Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
__________________
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.
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
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire