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Rekall, Aethera, Kapital... Oh My
The first application is ReKall. Rekall is TheKompany's answer to MS Access. Lots of people have asked for this kind of application for Linux, and TheKompany in response has issued this Preview Release version. The Upcoming KOffice will include a version of Rekall. Instead of using Visual Basic like Access does, Rekall uses Python, as well as plug-ins for MySQL, Postgre-SQL, and Informix (other plug-ins for the various databases will follow.) Note: Since Rekall is using KDE-DB (also a contribution to KDE by TheKompany) and KDE-DB will be available only with the upcoming KDE 2.2; you'll need to do some simple compilation and installation. All the instructions are available at their web pages.
The next product is Aethera -- a nice PIM manager to manage all your email as well as contact information. You might say it's competing with Evolution, but both of the projects takes different direction of implementation. Aethera is also expandable with Plug-ins. (Debian packages are also available).
While ReKall and Aethera are Open Source, the last one is a commercial product called Kapital, which is an Quicken/MS Money workalike. The product costs money (you can find those prices at the above link) and it has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with. You can download the beta to test it and find for yourself. (Debian packages are available for Kapital as well.)
Good luck waiting for Eazel to make money...
Just email them and ask them for their media kit, and you might want to read it (it's 1 PDF page)..
And what are their business plan? to put AD's on Nautilus. What about 3rd party applications support? (so you can download other stuff then they have) - Maybe in 2002...
You call this a good business plan? I call it the way to chapter 11
Hetz (Heunique)
Wrong
TheKompany is making their products and if they want - they release software to be included with KDE, but that DOESN'T mean that KDE is depending on TheKompany - they are totally independent of each other.
KDE is being developed by mostly volunteers (and some developers who are paid by the various distributions - Caldera, Mandrake, SuSE) - so if TheKompany tommorow goes south it will be a sad day, but KDE development will be continued...
On the GNOME side, Eazel and Ximian are doing lots of work - if Eazel and Ximian will go south, GNOME will continue to be developed, but with much slower pace until they'll get new volunteers to help.
Hetz (Heunique)
Why is it people continue to follow the Microsoft-think of "One World, One Operating System, One Product"? You do not need a single ubiquitous application or suite to solve interoperability problems! What you should promote instead is a single standard for documents themselves. Wait... isn't XML supposed to do this? (Or is that just a hollow promise? I'm not really an XML fan, an I'm not an application fan either, but this is ridiculous.)
Isn't it every other day with "New macro virus!" or "New Outlook security hole!" that we criticize the ubiquity of single applications? "Interoperability" means multiple products working together. Not the MS definition, "one product working with itself on every computer". That is not interoperability.
In fact, not having a standard application encourages interoperability. What would have happened if we'd settled on a single application for mail exchange? File transfer? HTML? (Oh, whoops, we tried that, and now have a horribly fragmented mess that's still being cleaned up.)
One ubiquitous office suite is not the answer.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Of course they do -- that's their business. But locking people into a proprietary document format is making the same mistake that was made in the Windows world.
If the format is open, and accessible to many different apps, then there is a real reason for a vendor to make their application perform better. If the format field is levelled, and one vendor has a word processor app that is faster, more stable, and more portable than their competition - they will get more users.
The problems then come when, in order to have product distinction, companies "extend" the standard - thus making files made by their app incompatible with other apps. This is the situation we have to avoid. It also means that once a particular app is exceedingly fast, stable, and portable, there won't be much call for other apps to do the same job -- so the developers of the "winning" app will be stuck...either move on and make new software, or start "extending".
The business world wants the latter, as it means locking people into a certain program/format, thus ensuring revenue from "upgrades". The former is generally better for users and the "community" as a whole, as it means more quality software.
This is one of those hurdles the linux/open source/free software/whatever community has to clear before free, open standards for this sort of thing will be possible.
So what really needs to happen is the KDE and GNOME people need to get together and decide on UI interoperability standards -- then any apps wishing to become a "de facto standard" would adhere to those, and run perfectly well in a GNOME or KDE environment, or a mix of the two, or neither.
To some extent, this has already occurred - AFAIK, it's possible to drag&drop between the two, and KDE is able to make use of GTK themes (haven't played with it myself though)
Admittedly, the differences in toolkits (qt vs gtk) aren't trivial - and the backend communications are even less so - but it doesn't seem out of the question that an interop standard could be agreed upon - then it's just a matter of porting the current apps to the new standards.
I am, of course, prone to being wrong.
The real win would be a standard and documented file format. Then people could run *any* program on Linux to edit their file. Obviously some will work better than others and there would be preferences. It would also help if the programs would preserve sections of the file that they don't understand and write them unchanged to the output.
The only way I see a standard file format coming out is if a free program is included with distributions that reads and writes it. A free Windows program that does the same will probably be necessary as well.
We still need some documentation that says what \lt;SHRB, size="40 gleems"> does, though.
You could pay $30 for a "preview release", or $40 for a final version. Or you could just run Quicken instead.
Or you could use the just-as-polished, already available, open source product.
I am a huge supporter of Gnucash, and use it to keep the books for the Victoria Linux Users Group, but it is neither highly polished nor finished.The killer features that I saw in the screenshot of Kapital were a functioning print chequing module and an address book which implies A/R and A/P.
I hope this gives the gnucash folks some impetus to catch up to a Linux based competitor
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
when is their next product, "Avada Kedavra", going to be available?
As soon as the rest of their dev team gets out of Azkaban.
0 1 - just my two bits
Let me get this straight:
You think it's a good thing for a Free Software company to sell things to generate money for development of Free Software, but only if the things they're selling violate the Free Software ethic?
The net effect of them selling t-shirts and stuffed animals instead of Closed software would be more Free software, *AND* better community relations. The net effect of them putting all their monetary eggs into the Closed basket is an eventual slide into releasing more and more closed software.
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The MS file format is specific to features in Word. If the Linux word processor doesn't support those features, then it is pointless to try and be compatible.
Essentially, if you want to be compatible, then you have to treat the document the same way that Word does. Which, one way or another, means putting Word on Linux (by reverse engineering, porting, or parallel development of equivalent code).
To develop a word processor that reads Word documents, your main goal has to be compatibility, not functionality or innovation. You can't say "I think it would be great if my word processor had feature A and changed the concept of feature B". Then when you try to push Word documents into it, you find out that your paradigm doesn't fit Microsofts', and you have to change it all.
Currently, import filters have to eliminate or ignore the parts of the format it doesn't support, and transform the other peices to fit the paradigm. Hence the poor filters.
So when people say, "Linux needs better import filters for Word documents," what they are really saying (but don't know it) is, "Linux needs Word."
The real issue is: why don't they stick to standard file types? Well, maybe there isn't a standard for presentations, spreadsheets, etc.
You can't use a Microsoft standard without your program having Microsoft's features in it. The two are inseparably tied together.
The de facto standard doesn't solve the problem, it just limits the options. A true standard will give a base upon which may be built custom extensions. That way an application may explore the possibilities, yet return to the basics when interoperability is called for.
Now if I could just get KDE to run on CygWin, I could switch to using all the same programs on both platforms!
:-)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
KWord opens MS Word 97 and 2000 (unsure about 95) files quite nicely. It has alpha RTF support (which can be saved as .doc files and opened transparantly by all versions of MS Word... that's how even MS Word itself handles backward compatability).
Basically, the hard part is done, and now the easy part needs to be cleaned up. Kinda ironic isn't it?
On the other side of the "Big Two Apps", KSpread reads Excel 97 and 2000 files just fine, but only saves to CSV right now.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Whups... I replied to this same message saying that it works well. Which it does - *if* you're talking about the current, i.e., CVS version.
The KWord packaged in the last official release of KOffice is much much more shaky in its MS Word import abilities. I should have clarified.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
This is nearly off-topic, but interesting in the same way:
KDE has a project going to produce a print publication (alongside a web site, of course) that highlights and discusses KDE applications and features articles of interest to KDE users.
The title of the project is KDE-Zine (can anyone in Europe guess where this is going?).
We Americans (particularly us Southern Boys) reflexively connect Kapitalized words that subsitute "s/C/K" with the embarrassing and horrific KKK, but the Europeans in the KDE project don't really realize this, but it goes both ways...
Recently on the KDE-Zine list, some of the Americans had started abbreviating KDE-Zine as "the kz". They would discuss what should go into the kz, what progress was made on the kz, etc. It lasted for a short time until some of the Germans on the list became rather emotional, to the bewilderment of the Americans.
It turns out that "kz" is the designation for the Nazi Concentration Camps in German. It's a *very* touchy and emotion filled subject.
It's interesting how Open Source ties cultures together, and how we are all revealed to have our own little hangups and embarassing cultural legacies.
And then there's the recent nixing of the proposed name for the new standard text editor for KDE - the original author wanted to name it Kant, until it was pointed out that many english speakers (particularly some British ones) had some issues with how that was pronounced. :)
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
No office suite is very good yet. As soon as one pokes its head out from the others with the stablity and features necessary, then it will probably be adopted as more or less "standard" (although it could be that we get more than one, which is probably fine). RedHat should not adopt any office suite as standard, because that would interfere with the evolution and natural selection of the best office suite. Just wait a little bit, and things will sort themselves out. Same is true for the web browser (konqueror really is pretty good, and Mozilla/gecko is getting better all the time). I've seen the cries of "X-windows doesn't do 3-D", and "we don't support USB", and "the kernel doesn't scale well", etc., etc..... the point is we always seem to get there. The same is true of office suites. We have several serious contenders now. Just let them evolve. In a year, we'll have a serious contender to MS Office.
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
The difference between TheKompany and Ximian/Eazel is that theKompany doesn't have any affect on the KDE core team and the KDE core development.
theKompany is just a software company. Don't use their software if you don't want to (and I think many KDE users don't use their software).
But nowadays, if you are a GNOME user, practically, you cannot just ignore the work of Ximian and Eazel (in the way you can ignore theKompany). They have taken over the GNOME development with venture capital. VC, which source now seems to drain.
That's the difference.
Eh? their products are either fully commercial, closed source, etc or totally open (gpled, bsded, or what license they use). For the most cases their commercial and open software is separate and have little to do with each other. Some of it is open-source but addons cost money - somewhat more questionable but still ok with me- usually the added features are stuff not that many need.
I just dont see their free projects as their evil plan to lure customers into feeling all warm and fuzzy then totally ripping them off. In my opinion the free stuff is their main thing, and the proprietary stuff is just to keep the food on the table. How else could they spend most of the day writing free stuff?
Now, that's a totally legitimate business plan, of course, but TheKompany isn't a free software company any more than Microsoft is. They're just selling proprietary software for an otherwise Free platform.
But please remember that they've released a lot more Free code than proprietary. Comparing them to microsoft is insulting. It's true though that they're not a *pure* free software company. They mix from both worlds. The "feel" i get is that they are a bunch of guys that wants to write free code, but still eat so they do the best they can.
So don't claim that they "Get it." And why are you knocking Ximian? It's fine to praise TheKompany in this forum, but will you (and TheKompany's prez!) quit it with the "t-shirt and monkey" crap?
I have nothing against Ximian and eazel and i truly hope they make it - but i just cant see how where they'll get the revenue. Hopefully it's just me being stupid.
-henrik
I have absolutly no problems buying products from theKompany - because I know I sponsor their free work by doing so (that their products are excellent may have something to do with it too :)
All people need food on the table, and selling some proprietary applications to be able to develop free stuff seems like a reasonable tradeoff. I'm afraid some linux companies will just disappear once they've burned through the VC money simply because they have no plans on how to make money. :(
Sorry FSF(Free Software Fanatics? :) but i feel that in some cases proprietary software might be a Good Thing. This could be one of them. The net effect of theKompany releasing some closed source products will be *more* Free software, not less.
Also: If you think their products could be useful: *please* buy them! It'll keep the free stuff coming.
Kudos to all @ theKompany.
-henrik (no, i dont work there :)
--Ben
If you want to be well liked, be CANADIAN. Im an American, and have experienced much anti-American sentiment that extended beyond "obligatory but well-meant jokes" in various European countires. In my last trip I put a Canadian flag patch on my backpack and was treated VERY nicely my entire trip. Luckily I lived in Canada for a year so I wasn't completely clueless when asked where I lived and such.
Gotta love the Canadians...
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
You could pay $30 for a "preview release", or $40 for a final version. Or you could just run Quicken instead.
Or you could use the just-as-polished, already available, open source product.
I bet you'd like some screenshots
An aside:
People always whine about KDE vs Gnome and relative freedom, GPL, FSF, blahblahblah. But it is interesting to note that Ximian and Eazel release ALL their products under Free licenses. TheKompany says "We will be offering Kapital under a closed-source license. However, we are considering a limited open-source license, under whose terms purchasers of the software also receive source code. We are exploring other options for making the software as open as possible."
Actions speak louder than words.
Good points, just one thing to note:
On the GNOME side, Eazel and Ximian are doing lots of work - if Eazel and Ximian will go south, GNOME will continue to be developed, but with much slower pace until they'll get new volunteers to help.
Keep in mind that Miguel was running Gnome development long before he created Ximian/Helix. If Ximian was to go under today, I doubt that he (or many of the other fine folk there) would stop working on Gnome.
All of the working going into open source desktops these days really makes me proud to be a part of this community. I have a preference for Gnome, but I'd buy any KDE developer a beer if I ran into them at a conference!
"Come to think of it, "cant" and "can't" are both prefectly acceptable words throughout the UK, at least in my experience, and I can't see why the "K" would make a difference."
Perhaps because people didn't want the name of the text editor being a homonym for "Can't"?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Yes, it's good to see companies undertaking real, useful projects - and actually throwing money and resources at it.
Yet I can't help thinking about how all of this will only be helpful for KDE users.
Of course, GNOME users (or even people who don't use desktop environments at all - personally I use X and the BlackBox window manager, period) can actually use KDE software - if you've got a few tens of megabytes of RAM to waste. I'm afraid I don't.
I know, competition is good, but... Damn the desktop war. Really.
Thomas Miconi
About 3D -- if you use Debian's supplied XFree86 4.x deb's, you get the precompiled drivers for the video card. And I have no idea where you're getting the idea that the drivers are 0.01 -- DRI is maturing rapidly and is already very useful on out-of-the-box configurations. Yeah it will only get better, and I think they're still calling the results "beta", but it's very-usable beta. If you have a card that is not supported in a distributed X, like the ATI Radeon (which I have), getting the drivers is still quite easy -- go here. That's the Debian side of things (and will probably apply to Progeny etc. as well); talk to others about the Mandrake or whatever. The only driver really lacking in automated install at the moment is the nVidia Linux driver, but I'll bet somebody has packaged that up by now also, and it's not hard at all to install even without a package. I think that takes care of almost all mainstream video cards (see the DRI site for what cards they support (a lot)).
And what's this crap about the games being poorly ported! Loki has done an amazing job moving these highly complex games from one display platform to another and packaging the results. I have recently installed Descent 3 for Linux, and the only trouble I had was that I didn't want to install it as root (but most people would install anything as root) and had to change the permissions on the install directory, but that was simple.
As for business apps, having useful apps on Linux would be nice, but VMWare running Windows 2000 gets me all I could possibly want in that area without leaving the comfort of my KDE desktop.
Let's hear it for the good work already done in bringing Linux to the mainstream, and I'm not even getting into KDE vs. GNOME or any of that (they're both nice, usable environments; I happen to like KDE more).
...my last reason to reboot into Windows on my home box. FINALLY freedom from Microsoft Money! Hopefully, if decently imports Microsoft's crappy .QIF implementation, or better yet, maybe someone reverse-engineered the .MNY format. Regardless, this is all I need. Oh, happy happy day!
P.S.-->Hrm. Guess I'll have to switch to KDE...is it worth it? I happen to like Window Maker....
El riesgo vive siempre!
Kivio is maybe not a recent addition, but Yet Another Tool From TheKompany That Looks Like Something We Know From Windows (YATFTKTLLSWKFW)
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If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
Total ReKall has already been filmed, you should be hearing from their lawyers soon if they use the same ones as MasterCard.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
I switched from gnome to KDE soon after 2.0 came out. I've loved the switch (no hard feelings toward the Gnomish among you, its a good desktop too) but the one thing I miss is the intergration of the address book, the mail client, and the palm pilot. In KDE you have kpilot, which just basically works as a backup for your palm. I hope this Aethera program can intergrate better with my palm pilot than the current batch of kde programs can.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Take a look for yourself, check out the mailing lists, read the docs;
http://www.openoffice.org
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
The answer is not to eliminate all Linux suites but one. What we really need is a simple convention for all these different products to share their documents, spreadsheets, etc. If such a standard existed and were supported by a lot of Linux vendors, that would do a lot to defragment the Linux marketplace.
Best of all, if such a standard were at all successful, it would inevitably spread to other platforms, including Windows. Eventually somebody would write adapters for Office. The ability to move data between Windows/Office and its Linux competitors would do a lot to hasten acceptance of Linux.
__
I think this is a huge step forward for the linux/*bsd/unix community. The existance of another office suite makes *nix operating environments not only usable as a desktop, but realistic as a desktop. StarOffice is a great set of programs, but it was basically alone.
What excites me the most, however, is that it's available in Debian packages. Hopefully, this will start a precedent for software developers who want their product widely used: Make it available in at least three forms: rpm/tar.gz/deb, although a FreeBSD port would also be nice. I personally think that if more companies were willing to package their software in these easy to code, easy to use packages, more people would be willing to use them, thus advancing not only the company, but the linux community in general.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
It's a troll. Why do all the GNU programs have to begin with a G? Gnome, Gnutella, Gunzip...
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Also, anyone have a distro of Linux that installs KDE2 and its associated applications correctly on a laptop with the ATI Rage Mobility chipset? The best I could get is KDE 1 compatibility with RedHat 7.0.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I think The Kompany has given considerably more to the Open Source community than it has taken. Check out the list of Free, free, GPL'ed software they have developed:
Aethera
KDB
kamera
KDE Studio
Kivio
Korelib
Kugar
PyQT/PyKDE
Rekall
VeePee
Now compare that to their commercial products:
Blackadder
Kapital
KDE Studio Gold
Powerplant
Three of those are merely souped up versions of Free products where you pay for extra features, packaging and support. Only Kapital doesn't (yet) have a Free version. And for those of us who care about keeping track of our finances, it's worth the $30.
Seems to me the community is winning here.
Problem is, people didn't like it.
Point: let the market decide. "De facto" standards usually emerge in the open marketplace, not when dictated by corporations. There just aren't any office suites, e-mail/PIM applications, etc. in the Linux world that are good enough yet to really get people going.
But it will happen. And when it does, Red Hat won't be causing it, but they will be making sure they include it because it's what the users want and it will sell units!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'm not usually a troll-biter, but there is a valid point there. There's a long tradition in the US for the Ku Klux Klan to use "K" spelling as a code-word for something they endorse. (Posters for "Kalvin Kooledge" used to be fairly common, for example. Check eBay for more.).
However, since the KDE folks are european, I wouldn't expect them to know this.
I don't think it's that important, but there should be some sensitivty there. Just as with folks who insist on using the word "cracker", which is a very common racial slur in parts of the US.
This simply isn't true. The Red Carpet service itself will always be free, as will updates to your distribution and Ximian GNOME. The revenue in Red Carpet will be in offering for pay subscriptions to channels or for sale downloads.
You are right about one thing, however. Ximian isn't built on a totally free model. We're a for-profit company, so we need to generate revenue from somewhere. All of our software is free, however.
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dude, assbarn it.
Actually, while theKompany.com has contributed significant applications to the KDE family, it is a relatively new company that was only incorporated last year, and in fact does not back the majority of KDE development.
KDE's development is driven by the developers themselves and is primarily independant of theKompany.com.
I'm part of the KDE community; I do some development work for KDE (specifically, I've contributed to the KWebStat application), and am involved in the KDE Zine project, so I have reason believe that my views on this should be more or less accurate.
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First, there are free alternatives out for all their products already; it's only a question of time until the free stuff gets good enough to kill off their market. Only Microsoft has been able to insulate themselves a little bit from free software, through an intricate web of proprietary standards, and even Microsoft has to be scared. The fact is that free software kills off proprietary software because it's the economically rational choice for customers.
Second, their software model is antiquated. Big do-everything C++ applications, the kind that made Bill Gates rich and famous, are not the way to go anymore. They were needed in the 1980's and 1990's because all you could do is distribute software on floppy and CD-ROM, and you better made sure that what you distributed addressed everybody's needs. With the Internet, you can now deliver small, targeted, light-weigh applications.
There is money to be made in software, but in the long run, not in proprietary, closed-source packages. It's nice if you want to support TheKompany. But don't kid yourself: from an economic and free market perspective, enterprises like TheKompany are irrational and an anachronism. Your $30 is more rationally put into a large pot that enhances GNUcash than TheKompany.
Did the Tooth Fairy magically drop Office onto your computer? She didn't on mine. Getting Office would have been several hundred dollars more. I consider it rather rude when people send me content in a format that would force me to buy a product that I don't want to buy. But perhaps you are the kind of person that gives somebody a birthday present of a vacation somewhere and expects them to buy the flight to go with it?
The most compelling example of this that I can think of is PowerPoint; if I need show someone my presentation at short notice and don't have my laptop handy, I can borrow someone else's, as long as they have Office.
I don't have a problem with that: I save my presentations in PDF or HTML format, and I can display them on just about every computer, not just those running overpriced Microsoft software.
Why doesn't a major Linux distribution provider (like RedHat) specifically embrace an application suite, and ship it with their bundle?
Probably because there is no need for it. It's only Windows users that think it's OK to send around documents in proprietary formats. On Linux, people use a wide variety of open, well-documented, non-proprietary formats that are understood by many different kinds of software.
A few Windows vendors like Corel have tried to bring bad Windows habits to the Linux platform, but they seem to have failed, fortunately.
The problem with Linux suites is that there's no lack of them in the marketplace, and none of them is in any danger of becoming a standard; users just install whatever suite they think is neat, which is an obstacle to interoperability.
Conversely, the (perhaps only?) good thing about MS Office is that any computer with Windows is likely to also have Office, so you can edit/display/transmit your files to virtually any Windows user. The most compelling example of this that I can think of is PowerPoint; if I need show someone my presentation at short notice and don't have my laptop handy, I can borrow someone else's, as long as they have Office. I had high hopes that Corel's suite for Linux would address this when it came out, but that seems to have died the death.
Why doesn't a major Linux distribution provider (like RedHat) specifically embrace an application suite, and ship it with their bundle? By creating such a de facto standard, much would be accomplished for interoperability and document sharing.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.