Lumina: PC-BSD's Own Desktop Environment

jones_supa (887896) writes "The PC-BSD project is developing a new open source (BSD license) desktop environment from scratch. The name of the project is Lumina and it will be based around the Qt toolkit. The ultimate goal is to replace KDE as the default desktop of PC-BSD. Lumina aims to be lightweight, stable, fast-running, and FreeDesktop.org/XDG compliant. Most of the Lumina work is being done by PC-BSD's Ken Moore. Even though Lumina is still in its early stages, it can be built and run successfully, and an alpha version can already be obtained from PC-BSD's ports/package repositories."

Re:Why?

[mrchaotica]

Okay, but when you've torn everything down and started over from scratch twenty-plus times already, maybe that stops being the right development methodology?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why indeed. The BSD license will ensure that if it ever does gain traction (i.e. is adopted by an Apple or Samsung or Microsoft for some product) that the community will never see any of that effort.

GPL is true freedom for your code. BSD is a corporate handout.

Anyone knows how it would compare to razor-qt ?

[biloute]

http://razor-qt.org/ [razor-qt.org]

Re:Why?

[Microlith]

What does "development methodology" have to do with it? Sometimes you just want to start from scratch rather than hauling along someone else's baggage. I guess your complaint just falls into the category of "dissatisfaction with how others spend their own time."

Re:Why?

[nyctopterus]

But what are they going to change that will make the effort worth it? When I look at the variety of desktops, the majority (perhaps all) of them seem to be tinkering with the same basic concept. It would be much more interesting if this splitting was leading to a drastically different desktop concepts, but it's not.

NIH syndrome

[bmo]

This is great and all, but I really don't see any reason to reinvent the wheel besides anal-retentiveness about licenses and Not Invented Here. KDE's libs (and the Qt they're using) are LGPL.

KDE license requirements (a partial list)

LGPL version 2.1 as listed in kdelibs/COPYING.LIB or later
LGPL version 2.1, or version 3 or later versions approved by the membership of KDE e.V.
BSD license as listed below.
Ensure that the BSD license does not contain the so called 'advertisement clause'.

Qt license for free software is LGPL or GPL 3.0.

Qt is available under three different licensing options designed to accommodate the needs of our various users.

Qt licensed under our commercial license agreement is appropriate for development of proprietary/commercial software where you do not want to share any source code with third parties or otherwise cannot comply with the terms of the GNU LGPL version 2.1 or GNU GPL version 3.0.

Qt licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 is appropriate for the development of Qt applications provided you can comply with the terms and conditions of the GNU LGPL version 2.1.

Qt licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3.0 is appropriate for the development of Qt applications where you wish to use such applications in combination with software subject to the terms of the GNU GPL version 3.0 or where you are otherwise willing to comply with the terms of the GNU GPL version 3.0.

Documentation for free software based on Qt is FDL.

The argument that there isn't already another desktop based on Qt is obviated by the existence of the Razor desktop, which could really use the extra development help. Why start from scratch when you already have this?

http://razor-qt.org/ [razor-qt.org]

This reeks of Not Invented Here syndrome.

--
BMO

Re:Several mistakes

[jones_supa]

Submitter here. I take full responsibility for the mistakes you mentioned. Most of that stuff I simply robotically extracted upstream from the Phoronix article. I did not use more of my time to do a verified, accurate research of the topic. My apologies.