Ximian gets new CEO

miguel writes "Today we announced that David Patrick has joined Ximian as our CEO. Nat which we all love has stepped down from this role and will now be in charge of our products (he insists that people call him `VP of Product Management' although to me he will always be Commander Nat "Fleebety Jeebits" Friedman). David is a great guy, his experience in the field will Ximian and GNOME tremendously." He's got old timer creds (Wordstar? Geezus).

Comments

Is that a verb?

[Ronin X]

David is a great guy, his experience in the field will Ximian and GNOME tremendously

How do you Ximian? I didn't even know it was a verb? Can you GNOME? Is that some kind of dance?

Re:Is that a verb?

[woggo]

I've clearly been reading slashdot for too long, because I didn't even notice that. I think longtime /. readers must develop some neural pathway that auto-inserts missing words, swaps transpositions, and corrects spelling mistakes. That's kind of like how if you cover one eye with your hand, you can "see through it", I'd imagine.

Re:Gnome 1.4?

[Deadbolt]

Apparently they're working their collective asses off on it. Supposed to be something special. See here.

I hope they get it done soon; I actually used KDE the other day and found it a well-designed usable environment! Horrors! <using non-FSF software shake> :)

Too distracted?

[mholve]

Is Ximian too distracted these days, with all these changes going on? Name change, CEO change, etc.

It's been ages since they've released their latest warez, yet very few of them are actually available! Solaris packages haven't been updated in AGES and still have old GNOME, etc.

Considering how much they're in the spotlight, along with GNOME - through Sun and HP... You'd think they'd be a little more diligent.

Don't drop the ball on this, Ximian - this is MAJOR!

Re:Too distracted?

[Kostya]

They are working, just maybe not on the stuff you care about.

Evolution sees regular updates and snapshots. But that is a beta channel on Red Carpet, so maybe that isn't a fair comparison.

But if they are focusing more on Evolution, that's very good. Evolution is kind of like Gnumeric--it's a test bed. Unlike Gnumeric, which is nice and cool, Evolution is everyday-useful. People need it. People like it. People use it every day. And so, it serves as a better test bed for fleshing out Bonobo.

Some people might pu-sha that notion, but Bonobo is extremely important. It will provide the component and compound document model needed to give GNOME the next leap forward. Then GNOME can go from being a nice shell (which is all it is right now) to a fully intergrated desktop.

I'm a GNOME user, so I'm not dissing GNOME unnecessarily. I think GNOME has the right idea (except for the C instead of C++ part--grin). Right now, however, integration in GNOME isn't very slick. And slick is important. DnD that was actually useful as opposed to functional would be a huge step forward. Note that Nautilus is heavily Bonobo dependent as well.

Additionally, if Evolution becomes a full Outlook replacement (i.e. it can do everything Outlook does and can be used with Exchange servers just like a normal Outlook client), I think Ximian might have their killer app that puts them on the map permanently. Did you see the latest figures on how much of MS's revenue is from Office? It's something like 30% or more. Not that Ximian will suddenly get that kind of money, but the money shows how important Office-like apps are.

Now if only AbiWord would take off, I'd be damn happy!

Re:hmm nice.. now get some work done... right now!

[SmileyBen]

The big problem with this is that gnome.org is telling people to go to Ximian for binaries if they want them. So we either have a choice of compiling the source of Gnome 1.4 (which, easy as it may be, simply isn't really an option quite a lot of people want to consider), or waiting for Ximian to realease Ximian Gnome 1.4. But if there is going to be such a significant difference between Ximian Gnome and just plain Gnome that it takes 2.5+ weeks to get it ready, what about the people that want just plain Gnome as binaries? It's all very well for gnome.org telling people to go to Ximian to get 1.4 binaries, but if they do users can reasonably expect the binaries Ximian provides to be those of the same product - as it is that seems unlikely to be the case, even if the differences are mainly aesthetic.

Miguel - have you guys given up or is it just me?

[slashbrent]

Okay, here goes my precious karma..

The only thing i can see that Ximian has produced to date this year are press releases and the two "big" projects started way last year - namely Red Carpet and Evolution.

Is anyone besides yourself actively involved in this project anymore? And if so, why is KDE kicking our asses in the progress department?!

Not only is GNOME falling impossibly far behind KDE in terms of in the scope and variety of apps, but we are not even updating our existing applications anymore.

And what about platforms other then i386? As a PPC-based user i cant even get Red Carpet (see it in the FTP directory anywhere?), in addition, i have not seen a single (and i'm dead serious about this) update in the Helix GNOME Updater since last year.

I have recently installed and begun using KDE 2 and i am donwright shocked as to how far they have come in the past year while we, the GNOME community, are still sitting here using GNOME 1.2.

On behalf of the hundreds of users i have encountered both on and offline, Why have the updates to Ximian GNOME stopped? And, if Ximian has chosen to abondon all PPC distros, then i would like to see the Ximian site updated to reflect this, so that we can all move to KDE (of which there are plenty of current packages available)and keep enjoying our Linux experience. And lastly, if Ximan/GNOME needs some help - why are we not asking for it?

I'm not trying to bitch too much (although i dopubt you can tell :-), but i especially feel the pain due to the fact that i am one of your application developers! I have a GNOME project on sourceforge with thousands of users, and it pains me to see them all leaving for KDE!

At this point i have no choice but to begin using kdevelop to port my GNOME app over before all my users leave me.

Re:hmm nice.. now get some work done... right now!

[ahaile]

This is what I've been able to pick up from rumors and inuendos on the various mailing lists:

Ximian could have released 1.4 shortly after the Gnome announcement, but let's think about what the 1.4 release meant. It meant that all the individual packages that make up Gnome were ready to release. It didn't mean that those packages played well together, or interacted in a way the user would expect. Because Ximian, being the integrator of all those packages, wanted to produce a desktop where all the parts worked together seamlessly, they still had a lot of work to do.

Here's one example: Miguel recently posted a lengthy patch to the Nautilus mailing list which would allow gmc and Nautilus to use the same desktop directory, so that when users switched back and forth between the two, they would retain all their launchers and folders. That's a very nice integration feature, but one which Nautilus didn't have in the version released with Gnome 1.4. It takes a good deal of code to make Nautilus understand GMC's .desktop files, and it takes time to write that code.

The indications are that Ximian does not think that 1.4 is "not that important." Rather, they think it's very important. They also think that their role as the integrator means more than just compiling all the packages into binaries.

Re:Miguel - have you guys given up or is it just m

[Skeezix]

Is anyone besides yourself actively involved in this project anymore? And if so, why is KDE kicking our asses in the progress department?!

The answer is, they aren't. GNOME is in a transitional phase as we try to build a really solid and flexible platform. Many of the new technologies upon which future GNOME applications will be build are just now ready for prime time. The arhitecture upon which apps like Evolution, Gnumeric, Nautilus, etc. are based is now ready. GNOME 1.4 is a stepping stone to GNOME 2.0; applications will begin to take advantage of gnome-vfs, bonobo, etc. The process of porting to GTK+ will take place. Service delivery platforms such as reef and SOUP are coming into their own. .NET has nothing on the GNOME project except maybe a few months developement time. We have apps, lots and lots of them. Just take a look at The Fifth Toe apps to get a small picture of some of the really solid, tightly integrated applications available for the GNOME platform. Nautilus is being developed at a blistering pace. It's only been a month or so since 1.0 was released and already the new developments and features I've seen in the nightly builds from CVS are incredible.

At this point i have no choice but to begin using kdevelop to port my GNOME app over before all my users leave me.

If your application is useful and you keep up with existing GNOME technologies and developments, your users won't go anywhere. GNOME has an estimated 1.5 Million Users and one of the focuses of GUADEC was to think outside the box, coming up with ways of getting new users. One of the ways to do that is not to compete with KDE as such; let's share the same user base. Expect to see a lot more cooperation between the KDE and GNOME projects in the coming months and years. I personally have demonstrated GNOME to probably about 20 - 25 windows users in the last year--every one of them has been impressed, several have asked me to set up a cheap box for them with GNOME as the desktop environment. People get excited about GNOME. I know I do. The future is very bright.

I don't know how many GNOME applications you use regularly, but here are a few applications I have fallen in love with:

• Galeon They have come up with more browser innovations than any other project I've seen. Tabbed browsing kicks arse!
• GnomeICU, Gabber, X-chat The dynamic trio of chat programs. All are outstanding.
• Gnumeric and Abiword These should cover most of your spreadsheet/word processing needs. Both are being developed rapidly and are incorporating new GNOME technologies for tighter integration and use of components.
• Nautilus Wow. The basic architecture is there. To you skeptics who look at Nautilus and say "it doesn't have feature X" or "it's too slow" I say, watch development closely, check out the hourlies, watch CVS commits, read the mailing list archives. A lot of cool stuff is coming.
• Evolution If you use the snapshots, you might find that at times it's rough around the edges or unstable, but it's coming along nicely and promises to be a very good PIM suite. I love vfolders.
• Ximian Setup Tools Looks great so far and so much more is planned. Good-bye, Linuxconf.
• Red Carpet Only in beta. If you're testing the beta you're not going to see updates nearly as often as you will in the coming weeks. But, RC is slick.

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