life. Just as I extropolate that an open development process is not going to create a complete and solid UI, you extropolate that it does (or could, if so desired) produce what you regard as "many large, complex, well designed, high quality software projects" . It is not written. Furthermore, I'm not just extropolating from the lack of examples of UIs, I'm extropolating from: all other open developed end products, the attitudes I've seen in open source development efforts, the effort I've seen in complex development efforts, human nature, and many other things. That said, give me an example of open development that has met all four of these conditions (or even in part):

    a) originality -- as in very little copying of design and/or code.

    b) low degree of modularity / high degree of sustained complexity throughout.

    c) relatively low entertainment value / geek cred potential

    d) successfully carried to fruition

    Now that is not to say that anything that does not meet these 4 criteria is worthless or less worthy than the alternatives (e.g., not a "hacker toy"). Rather I simply assert that a great many things require this and that open development is not capable of doing this with any real probablity.
  • Modular, yes (but so is Nautilus, and what's wrong with modular). Derivative, maybe. Relatively simple to organize? You have got to be kidding. Lends itself to casual hacking? Drivers - yes, but the core of the kernel - no. The core of the kernel is quite a bit more sophisticated than what you'll find in Nautilus. And the design of the kernel is very consistent and focused and strongly guided by the vision of one person. I personally find it amazing that kernel development has scaled up to the present code size and number of developers. That's a testament to just how well designed the kernel is and how well organized the team is.
    It's basically a given that Linux WAS developed by casual hackers, since very few of them work at it full time (most all are part time at best) and because many are not that skilled. Anyways, completely ignoring this simple and undeniable fact, Linux is a poor way to disprove my statement since so many things cloud the question. Firstly, the assorted drivers, modules, and optionals comprise a very large part of the kernel. Secondly, it is derivative--meaning it has had decades of design experience before it--it's not too different from coloring by numbers, so far as the design process is concerned. Thirdly, what little is sophisticated, a few of the core elements, is modular--meaning that organizational abilities are substantially less important. Fourthly, Linux has taken quite a long time to develop. Sixthly, it is the ONE project that you can really put on the table with a straight face, compared to hundreds and thousands of commercial efforts. It is a widely recognized effort which many geeks both find entertaining and find recognition for. Did it ever occur to you that, no matter how flawed an example believe Linux to be, it is a maverick? After all, where was all the hype before Linux came along? In any event, which horse would you bet on?

    I could comment on your other replies, but that'd be redundant.

    If I'm catching your drift right, what you like about Windows is that it's one monolithic entity to you. You don't have to think about different distributions, kernel versions, GUI toolkits, window managers, package formats, etc. Since everything is developed by one company, you only get one way to do everything. You would prefer to trade off flexibility and choice in favor of consistency. Fine. I can appreciate that.
    No, it's more than just the fact that Windows/MacOS is an easier development target because of their singularity. It's a demonstration of sustained development that meets some (or all, even if both are quite flawed examples) of the criteria that I don't believe open source is capable of. e.g.:

    a) originality -- as in very little copying of design and/or code.

    b) low degree of modularity / high degree of sustained complexity throughout.

    c) relatively low entertainment value / geek cred potential

    d) successfully carried to fruition

    Now you might think that some open development efforts meet one or two of these requirements, but I don't think any ever have come close to meeting them all, nor do I think it will for some of the reasons listed previously.

  • Linux? Highly modular, very derivative, relatively simple to organize. The type of thing that lends itself to casual hacking. Yes, there is some sophistication, but it's for limited duration and it can be isolated quite well.

    Apache? Quite simple when you actually sit down and think about it. It listens, opens up files, and sends them over the network, plus or minus a little caching, logging, vhosting and other features. Yes, it is efficient and good at what it does, but that's not the same thing.

    Samba? Not much different, the only hard part is reverse engineering MS's "extensions".

    XEmacs? Who cares?

    XFree86? Relatively simple, modular. Truely lacking in many regards.

    KDE? Bloated piece of crap. It also depends very much on QT, which was developed by a company.

    Gnome? More trouble then it's worth. Also being funded by RedHat as of late. That means more (but not nearly enough) full time programmers and leaders.

    Just because some things are succesfull in terms of number of installations does not mean they're feats of engineering.

    I'm sorry, but I must draw a major distinction between original, sophisticated and well concieved projects that are carried to fruition, not leaving any holes for the user to fall through, and all of these projects that you mention. Yes, there are a lot of man hours in these other projects, but brute force does not work for everything. Some projects require a lot of focus, clear thinking, and follow through, that can only be found in a structured, full-time, and highly skilled environment. In other words, I'd only accept ~20 (or more) accomplished programmers working full time with ONE direction and ONE leader, not a half million programmers of varied skills following their own agendas while working part-time at best.

    As much as Microsoft annoys me and despite all windows' bugs, I don't believe I'll ever see the day that Linux-style open source will ever create a user experience that rivals windows--end to end system that allows the user to do everything that they need and want to do. (Even though I think windows is horrible in many ways, there is a level of involvement in its totality that the open source community does not fully appreciate). I think Eazel (or a similar company) is as close as Linux is ever going to get, and when and if it dies, it'll be a real loss for the Linux community that'll never be made up by the hundreds of open source wanna-bes.
  • Yes, I agree that differences in "itches" is one of the major problems (I think I at least implied that in one of my previous comments in this thread). However, it's not quite that absolute. I could see (and have seen) a handful of hackers putting _some_ energy into helping newbies, rather than themselves (e.g., make sure a GUI is easy to use and complete, rather than merely pretty or "feature" packed). The problem is that complete UIs require a lot more work than that. In other words, there is not enough motivation to organize enough hackers to work long and hard enough at it.

    Furthermore, I believe that organization ties into motivation itself. In other words, with the ESR's "itch" hackers are personally motivated to solve problems that they find (though I could dispute this from a cost/benefit point of view, I won't...for the time being). The problem is that when we have no "itch", no particular problem for the casual hacker to focus their energy towards, just a mass of problems for OTHER people, there is no naturally occuring way for each and every problem to get solved. The open source developers have to know what the problems are. Even if the individual developer knows what the problems are, unless there is a proper division of labor amongst a sufficient number of hackers, that individual is going to be very much discouraged because he will not be able to create tangible results because everything else will be broken. In short, allocation of resources--not just on a macro level but on a micro level--is an issue.

    People I encounter, newbies and techies alike, are always _hugely_ impressed with the UI's.
    People may be impressed by the eye candy; afterall windows is pretty ugly. However, that doesn't mean they'd be happier actually using it. Even ignoring the lack of applications, I think most users would not want to use Linux UIs. Take, for instance, installing applications. Do any UI's / installers actually install a GUI icon from the user now, or does the user have to know where the application is, how to invoke it, and then setup an icon...? How about hardware? How about help systems?

    I'm not sure there troubles really discount that model because something like 1 in 20 businesses fail anyway.
    Sort of unrelated, but most of those "20" businesses are sole-proprietorships and parterships, as in the numerous small businesses that you see near you, like restaurants and retail stores. They're generally not companies that recieve millions of dollars in external financing. Although I grant you that venture capitalists often do make stupid investments; that hardly lets Eazel's business model off the hook.
  • It was never intended to be a commercial benefit to the developer. That just sort of developed, to the extent that it has. There's nothing wrong with donation-ware, but without a fund-raising group, don't expect it to be too successful. ( Perhaps the company that should sponsor them is Pay Pal? :-) The GPL was created to allow hobbyists to persue their avocation without being taken financially. To this end, it is largely a defense against many of the normal commercial practices. OTOH, one may question the rationale behind many of those practices in every field. Software just makes it more obvious. The problem is there is this thing which has been called the common intellectual heritage of mankind, and there are these groups who want to turn it into private property. They didn't create it, but they feel that if they do a little bit of ground clearing, that they should be able to homestead it. Now this doesn't work out very well for those who are already occupying the area. So the GPL is a kind of claiming without exclusiveness. It just says that if you want to play here, then you can't be exclusive either. Personally, I really think that there should be fall-back licenses, sort of a defense in depth. Something along the lines of: This GPL version is to be considered and advertising demo. If you wish to make commerial use of this code, then you must pay the author $1000 per copy, and otherwise agree to abide by the trems of the ... (some other Open Source license, possibly the MPL, or even the BSD). Something that would allow at least a nominal amount of damages to be assessed. Nobody can predict what the courts will decide. Perhaps the best policy is a diversity of licenses, so that they must be attacked one-by-one. That way if any of them holds up, there will be a good point to recover from. And, to the extent possible, avoid centralized power. These create handy targets.
    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • If they think that refering to "wav" and "mp3" files as songs is what's really going to enhance the quality of the user experience, they're a little loopy.

    For a few first time users, I think that could be useful.

    However, Eazel's real selling point could be: simplifying system administration, which is really the hard part of computers. If you can do that with Unix -- or any system -- the world will beat a path to your door. Well, 10% of the market anyway, looking at things empirically....

    --
  • I don't know about the rest of the non-redhat users out there, but I did not find very pleasant the fact that Eazel only supported Red Hat officially. I could understand that from a non linux related company but from Eazel, I didn't. Maybe if they did something like Ximian, supporting a big bunch of linux distributions,they had more people following their work and got more venture capital to continue their work. I would hate to see Eazel go down the toilet, but for me that clearly showed how important is to this kind of companies to gather an open community around them, and not around on a distribution.
  • To my earlier point of what is missing, for admins I'm referring to good, solid GUI based apps for configuring the basic services. A small suite to deal with Apache, Sendmail, Inn, and other daemons. Today folks would rather tweak on the text files directly then use those few apps that are out there because they aren't nearly as good as they should be yet. Neither GUI environment today provides much for admins.

    Well, Linuxconf and Webmin both look to take a shot at that, but these are not part of the GUI environment per se. Also, what about integration of the GUI with peripherals? PNP, while far from perfect on Windows, is something we need to strive for. I should be able to plug a printer into the parallel port and have the OS automagically detect that it is plugged in, and install/configure any software necessary to get that printer working.

    Don't get me wrong...with CUPS it's *far* better than it has ever been...before that, you would need to edit scripts and configuration files and it was a mess... but if Linux is going to succeed on the desktop, it has to be easy enough so that Grandma can use it, but still be configurable enough that even the brightest Ubergeeks have a powerful enough system to tinker with.

    It's a hard balance to strike, but Linux has the most potential to strike that balance than any other operating system I've seen.
  • In all fairness, there are some projects looking to provide some of HomeSite's uses, but there's nothing even coming close to Dreamweaver in the way of a GUI HTML editor.

    There's always FrontPage for Linux... :)

    Quanta isn't bad, but I guess that's more like HomeSite? I don't know, I don't use Windows HTML editors except for HoTMetal.

  • Eazel's potential problem at the moment is not that they don't charge for software, it's that they don't charge for anything yet. Their problems may or may not be bad planing, but Eazel still hasn't gotten to the ``ask for money'' phase of their plan. In short, it is not that ``if you want to make money from software, you got to charge for it'' rather it's ``if you want to make money, you have to charge.'' This is something that the people at Eazel have known all along.

    --Ben

  • KDE (Score:2)

    by lal ( 29527 )
    This is a serious question, not a troll:

    How is it that KDE can put out software that is arguably as good as Gnome without millions of dollars of venture capital?

    It seems that the past year's (impressive) Gnome improvements have been contributed in large part by Ximian and Eazel, whereas KDE has been able to create some nice software without an equivalent source of funding. Is there a lesson somewhere in the KDE project for Ximian and Eazel?
  • looking at the evidence that organizations like Gartner have collected, you are definitely in the minority on 2K stability.
    And I suppose IT managers have never LIED about Win2K stability/uptime to Gartner to justify their decision to spend all that money on what many feel is an unnecessary upgrade in the first place?
    --
    You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
  • So many major Linux companies are in trouble of some sort. Indrema and Eazel look to be going bust. Redhat seems to be doing badly economically (look at the stock). Linux companies seem to be going the way of the web companies in this economic environment, and I'm doubtful that the craze will ever return. After a few months of this, I guess we'll see what Linux companies/organizations can truly have their act together. Fortunately, GNOME, KDE, Debian, and of course, the kernel itself have truly non-profit motives, and so there is some route mostly guaranteed for Linux to stand the test of time and of the economy.
  • "yet the editors here feel we should make donations via PayPal to keep this company afloat. Does this mean that these rules are only supposed to apply to non-Linux related companies? "

    Well yes. You judge companies the same way you judge people. If they are nice people doing nice things and they need a hand you help them out. If they are morons then you don't hang out with them and you point at them and call them morons. Why should we treat every single company exactly the same?
  • god damn.. I've been dissin' vi users for years now and for some strange reason I recently decided "Damn it, I'm gunna learn that obscure stupid editor that you have to press 'i' before you can start typing and all the other mode lameness" and I figured it would take me a few weeks.. it took one day! one day and I had memorized half the command set and was up to my old level of efficiency in other editors [nano-editor.org], now I'm going beyond it. Ease of use often == lack of effort.
  • ...but there's nothing even coming close to Dreamweaver in the way of a GUI HTML editor.

    Talk about missing the niche! Someone running *nix is extremely unlikely to use a graphical WYSIWYG-type editor if they are doing any serious web design. It is much more difficult to configure an Apache server (with security patches, etc) than it is to script HTML.

    To be perfectly honest, web scripting (HTML, Javascript, DHTML) is best done using a simple and effective text editor with configurable text colouring (IMHO, Visual Interdev is ideal). There is much more control over where items are placed on the page when you script by hand and learning enough HTML tags to be functional in the language is not that difficult.

    If you ask me, all *nix needs is a text editor like Windows Notepad that does text colouring. Find me one of those, and I'll be happy.
  • Okay, here's someone who's obviously never used Dreamweaver, or at least to any extent.

    I have used Dreamweaver, but when I found it didn't suit my needs I went back to Visual Interdev (for the text colouring only).

    .. and while I won't argue that some WYSIWYG editors are good for placing items and text on a web page, it can also use the markup language in ways that it wasn't intended and create very bloated web pages (FrontPage is even worse). WSYIWYG editors also tend to create browser-specific code - another no-no.

    Also, increasingly web pages are becoming dynamic. Whether your choice is CGI, PHP, ASP or what have you, WYSIWYG editors make creating dynamic pages quite difficult.

    As with any other language (markup, scripting language, etc) you have to do your time. You can't expect to jump straight in when you don't know what you are doing. The worst thing a person can do is expect that a web page can look like an Office (or other word processor) document because that is not the intent of HTML. It's a shame too, because that's exactly what people want. Clearly another more flexible language is needed to fill this void.

  • this is ridiculous, post an article on /., the #1 linux site about some up-and-coming linux company going under, and make a plea to the "big boys" (RH, VA, etc.) to give them some support. i don't know about you, but this sounds a bit fishy...

    E.

    -
  • Mergers suck and usually always fail to give return on investment.

    Ximian should not merge with Eazel. Why would you want to buy a business model you already have? What ximian should do is wait for Eazel to go out of business, and hire the developers of nautilus. Cheaper, more effective, low overhead, and you get to keep nautilus alive, just as it was before.

    Business is tough shit. You dont feel sorry for a bad business, although there's nothing wrong with picking at the carcass.
  • Was that their code was too user friendly. If they'd cranked out a really amazingly cool product that was esoteric, a bear to install and had hundreds of non-intuitive/hidden features, they could have made a killing in tech support. But noooo... It's got to be easy to use and install...
  • I guess they didn't spend any of their money on advertising.
  • Seriously. How does Eazel expect to make *money*.. you know, the stuff that companies run on. This is not a troll, I'm seriously confused about how Eazel is supposed to grow, let alone survive, as a company.

    Great technology is one thing, but staying alive in business is a totally different animal.

  • That if you want to make money from software, you got to charge for it.
  • We have both of those, by the way. In a Red Hat Linux 7.1 or sufficiently similar system, look at kontrol-panel (in kdeadmin) for a centralized configuration tool for everything - for an easy to use web editor with php support and all, look at Quanta [sourceforge.net]... The bigger problem is that people aren't aware of those tools. *nix still has the reputation of being hard to use, even though both KDE and GNOME beat Windows.
  • I'm typing this message from my Win2K machine. The same machine that I had to physically turn off this morning because I had a DOS box running telnet that would not respond and that wouldn't close. Not that I haven't had problems with Netscape or Mozilla on Linux, but none of them forced me to pull the plug. Win2K is not as stable as Linux. I run them both, use them both every day, co-administer a large network that is all Microsoft on the desktop, and no one can convince me that Win2k is not flakier than even Winnt.
  • I'm using Mandrake 7.2 which is based on an update to parts of the RH 6.X distributions and yet the installer won't run on my computer. It doesn't even bother to try to see if it will install, it flat out refuses to even attempt to get Eazel working on my copy of Linux! So how am I supposed to feel sorry for a company that makes it a pain in the ass to get its product working? Also everytime I've tried updating Bonobo without the ximian installer, I get dependecy problems. So installing by RPMs is out of the question for me and I have no plans to download the sources and try to build it.

    At the rate the GNOME world is going I very well may switch back to KDE 2 when it is all said and done. Why? Here's why!

    1. -the GNOME team and/or Ximian DO NOT release packages on a timely basis when new versions of GNOME are out, users should not have to wait a month or more or in the case of Mandrake users for their distribution creator to release a new distro with the updated GNOME
    2. -updating GNOME easily for the average user requires the ximian installer/updater to be sure that all dependencies are downloaded; KDE users can just download everything they want to update in the stable directory and know that ALL dependecies are included there
    3. And finally while I'll probably still use GNOME 1.4 when I get Mandrake 8, why should I feel sorry for a company that ignores the existance of a significant portion of the Linux community, especially users it could easily support since they use a RH-derived distro like Mandrake 7?
  • They probably *did* do what they promised in their funding proposals. Given that they started up in August 1999, the single word "linux" was probably enough to bring them their $11 million of venture capital.
  • QT, which was developed by TrollTech, a commercial company

    Yes and QT is under a public license... so what.

    Personally I don't care if users would rather shoot themselves in the head... oh wait a minute. That'd definiteley make the world a better place.

    I happen to like existing Linux UI's. The command line is a particular favorite of mine. But I like the GUI's too, which would be the ones with windowing for those of you out there that don't know the difference.

    Regardless, Gnome, KDE, it's all the same to me. It still takes me less effort to get more work done than anyone ever will with Winblows or Mac.

  • cool, I'll have to try webmin. Linuxconf is a total joke (what fool thought that putting a "quit" button on the bottom of each screen to go to the next made sense??). Memorizing N conf file formats gets tedious real fast, it would be nice to have a good GUI way to remotely admin unix machines.

  • The impatient can always install their own stuff on the day it comes out from the source code. If you don't have GNOME 1.4 running on your system at this point in time, that really is a result of the choices you have made.

    Or a result of choices that others have made, such as telcos not providing broadband [8m.com] in the area where your family lives and making it hard to download the latest GNOME releases every single day. Quite a bit of software written for GNOME required GNOME 1.4 components before GNOME 1.4 was even released.

  • In fact some of the more fanatic anti-KDE crowd may have a point in continuously bringing up Qt's licensing issues (although the real pain is past now, with Qt/Linux being GPL).

    Except what you call "Qt/Linux" will (with trivial tweaking) compile and run on Windows, thanks to Cygwin XFree86 [redhat.com] (think DirectX11), which has recently been patched to run properly on Windows 9x and ME (which are not as 32-bit clean as Microsoft would have you think).

    How does this work? Qt Free Edition is intended to run on any POSIX environment with an X11 server. Cygwin creates a POSIX conforming environment with a complete GNU userland inside Win32; Cygwin/XFree86 handles requests from Xlib clients and calls GDI and DirectX on their behalf.

    Of course, Mac OS X can run X11 programs [mrcla.com] too.

  • Webmin is some good stuff, but it's more a proof of concept kind of application. The concept it proves is that you really can have some utility to assist in configuring daemons without having to give up the ability to edit text files directly.

    What I'm specifically referring to is having either a set of GTK or QT based apps that can do this. Using the web as an interface for this type of work is limiting, though webmin does a fair job of working around it. The goal here should be to provide a set of "compelling" (yes I'm going to over use this word) set of tools that *nix a no brainer kind of decision when a choice is to be made.

    All to often I've seen companies that friends of mine work for go with an NT solution based only on the fact that they've got folks that know how to admin it. The thinking is also that there's a lot more NT folks out there then *nix folks, and they're cheaper too. Pages served per second, up time stats, and software licenses all go to the toilet in comparison to ease (or more appropriately, apparent ease) of use.

    Again, I don't have anything really against Webmin. It's just that we shouldn't consider that the end game.
  • Too bad one needs a credit card for Paypal. If I were to convince someone to let me use his/her credit card, would you send the T-Shirt to Europe?
  • Mozilla (0.8.1) has been running on my Debian Woody machine for two or three days now without crashing.

    Granted, I've not visited any SSL sites in that time....
  • Nicely written little begging-for-capital- through-the-press article. Makes Eazel sound like it might actually compete for the same market that buys a Mac these days - folks who really have no leaning towards understanding the underpinnings of their machines, and just want intuitive obviousness. What it needs to be to sell to them, though, is part of an appliance. Put something together where the underpinnings are Debian (for easy upgrading at that level), the CPU is Transmeta (advertise the ecological soundness of power saving - "We're in an energy crisis, no doubt about it," says Ms. Whitman), and the box itself is built by someone like Sonic Blue (because I was stupid enough to buy their stock when they went by the less silly name of S3, plus they know something about consumer devices, and were an early Transmeta adaptor - and appear to have some cash to invest).

    There are currently two Mac markets: graphics designers and folks who just use them as fancy typewriters and communications devices - Eazel as an appliance could own the second group, and they'd pay extra just as they pay extra to run Macs now.

    For everyone else - probably 90% of the coming Linux desktop market - there's KDE, which is well on the way to being a better Windows than Windows - and we already know from the relative triumph of Windows over the Mac that that's enough for the majority of productivity users, especially when coupled with lower cost.
  • I don't know about the rest of the non-redhat users out there, but I did not find very pleasant the fact that Eazel only supported Red Hat officially. ... Maybe if they did something like Ximian, supporting a big bunch of linux distributions,they had more people following their work and got more venture capital to continue their work.
    Far more likely they would have got the same or less money and it would have run out quicker due to then need for more people working on packaging. Look at it like this: it costs X to cover 60% of the market (RedHat). It costs 2X to cover 80% of the market (RedHat+whoever's next). And the returns diminish from there. The product's only just hit 1.0, this is the time when it makes sense to look at supporting extra distributions not during development. Besides Ximian are doing a fine job packaging for multiple distributions, why duplicate that work for no benefit?
  • There are a lot of differences in the model where the CueCat is free and use of it is free but in theory you will buy more stuff through CueCat, therefore the companies that use it will be willing to pay for it. Since the CueCat is hardware, there are some inescapable costs of production and distribution that DigitalConvergence can only reasonably make up for if a certain percentage will actually use it with their software. Geeks that develop alternative software will have a reason to get as many free cuecats as possible and DigitalConvergence won't benefit from it. If just a few people were re-purposing the cuecat for their own use, it still wouldn't be a problem, but if useful alternative cuecat software is published, there will be a huge demand for cuecats, which will make it impossible for them to be free. Actually, I think it's stupid that they are free. They should do what large catelog companies do, charge for the catelog and then refund the cost on the first order. If I buy a catelog from a company, I'm actually interested in purchasing something, and if I never purchase anything and decide to use the catelog in a place of a jackstand for working on my car, at least I know the catelog company won't try to sue me for improper use of my own property.

    Basically, when you are given a "free" cuecat, you are being lied to, because you aren't allowed to use your own property. Eazel Nautilus is under the GPL license; therefore, you are allowed to use it for anything you want. You just have to give people the ability to obtain the source code, if you distribute a binary application based on the GPL'ed code. The GPL even grants you the right to charge for distribution. It just doesn't give you the right to demand licensing fees.

    The idea to donate money to Eazel is based on the fact that if we benefit from it, it would be good to keep it going. Eazel isn't demanding that we use their service like DigitalConvergence is basically doing with the cuecat. The cuecat situation is as deceitful as someone giving you a car, and the next day they demand to be paid for it, not directly but by forcing you to go to their toll roads.

  • Use Debian [debian.org] stable!!!

    And yes, Window Maker is a fine wm to use.
  • I think that picking up Eazel would be a no-brainer for Mandrake or RedHat. The company has only a couple dozen technical people, and their work will definitely be a tremendous enhancement to Linux as a desktop platform. I think Eazel has it right when they call themselves the missing piece of the desktop puzzle.
  • I understand your argument completely, and it is a very valid one, but one may argue that it is this specific 'benefit' of Free Software (giving away your program open-source for free) that might make them go under. So it is a benefit to whom? Not to poor eazel I think...

  • That's an easy one. Most of the core KDE team is employed by Trolltech nowadays, so KDE is being massively funded on the sale of proprietary software (Qt/Windows and Qt/Embedded).

    So in respect to funding KDE is no better than Gnome. In fact some of the more fanatic anti-KDE crowd may have a point in continuously bringing up Qt's licensing issues (although the real pain is past now, with Qt/Linux being GPL).

    A personal note, I like KDE, and would definitely recommend it to a newbie. The only reason I don't use it regularly is because I happen to dislike some of their UI defaults

    Mart

  • Really a shame to see yet another company go that dreaded route. As for another company picking them up, its a highly doubtful move that anyone would budge, and I'll try to explain my views on it.

    Market is crappy for tech stocks, sure Greenspan made a move this week, but the market is half of what it once was, which means money is still tight, and even though the past two days have been good, companies have to hold on to their money for future's sake.

    With that being said...

    Companies like Redhat, Mandrake, etc., fall under this umbrella of saving money, (well RHAT is on the market don't know or care about Mandrake) if they attempted to save every dying Open Source good idea project, they'd have no money for their own companies.

    What should be done, is the developers should they not find funding, is post their work to maybe SourceForge or something similar to preserve their work and continue producing until funding comes around.

    Pay pal may sound like a good idea, but how many people actually donate to projects like this lets get realistic. Personally I would work under the most limited circumstances if I had to, and if it fullfilled my needs, and would rather donate to something like feeding a needy child or something.

    Sorry but reality kills in this game.

    Pimpfolio © [antioffline.com]

  • I really don't think it's that complex. Eazel would make Mandrake, RedHat, et all easier to use, and therefore more consumer friendly. Consumers are more likely to go pay $50 at the store for their OS than they are to download the ISO and burn it. Making your OS friendlier and easier for people to use gives you more market share, therefore more power, therefore more earnings potential. I really don't think it's any more complicated than that.
  • ... so that everybody knows that comercial driven open source not works - at least using this way.

    How do they ever want to earn money? -- I think it is not possible if they not ship a usable program which everybody can install and which is nice to use.

    I've thinked about installing GNOME 1.4 - but after i downloaded the source packages i stoped because i dont wana spend days with compiling it -- There are of course no packages for SuSE 7.0 ...

    Just getting some money from investors, putting some (non open source) programmers on an program and releasing the sources is not making a program an open source comunity project.

    AFAIK Ezael put 80 programmers on Nautlius - with an simmilar result as Mozilla - Slow bloadware which is never really finished or usable ...

    Look at Konqueror - very few programmers did a very good web browser in a very short time. Also very easy to understand (source code wise) and easy to install (not such an nightmare as nautilus or GNOME). -- They just did OpenSource at there best.

    IHMO Nautilus dies when Ezael dies - which will happen soon i think - because it is not community driven.

    Look at theKompany to see how open source can work. -- Hmm, but perhaps it works there because there have many very good products which are made by (former) open source programmers - and some of this products are selled to keep the programmers payed. They will IMHO survive.

  • Eazel already got the benefit from making their software free: the chance of having it adopted. Sure, their business model may not have worked out, so that wasn't enough. But without it, how much chance of widespread use do you think yet another closed source C-based application suite would have had?
  • You need to have a sufficient demand for a product by paying customers in order to make a go of it today. Eazel also might have some issues with their performance metrics if they have burned through a sizeable amount of cash already. The big money big spender attitude is hurting them. It's a plus for the marketers to have a big name behind the project, but it tends to lead towards more spending as the old school employees think that's the way a business is run. Sadly that's the odd mix we see in many flawed Linux business plans today, how do you mix the free commando attitudes with the spend big money to make big money people.

    I could make 13 million last more then a few years while working on a file manager, I promise you that.

    One of the major issues I've noticed while getting my business off the ground is the total lack of quality collaborative relationships which align towards common goals. I suggest the good folks at Eazal take a hard look at that.

  • Re:It's a flawed business model (Score:3)

    by Chris Johnson ( 580 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @09:18AM (#277934) Homepage Journal
    Answer: you don't. You can't mix free commando guerrila development and marketing with the spend big money people. It's a guaranteed way to lose totally.

    I would ask, has anyone at Eazel heard of the terms 'cash flow' or 'break even point'? If all they know is 'burn rate' they're in big, big trouble... and if their mental picture of a business is Apple, they're absolutely fscked. Apple is neat, Apple is great, Apple has been an amazing place to work for many people, but Apple is a Fortune 500 company monster corporation that has long been able to throw a million dollars at this and that just in case it produces technology that might turn Mac users on. Jobs kickstarted this, by having Apple pay for backrubs and freshly squeezed orange juice for the first Macintosh creators (work 18 hours a day, but in an atmosphere of elitism, luxury and insecurity- worked pretty well) and then when he was canned, they forgot about the insecurity part and Apple people got used to working with basically unlimited resources. When Jobs returned he brought insecurity back to Apple and killed a lot of projects and scared people into producing like mad again- result, iMac, the cube, lots of good and bad products that were less boring.

    But the common factor is that Apple people don't really think in terms of budget. They produce neat stuff but this is not the background you want, if you expect to manage a small business and have it survive- and all free and open-source projects more closely resemble small business than big business. It's about not running out of cash, managing your expenditures so you can keep going on a month-by-month basis. If you've got yourself into a position where you're going, "Unless we land this big investment we will run out of cash next month!" you have already lost. Go turn into a 501c3 nonprofit and s/investment/contribution/.

  • webmin rocks for admin! (Score:3)

    by benmhall ( 9092 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @04:31AM (#277935) Homepage Journal
    >Try: http://www.webmin.com/webmin/

    I'll second that!

    So far, webmin is the ONLY admin system (short of modifying config files by hand) that comes close to doing everything it should. Linuxconf? nice try, but it's too linux-centric and buggy.

    WebMin is sweet. It's all Perl, and it gives me a consistent way to admin Debian, RedHat, FreeBSD or Solaris (and more) boxes.

    What's the easiest way to setup printing in Debian (or FreeBSD)? Install webmin. Want to know how to change the IP address of your NIC on an unfamiliar unix variant? Try webmin.

    Seriously, other than sound setup it gives you everything. Really.

    WebMin is the best, most underrated Unix admin program I've met. The best part is that it works on almost every unix out there!

    Oh, and I'll second Quanta as being the best HTML editor too. Unless you've spent the three years needed to master Emacs, it's the best way to go. (Sorry, no WYSIWYG. Still, what self respecting web designer uses WYSIWYG anyway?)
  • The KDE team doesn't announce that a new version is ready for public consumption until they either have working binaries or are in the process of finishing up the testing of the binaries. It was only around 1-2 weeks before Mandrake 7.2 users had fully operational RPMs ready for installation. It has been what.... at least 3 weeks going on a month and not even an announcement that "hey guys, we're working on the binaries.... here's our expected ETA for them, we'll keep you all posted!" from Ximian.

  • But the File Manager/Interface is also key... (Score:3)

    by Sir_Winston ( 107378 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @07:38AM (#277937)
    I agree totally that the most important factor for any mainstream platform is applications. Everyone needs and wants them, otherwise there's no sense in having a PC. People don't stare at pretty widgets all day, they want to write, read, surf the net, e-mail, play games, look at pr0n, and wipe their monitors, though not necessarily in that order. ;-) You can't do that stuff as well unless there are a lot of application choices. That's why Win9x is desktop king. That's why I still use it myself--few of the programs I love are available in Linux; in fact, I think only one is.

    But the interface is key as well. Users want easy to understand and standard displays, so that they can go from home to work to a computer lab and know exactly what to do everywhere, without thinking "which shortcut is for Mac? which for Windows? Which for Linux? Why does this Linux have a shortcut panel here on the desktop, but this one has this thingy instead, and this one has nothing?" Most of all, average users need help sometimes. So, running Windows or MacOS, they can call up tech support and some random guy can tell them exactly what to do.

    Not so for Linux. I can see it now: "Ma'am, are you running KDE or Gnome or Eazel? Well, umm, is there a little elf-like foot anywhere on your desktop?" Linux will never be a viable desktop operating system for non-techies until there is a standardized interface for average-joe oriented distributions. And no, a techie setting up a system for Grandma and being her own personal tech support doesn't count.

    This is why the big companies, like it or not, need to back a standard for interfaces and run with it. Geeks everywhere can still choose to use whatever desktop and wm they want, or to go without one. But for average joes, we need a standard Linux interface.

    Now, if Linux had one, it would have a great chance very soon. MS is going to be switching consumer desktops to Windows XP, and so a lot of the Win9x and DOS apps people use will be broken or run poorly. That would give Linux a chance to zoom onto more desktops quicker than it ever has before. I can see it now, screwdriver shops and small vendors everywhere telling customers, "Yeah, Windows XP is the new standard from Microsoft, but it won't run many older Windows programs. It'll also cost you an extra $100. But take a look at this computer with Linux--it works like Windows does, is more stable, is free, IBM backs it, and if you want this on your computer instead of Windows it not only won't cost you anything it'll come with free software to view pictures, play movies and music, edit and print text, and even make your own graphics, all for free." But it ain't going to happen because there's no standardization. But just imagine how big a threat to MS it would be if IBM and Sun backed a certain Linux interface and distribution for the average joe, and started offering it on all new IBM computers, and telling OEMs that it's the greatest thing since grated cheese and they should back it as an option.

    It would be damn nice.

  • Be patient with Ximian (Score:3)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @05:27AM (#277938)

    1. -the GNOME team and/or Ximian DO NOT release packages on a timely basis when new versions of GNOME are out, users should not have to wait a month or more or in the case of Mandrake users for their distribution creator to release a new distro with the updated GNOME

    Guess you don't appreciate that just because the source code is out, it's not necessarily an instantaneous process to make RPMs and test them thoroughly on all the distributions.

    I have seen a ton of people complaining that Ximian hasn't released packages for GNOME 1.4. It's been three weeks since they were available. Ximian supports about 15 distributions and generally does a damn good job of bundling all the GNOME stuff together in one easy-to-install and easy-to-use set. Give them time to make sure that when they release Ximian GNOME 1.4 they get it right. The same moaners who are whinging and carping at the moment would be yelling blue murder if Ximian Evolution had corrupted their mail file or broken their IMAP setup, or if a minor glitch in Bonobo was causing grief with their GNOME subsystems.

    For those of you who can't be bothered to build your own GNOME distro, be patient. The impatient can always install their own stuff on the day it comes out from the source code. If you don't have GNOME 1.4 running on your system at this point in time, that really is a result of the choices you have made.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • Re:Missing the niche (Score:3)

    by Metrol ( 147060 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @03:47AM (#277939) Homepage
    I kinda figured there'd be replies similar to this one, so a reply here is as good as anywhere else.

    For the admin part, I am very glad that I don't have to deal with GUI tools.

    So am I. All to often folks seem to get the notion that you have either GUI or Text config, but never ever both. That is simply not true. SWAT does an outstanding job of admin for Samba, yet I am just as capable of editing the text file directly. SWAT also shows me up front a variety of tweaks and settings that'd take me far longer to locate and learn then reading a cryptic man page. The two concepts can live in harmony.

    It hurts performance, hurts stability, and most of all it opens up a whole lot of security issues.

    Again you seem to be thinking from an NT perspective. There's no reason why a GUI would need to be running all the time. An admin can get in, make the tweaks, and get back out again. The point is, none of the GUI solutions available now give the sysadmin a compelling reason to use them.

    From a webdesigner/developers point of view, Linux offers a lot of useful tools. Granted, no WYSIWYG html editors...

    You say that like it's a minor point. This is a HUGE point for folks doing layout and design work. This is a major show stopper for a lot of folks. It should be a place where a *nix app provides a highly compelling reason for a user to move on over. The web is a Linux/BSD specialty served up on a gold platter.

    For that, I use Quanta +, which offers the tools I need.

    Quanta is a tweak on KWrite with the GUI made to look like HomeSite, without even half the functionality. For example, you do some PHP coding, as do I. Try putting together a page with JavaScript, HTML and PHP all in the same file and watch what happens to that syntax highlighting. I could rattle off another twenty some odd features I use regularly in HomeSite that Quanta, nor any other text/html editor simply doesn't provide.

    It's not a matter of having apps that are "good enough" in comparison to Windows counterparts. Companies such as Eazel need to be working on those apps that make working with *nix a compelling choice for users on the fence. They don't have to be free, but they do need to make a user want to use the platform they're sitting on.

    I'm not going to start a KDE vs. Gnome flamewar here

    Oh sure, and take ALL the fun outta Slashdot while you're at it :) BTW, I'm also of a similar opinion on this. Very definitely a KDE advocate. Thing is, providing the tools for the admin and webmaster are going to be key to which of those two come out dominant in the long run. If neither get to it in a serious way, it'll probably keep things split up like they are for a long while to come.
  • Now, it is clear after MS and Apple got done reading their customer surveys and doing their marketting research that the Explorer/Finder is the key factor to a successful desktop.

    No, whatever their 'marketing research' says, the key factors are:

    + Available applications (Win)
    + Public awareness (Win+Mac)
    + Prettiness (Mac)
    + What everybody else uses (Win)
    + What came first in a niche field (Mac)
    + What they can get cheap on a CDR (Win)

    At the end of the day, Explorer and Finder are just file managers. Many of the non-technical Windows and Mac users I know avoid managing their files properly, because they don't know how, or don't see the benefits - everything goes on the desktop or in the 'My Documents' directory. Eventually that fills up, then they forced into learning the skills required to get some return from the tedious task of file management.

    None of them went with Windows or Macintosh because it had a great file manager.

  • Re:Eazel = CueCat? (Score:3)

    by edyavno ( 190451 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @06:42AM (#277941) Homepage
    I find this comparison between CueCat and software flawed, to say the least.
    And not just because Red Hat broke even and Caldera showed profits this past quarter, but because you seem to miss a very important point about modern software business: THIS BUSINESS IS ALL ABOUT SERVICES. The days of selling software as a self-contained "product" are long gone. Look at Oracle, Microsoft and others as they are trying really hard to change themselves into business of selling their software as services.

    I do agree that the open source companies don't seem to spend enough time thinking about what kind of paid services would be the most beneficial for their users to bring in enough revenue. How long did it take Red Hat to come up with such an obvious moneymaker as their Red Hat network?! A lot of companies using dozens of Linux boxes would love to pay for a unified automated way of tracking upgrades for all the Linux boxes on their network.
    Same with Eazel and Ximian. Their business plans are very blurry about what services exactly they plan to make money on.
    I do think that Eazel is positioned better than others to make Linux useable by your average PC user, which in turn would advance Linux position in server market as well, as more people become comfortable with using it.

  • Eazel = CueCat? (Score:3)

    by Riplakish ( 213391 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @04:46AM (#277942)
    It is readily apparent that Eazel and most other Linux related products (Ximian, RedHat, etc.) follow the CueCat business model of "give away the product and try to make money off the product by indirect means." In this case, it's give away the product and try to get people to pay for services. This business model is doomed to fail in every instance.

    What I don't understand is the reasoning here on Slashdot. I hate to paint this community with a broad brush, but the editors inundated us with article after article on the CueCat. Granted, most of it was about how Digital Convergence was trying to enforce licensing on hardware and how they were issuing "Cease and Desist" orders to anyone writing alternative software for it. However, there was quite a bit of commentary from this community about how flawed DC's business model was, and how no company has a right to make a profit or survive for that matter. It appears that this is the same business model a lot of the so-called "Linux Companies" are following, yet the editors here feel we should make donations via PayPal to keep this company afloat. Does this mean that these rules are only supposed to apply to non-Linux related companies?

    I apologise for the long-winded, Jon Katz style editorial, but this seems to be an issue that not only affects Eazel, but most other "commercial" Linux companies. I fully expect this post to be modded down as a "Troll" by the blind Linux faithful, but hopefully enough people will read it before it finds -1 to spark some discussion on this problem.

  • Can IBM live up to it's marketting? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 20, 2001 @12:25AM (#277943)
    IBM seems to be marketting itself as the Linux hero. Well, in responce to the Windows desktop war, IBM was more than willing to dump alot of money into the looser desktop formally known as CDE. Now, it is clear after MS and Apple got done reading their customer surveys and doing their marketting research that the Explorer/Finder is the key factor to a successful desktop. It seems clear that Eazel knows how to provide the best possible Explorer/Finder ever created. Now, will IBM be willing to provide the same sort of $backing$ that they provided to CDE? Or is IBM only coming to their own rescue when they run their Linux ads?

  • Missing the niche (Score:4)

    by Metrol ( 147060 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @01:08AM (#277944) Homepage
    It just seems to me that both Gnome and KDE are missing out on an important niche as they go striving for usability for the mass market. At this point in time the *nix desktops simply don't offer much to either the system admin, or to the web developer. Considering that these are the folks most likely using *nix now.

    Eazel has tossed the bulk of their effort into making a file manager and putting gobs of ease of use features in and around it. The problem is, that's not where the holes are! Both Gnome and KDE are quite user friendly on their own merits today. Both are making great strides in this realm without venture capital.

    To my earlier point of what is missing, for admins I'm referring to good, solid GUI based apps for configuring the basic services. A small suite to deal with Apache, Sendmail, Inn, and other daemons. Today folks would rather tweak on the text files directly then use those few apps that are out there because they aren't nearly as good as they should be yet. Neither GUI environment today provides much for admins.

    As to my point about the web developer, there's simply nothing I've seen in the *nix world that compares to Dreamweaver and HomeSite for development. I just have to imagine there are a lot of web developers that would like to work on the platform that Apache runs best on. Neither of those apps are perfect, but telling someone who has been working on a Mac or Windows that they need to take a month out to learn EMACS is just silly. In all fairness, there are some projects looking to provide some of HomeSite's uses, but there's nothing even coming close to Dreamweaver in the way of a GUI HTML editor.

    Bottom line, if Eazel does crash and burn I really don't feel that this is an indication of some kind of open source failure. On the contrary, it might go to prove that the environments already in place are plenty user friendly. What is needed are the apps for those folks most likely to be looking to work with Linux or a BSD and expand upon that.

  • The problem with both ximian and eazel ... (Score:4)

    by richie123 ( 180501 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @03:31AM (#277945) Homepage
    The problem with both these companies is that
    they don't even try to make money, they give
    away all their best product for free.

    If they wanted to pull in some cash they should
    move to a model where they give away source code
    for free, and make people pay for their easy
    1-2-3 binary installer. After all why would
    anyone bother with buying their CDs if it's
    easier to download ximian for free off their web
    site.

    They both pay lip service to the idea of selling
    services, but ximian even gives that away in
    redcarpet!

    Not that I'm complaining, but I do want both of
    these companies to stick around, and they have
    to make money to do that.

  • Another Benefit of Free software. (Score:4)

    by LordArathres ( 244483 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @12:06AM (#277946) Homepage
    This sucks that Eazel might go under. But I would like to point out a big benefit of Free Software. For example if a company like MS or Apple were to go under. The current owners of their software would be screwed as all updates etc would stop. Free software is different in the fact that if Eazel dies, a group of people will take over. The advantage is that Free Software will never die as long as there is someone to keep it alive. That is also a disadvantage as you cannot really make money from it.

    I think a solution to Eazel would be to consolidate with Red Hat or Mandrake, that way they would have a financial backing to continue.

    Arathres


    I love my iBook. I use it to run Linux!

  • Why not a merger with Ximian? (Score:5)

    by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @12:34AM (#277947)
    Ximian, as I understand it, still has money. In addition, Ximian is highly dependant of Eazel's work, and has competing business strategies (services). How about Ximian buying out Eazel, thus keeping them alive, and merging Eazels services-strategies with their own. I suspect this would have been the better option from the beginning, as newbies won't like the idea of several different entities from which they are supposed to get help.

  • I'd say pour the work into Mozilla first (Score:5)

    by Tyler_L ( 213707 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @01:04AM (#277948) Homepage
    And here's why: I'm a real fan of Eazel. I think that GNOME needs a bit of work in the UI department, and I think that Eazel has done a wonderful job of making the environment more user-friendly and aesthetically appealing. (heaven forbid on a -nix box! *grin*)

    Every time Eazel releases a new version of Nautilus, I gleefully download and install the latest and greatest patch or release hoping to have come across something that I can actually use. Every time, I'm disappointed. Here's why.

    It's not Eazel's fault. I believe that their part of the application is pretty solid. From what I've seen, it's that dang Mozilla browser that's embedded that renders the application unusable. Without fail (and I've run it on a myriad of boxen with fairly heterogeneous configurations), within a few hours something will snap and Nautilus will choke, requiring me to switch to a text console and remove it with kill. Considering the fact that I've had similar luck with many of the Mozilla releases, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to Eazel and placing the blame on Mozilla instead, though I admit to having never set out to research the phenomenon.

    Conclusion: Eazel has a good thing going for them. They're making my favorite desktop more enjoyable. Mozilla also has a good thing going for them. Finally a browser that adhires to the standards set by the W3C. But in my opinion, Mozilla needs far more work than Eazel does, and Eazel can't survive without a bulletproof Mozilla (it's embedded... there's no way around it). Therefore, I say that before we can hope for Eazel to fulfill all our hopes and dreams, we're going to have to finally build a browser that rivals IE in stability.

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