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Inprise's Kylix To Be Opened? & Gnome Alliance
captaindelphi writes "ZDNet has an interesting article on Kylix that can be found
here. While it is short on the details it makes for some interesting news!
"Inprise Corp. will announce, at Comdex in Las Vegas this week, plans to release the source code of its Kylix Linux rapid application development tool to the GNOME Foundation"
" That's an interesting twist - releasing the code to the Gnome Foundation - but the addition of a lot of Gnome support to Kylix will stir things up as well.
The article also mentions that Kylix will integrate with bonobo. Perhaps this means that they support QT *and* GTK. The VCL/CLX libraries can be bound to any underlying widget system. Another month of programming and, voila, new widget bindings. And if they change CLX to support GTK, then since the Kylix IDE is written using CLX, Kylix itself will be a GNOME app! Here is a section from Borland's Kylix faq: "Is Kylix an Open Source project? While the Kylix project itself is not being developed in a community Open Source model, it is a top requirement that developers be able to use Kylix to develop both GPL Open Source, and proprietary applications. The details of the Kylix open source project are currently under development and will be announced at a later date. The Kylix development team believes strongly in the value of open source and free software (in the FSF sense) and aims to support GPL application development as a clear option in Kylix." Notice the clause that specifies "in the FSF sense". Well, since the FSF doesn't recognize Qt as free software, then it could be argued that Kylix no longer depends on Qt. Either way, we should know by Christmas. I'll take a copy of Kylix in my stocking anytime.
Opinions change daily as new information arrives. Stay tuned.
Ah Jesus, what are you on? :) Of course I can make a GPL program and sell it to my buddies for $10k, but why the hell would they pay that price when they could get it legally from elsewhere for the price of a blank CD?
;)
Of course, you're right about the GPL not prohibiting sales, but in a real world, basing a business on that idea is futile. You WILL agree with this, and therefore, you WILL agree that my saying "You can't combine Open Source with selling the same product for thousands of dollars" is indeed NOT "dead wrong".
*sound of me resting my case*
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
For those interested in a genuine GPL'd project to provide an IDE for a Pascal compiler, check out The Lazarus Project.
One of the reasons we are doing this is because Borland is intending to make Kylix a closed-source compiler and IDE. This is also being done as a cross-platform project (supporting both Windows and Linux through the GTK).
For my $0.02, I think this is mainly a lot of buzz words and steam to create the impression that they are GPL-friendly. There are some Borland-sponsored projects, such as the JEDI project which incorporate quite a bit of GPL'd code.
I think that Kylix will be a fantastic tool for people who want to implement a Linux-based application platform with closed-source software (using Linux as the OS... instead of MS-Windows or something else). This should be encouraged in the sense that it does promote the use of Linux as a general platform and will get Linux into "the real world(tm)". For the GNU/Linux purist, however, Kylix will never be GPL'd or free as in speech (such as an RMS-inspired completely free computer system without any closed-source software whatsoever), except as a piece of abandonware from the ruins of Borland. This won't happen soon, if ever.
Yup if you yell I WILL agree. I don't think so the key here is to add value to your product so that buying it from you becomes a better option. For example if a company had a database that they sell for megabucks and at the same time are giving away a certain level of support for this product for free. Now say they see the light and GPL the database. Now you are right no one would pay for the official copy of the database unless for example the support was priced on the free copies in such a way that it make more sense to buy a copy or if say paid support is cheaper for people who buy the software. Or say you throw in tools and information for free to people to who buy it. Or say you produce such a great product and GPL it and provide such great service that people are willing to pay for it in order to encourage this kind of thing. It is called quality and yes it can be done. It is called support. Yes you would have to work very hard and be really good to make it work but I think this is a good thing.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
that was a troll BTW... didn't you notice the constipation in monkeys part?
This is, incidentally, the first Google result that pops up for CLX. I wish vendors would at least do a websearch before picking a name for a product. In this case, it's particularly confusing because both CLX and Borland's toolkit are about interfacing programs to window systems.
As for the announcement itself, let's wait and see what actually happens. This could be little more than the source code Microsoft includes with MSDN, which is largely useless to anybody who hasn't also bought their product.
The BDE is shit, even Borland recognizes that.
I remember reading somewhere, in one of the many "Kylix is coming!" articles, that CLX will include a new, sane db library.
That is about the only thing Delphi/C++Builder screwed up on. Hopefully Borland will come through on their promise and make the CLX db lib small, fast, and usable.
RMS stepped up and made a gesture of goodwill, publically issuing a legal forgiveness for any infringements on FSF copyrights they might have commited
:-) you for your ignorance. I, myself, personally, wrote StepStyle, a Qt widget theme based on the NeXT look and feel. Mosfet wrote KStep, a Qt widget theme based on the NeXT look and feel. That's two! Look before you leap.
But KDE used no FSF code. There was nothing for Stallman to forgive. I have a hard time believing that he didn't know it. It would be like me making an announcement to the world at large that I forgave RMS for beating me as a child. He didn't do it, I know he didn't do it, and he would be fully justified in getting angry over my announcement. The situation is no different. Stallman accused KDE of illegal activities then forgave them for it.
No, it was always intended to be free. However, the licensing it was offered under was inconsistent - KDE code was released under the GPL, yet depended on the QT libraries released under the QPL, a license which is not compatible with the GPL.
None of this made KDE unfree, any more than djcpp is unfree because it depends on closed Window libraries. Every byte of KDE code was and is 100% Free Software by the commonly accepted definition of Free Software. It was 100% free to use. 100% free to copy. 100% free to redistribute. 100% free to modify. 100% free to distribute modifications. That it linked with Qt may have been problematic, but in way diminished its Free-ness.
There's a reason there is a GTKStep but no QTStep.
I will forgive
Forget about writing KDE code if you don't subscribe to the C++ religion also.
It's not a religion, it's a coding preference. I'm not losing sleep over the lack of a Babbage wrapper for Qt. I'll let the Babbage guys worry about it. If they want a Babbage wrapper, it's up to them to write it. This is Open Source (Free Software for those of you living in Rio Linda), so no one is going to hold your hand. Go do it yourself. Just like in the GTK+ world (or do you think those language wrappers miraculously fall out of the sky). Trolltech has enough to do without hiring 100 new developers to port the interface to a 100 different languages.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
And as a user, you can as always mix KDE and Gnome apps. They won't look exactly the same, though.
...for people to quit saying this or that is "desperately" needed. Why do I say this? Look at your comment. It implies that there's nothing in the way of RAD tools for Linux.
There are already RAD tools out for Linux.
JBuilder.
Forte.
VisualAge Java.
Visual TCL.
BigForth/Minos.
Phoenix Basic.
XBasic.
(And many others out there- I just remember these off the top of my head.)
Yes, Delphi/C++ Builder would be MOST welcome as an addition to the Linux community's available options. One, that if Delphi came available, I'd buy a copy- I'm a Delphi fan, after all...
Does Linux "desperately" need RAD tools? No. It HAS them already.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Combine it with the Free Pascal Compiler and you should have a complete open source solution (iff the Kylix IDE indeed gets open sourced)
--
Donate free food here
Kylix has been announced by Borland as one of their top new commercial products and they put quite a lot of their resources into it so it is pretty much impossible to release it all free (whatever free means).
However, in the past, Borland has prooved their will to focus on the needs of the Linux and also Open Source community by
It would be really unfair to trash Borland just because they try to make money out of software development or because they don't release it all as free. Instead we should be happy for every part they might possibly release as free.
(I'm not working for Borland nor do I have any releation to them or something - except for being their customer.)
See this is the problem we are not talking about the same thing you are talking about savvy geeks who know that they do not need to have their handheld and do not care if their is anything behind it. I ,and I suspect the other posters, are talking about managers who don't know C from Perl the kind of people who really make these purchases . This simple fact is these people will pay through the nose for support and will in many cases do *anything* to ensure that they will have a phone number to call and someone on the other end who has the same piece of software running and acces to a great big database of info on that software. For example at the last place I worked they had a intranet server running IIS. I was allowed to mirror it on a Debian box with Apache while the M$ box kept crashing every couple of days down for a average of 10 to 20 minutes my mirror had uptime of about 200 days when I left and AFAIK is still up and running. The still would not switch. Why? "Well when it does go down who is going to support it?" You see it did not matter that I had been supporting it and kicking the IIS boxes ass for over 200 days it only mattered to them that they had a phone number and someone to call when the M$ bo went down. This is typical. These are PHBs not geeks. This is why you are wrong.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
This seems fair to me. In fact their intention is to do exactly thing as troll tech with QT. I would have prefered if they had open sourced the IDE and the compiler too, but this is better than nothing and would probably contribute to bring VCL in the center of free software development.
Secondary disclaimer: I can't prove I work for Borland, but in a couple days it will be a moot point.
Two issues at hand: (a) What's is Kylix? (b) Will Kylix be Open Source? I can't answer these in detail, because I actually take my nondisclosure agreement seriously, even a few days before the info goes public. (For me, it's not so much a legal issue as an ethical issue.) But I think I can clear a few things up.
What is Kylix? The answer to that keeps changing. When I was hired (early this year), there was no product called Kylix, and no plans for one. What we had "Project Kylix" (complete with T shirt), a scheme to extend the Delphi/C++Builder product line into the Linux world. This project went through many changes, but at that time, the basic idea was to port various development apps, including the IDE and compiler, to Linux. A cross platform version of the VCL (Visual Component Library; the cross platform version is now called CLX) would also be written. Existing software would be extended to support CLX (in addition to the VCL), but the new Linux software would support CLX only.
Sidebar: this strategy is meant to leverage a little known fact: there is a lot of Delphi and C++Builder code out there. (This is no suprise to thousands of programmers who use these products every day. But the rest of the world -- including me, before I came here -- is under the delusion the Delphi and C++Builder are more or less dead. Running the VCL Scanner will demonstrate how untrue this is.) CLX is designed to minimize the cost of modifying Windows-VCL software so that it becomes Windows-Linux-CLX software.
Now, I'm not giving anything away when I disclose that there has been a slight change in plans. There will actually be a product called Kylix. (All the name recognition was too good to pass up.) I'm gonna honor my NDA and withhold the specifics of this product. But any intelligent person should be able to figure out what "Kylix" will be. The rest of you will know later this week.
Now, the open source issue. I can't disclose specifics, but Borland's strategy should be obvious. On the one hand, we need to contribute to the Free (RMS "Free", not Budweiser "Free") software pool -- this is enlightened self-interest. On the other hand, we don't sell hardware, and our revenues from consulting are limited. If we can't keep some of our source private, we have no income. Again, an intelligent person should be able to figure out what we plan to give away.
One complication is that we've unwittingly involved ourselves in the KDE versus GNOME wars. Kylix was never conceived as a desktop-specific product. Unfortunately, the decision to base CLX on Qt was interpreted in some quarters as an alignment with the KDE camp. (Possibly the abortive merger with Corel, which is very KDE-involved, also contributed.) With Sun et al. leaping on the GNOME bandwagon, this Looks Bad. So upper management is making the most of Kylix's interoperability with GNOME, and our possible plans to provide future GNOME support. (And, of course, minimizing future plans for KDE support!) Which, together with our limited open-sourcing, seems to have been lept upon and overblown by ZDNet.
__________________
IANAL but I understood the GPL allowed charging for binaries. I thought that it simply insisted that source code for the software be made available to the customer on demand, ie available to people who paid for it.
Not to say that you can't give it away to anyone, but the GPL only INSISTS on giving source code to at LEAST paying customers. So even if the whole system was GPL, they could still charge you in the first place before they needed to give you the code.
(But of course under the GPL, I could buy a copy and then redistribute to all my friends for nothing).
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
And it's a shame. Ever used Delphi or C++ Builder? They rock. None of this pissing about with message pumps or maps, just get in there and _write your code_. If you want to do low down and nasty stuff, you can, with a minimum of effort. And the compiler spits out some very tight code. MS stole some Borland people a while back, but Borland still have a keen competitive edge.BR I thought Kylix was about to resurrect Borland's finances, but if they release this as free beer, it will be great for the OSS people, but suicide for Borland. Don't get me wrong, I love free beer as much as the next man, but I _would_ shell out for Kylix as I trust Borland to bring some serious quality tools to Linux. And the ease of use of Delphi / C++ Builder will bring many, many Win32 programmers across. The Bearded Gurus amongst you may not want this, but even a Win32 coder brings another pair of eyes to see those bugs...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
From the FAQ (quoted from you):Kylix open source project are currently under development and will be announced at a later date
From the article: will announce, at Comdex in Las Vegas this week, plans to release the source code of its Kylix
What here dont you understand?
Under Is Kylix an Open Source project?, Borland states "The details of the Kylix open source project are currently under development and will be announced at a later date."
But under How will Kylix be priced?, there's the usual "ranges between $99 and $799 for the standard to professional editions and up to $2,500 for the Enterprise editions"
So this means, yes, no, maybe, and perhaps later?
Believe it when I see it, perhaps...
M.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Seriously! Kylix is written with Qt. Of course it can be run under GNOME, and sure adding support for GNOME projects is a plus, but the environment itself IS a Qt application, and looks very much like an average (albeit complex) KDE application.
;)
;)
Claiming it will be opened up for GNOME is just a petty combination of two of the most popular buzz words these days; Open Source, and GNOME.
Having said that, of course an Open Source Kylix would be fantastic. However, it's just not going to happen. You can't combine Open Source (which is a protected term, mind you) with selling the same product for thousands of dollars, as they still claim they will (and deserve to, IMO). I think the best case is we'll end up with a quasi-"open source" "Kylix Lite", and the "source" part will probably be the bundled example programs, with the "open" part being that the file permissions is set to 777
Even in the impossible turn of events that Kylix be GLPed, KDE would benifit significantly more than GNOME, because Kylix is based on Qt and not GTK, and written in C++, not C -- Talk of opening it up for GNOME
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
I work at Borland. In fact, I've been working on these very issues for the company. The CLX libraries will be open-sourced (GPL) and made available with a free (little f) compiler for developing open-source (GPL) applications. The entire IDE will not be open-sourced, and commercial developers will be able to distribute applications under a commercial license. Kylix will support both KDE and GNOME, and Borland intends to support both desktops as much as possible. After all, it's about choice, isn't it?
DaBuddha
First off, there's nothing in the article itself to indicate that GNOME will be free to do anything with the code except look at it and maybe make a few changes to improve interoperability with GNOME.
Secondly, this isn't anything radically new. Borland has always sold the source for Delphi's component library. They haven't kept it locked up where nobody on the outside could see it
While this is news (they're now developing strong support for GNOME as well as KDE), it's not necessarily so earth-shattering as the headline might make you think.
Borland already gives away the C++ compiler and linker from their C++ Builder package. They also include the full source code to their Visual Component Library (VCL) with both Delphi and C++ Builder.
In the future, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they (1) release the Object Pascal compiler for free, and (2) make the VCL source code available for free. These moves do not hurt their prime products, which are the Delphi and C++ development suites, including form and property editors and an IDE which integrates the VCL and compilers. That's what people want Delphi/Kylix for. They don't just want raw compilers.
Personally, I would love for Borland to give away their Object Pascal compiler, both for Windows and Linux. What a masterpiece it is! It would get a huge following among amateur programmers, because of its speed and ease of use. Don't try to say that Free Pascal is the same thing, because it isn't. The big advantage of Object Pascal is that it compiles darn near instantaneously on any machine. I'm talking over a million lines per minutes on a halfway decent machine from two years ago.
Inprise renames itself to Borland, Silicon Graphics renames itself to SGI... all we need now is for Compaq to rename itself to DEC.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
If it's open or closed. As a developer, I just want it! Soonest. I've used Builder from ver 1.0 and Visual C++ from 2.0. Builder is better! Easier to use, and therefore faster to develop with. Linux desperately needs a RAD tool, and Kylix would be perfect for that.
Best Slashdot Co
Which window manager is that? BlackBox, Windowmaker, enlightenment, sawfish, xvfm, xvfm2 or any of the others? Which window manager do you mean and how are they tying us to it? Hmm?
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
> can't believe they've decided to tie things to one window manager in particular
Bzt wrong. They haven't. Get a bit of context already before leaping to conclusions.
Borland has stated several times that Kylix will run and work under both KDE and Gnome, and will be capable of producing apps that run and work under both Gnome and KDE.
Thier bias up to now has, if anything, been the other way; towards KDE. Borland stated that they did not wish to take sides in any way, but came to realise that thier gui code must be based upon an exisiting or new gui toolset. They therefor chose Qt, ie KDE's widget set. Yes, in version 1, GUI apps written in Kylix will use QT. Not Gnome's libs.
As someone who had been avidly waiting for Kylix and readling lots about it, today's news is suprising, both as it shows a swing towards Gnome, and as I fully expected Kylix to be a commerical app.
The other poster may be correct - perhaps just the code for the *IDE* will be GPL'd, with the OP (and later the C++) compilers staying closed source. Either way, Borland is making big concesions to the open-source world.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Short version: Kylix is Delphi for Linux.
Borland already has Interbase on Linux, Open Source and the works.
M.
So the question is... are there any good free compilers for Linux? ;)
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Considering that Kylix uses the Qt library for its GUI, and paid good money to Trolltech for services to boot, it's a safe bet to say that it will look as good (or slightly better) under KDE than under GNOME.
Of course, if this GNOME announcement is genuine and not just a spin, then Kylix will be able to use both Qt and GTK+, and it will look great on both desktops (or none at all) at the same time.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Stallman has more than once extended the proverbial olive branch to the KDE team
You mean like declaring KDE distributors to be illegal? Like arrogantly granting forgiveness for using code that they, in fact, did not use?
Even though they finally, relunctantly, took the steps needed to make their software free
Their software always was free. It met every definition of the OSD, and every definition of FS stated in the GNU pages. Everyone always had from day one the explicit permission to use, distribute and modify KDE source code. The only thing that changed RMS' mind about the criminal status of folks like me (who gave a copy of KDE to their friend (it would be wrong to deny them if they asked)) was done by Trolltech in their triple-licensing. The KDE core team had nothing to do with it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
__________________
Kylix is their port of C++Builder/Delphi. JBuilder is their Java deveopment environment.
The article mention Kylix briefly in the beginning, but the rest of the aricle is about JBuilder. It is unclear what part of "open source" and "Gnome intergration" refers to which product.
The article states that they will be releasing the code to the GNOME Foundation. They will also be joining the GNOME Foundation. This is a completely different than releasing the code to the general public, under a Free license like the GPL.
So members of the GNOME Foundation can now all to easily build GNOME and it's applications agnist libiaries that are not under the LGPL.. Yeah, sounds like a great idea.
Really, it sounds like Borland/Inprise trying to get some press attention before/durring the show. See? Look we're good. We're releasing the source [to the chosen few who we deem worthy] so that applications can be rapidly developed [and we can get you to pay licensing fees in a market where there were none]. Yup, those marketing people sure know what they're doing, but they're happy to let you think of them as mindless drones.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.