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Ask Shawn Gordon About theKompany
Lots of software houses write software for GNU/Linux, but one company that's
taking a different approach to products (and an unusual approach to licenses, too) is theKompany.com. TheKompany have released many open source projects, like PyQT/PyKDE, a Python binding to QT and KDE, and KoreLib, cross-platform C++ library for developing modular applications. They also combine Open Source licensed projects with
plugins that they're selling: Aethera, Kivio, and closed-source products: Data Architect, (ERD & advanced SQL Editor), Kapital (a Quicken clone
for Linux), among other things. Here is your chance to ask theKompany CEO Shawn Gordon questions about theKompany, Open Source, and the Linux from the commercial eye. We'll forward the best questions on to Shawn, and print his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.
Just wait to be sued by the ghost of Karl Marx.
As you seem to be in this business, what do you see as a viable economic model for Software and Software/Services companies who want to develop either partially or purely open source for Customers and/or Consumers? What effect does open source have on Business to Business relationships and do you see it as a strength or a weakness for open source companies in this area? Is open source appropriate for software written for business solutions rather than for consumers?
Windows is more convenient than Linux just as having an ingrown toenail is more convenient than seeing a podiatrist.
Your company's methods of licensing software seems very sound. Core components are open source while the end apps are closed for profit. That gives back to the community and allows outside developers to potentially create other apps with the same foundation as your own. My question is simple:
How do you plan on continually increasing your user base? Obviously there are many GNU/Linux users thirsty for solid end-user applications such as Kapital. But how do you plan on getting to current Windows users? Do you plan future ports of your apps? Or do you have an idea of how to get more Microsoft customers to move to Linux and use your apps (possibly a model others can follow)?
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Developers: We can use your help.
Following the attacks on open source by agents of Microsoft, claiming it's anti-business, there's been quite a bit of discussion on this site concerning business models for companies dealing in open source.
I am interested that your company does both open- and closed-source programming. My question is: How does your business model balance the benefits of open-source programming with the requirement to be a profitable software business? In your opinion, is it possible for a for-profit company to work purely with open-source, and sell support (or whatever)?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
If you had three (3) wishes, what would you use them for?
Kould you komment on the klearly komplikated task of selekting produkt names that konform to kurrent konventions?
Kordially,
AAiP
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Are you worried about the GPL "virus" forcing you to open your proprietary code?
What was the reason behind the decision to make products like Kapital closed-source? Was it to provide a way of generating revenue? Or do you plan on using product support as your main way to generate revenue?
Now that Big Blue, HP and such are getting into the race for support and development of Linux and products. Do you believe that this will help or hinder your Kompany? My second question would be that do you forsee IBM attempting to regain it's almost status of pseudo monopoly that it had in the early 80's before Billy Gates came along?
My question related to how the Kompany can make Linux an easier product to use. Attempts have been made to make the product more user friendly, but Linux is still a product that requires more effort to use then most people are willing to exert. To some extent, this is even promoted by the Linux community, some people of which take the attitude that if you can't figure it out you're just out of luck. Perhaps documentation/tutorials are the answer? How can we make the process of going to Linux easier, including ease of installing the Linux OS, helping users find programs that will be equivalent to those under windows, and the like? How can us end users of Linux be more responsive to people who express an interest in Linux without scaring them off?
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
I congratulate you upon creation of several pieces of software for the Linux market, and you have successfully blended open and closed source software; however, do you think you can be profitable in a community that sometimes rejects closed source projects? Has the fascination with Free/free software hindered your business plans or has the creation of Free code libraries/bases kept good PR with Linux users while allowing profit to coexist?
CMcTortoise
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For Kivio, you can download and do whatever with the program itself (and source), but object templates (or stencils as they call them) and such can run you anywhere from $5 to $20 or so (USD). The basic Kivio download comes with two default stencil packages.
J
How do you plan on competing on the linux platform with open source projects?
Basically, why would I buy Kapital if I can use GnuCash for free? And if it doesn't do everything I want, its opensource and I can add it. It seems like a very stiff competition. How is your company planning on attacking it?
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Will it help you, if I add that in German communist is written Kommunist (and pronounced differently, of course)?
KParts and DCOP. Finished, done, working. Where have you been for the past year?
You should take a look at Trolltech. They released their flagship product as GPL, and they're doing just dandy.
many windows developers use visual basic and interdev because of its rapid development capability , and to some extent, the availability of developers who can work with vb's menus, clicks, etc. it could be argued that the availability of easily learned tools such as vb have been a great benefit to windows as a platform. (I know several vb developers who are very productive, but won't touch anything involving a command line. -sigh-)
as a commercial developer, do you consider RAD tools to be as important to linux as they have been to windows? and where are we in terms of having the tools a commercial developer needs to push product out the door?
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
Hi Shawn, I am very impressed with how hard you are working towards commercial Linux applications while still supporting the ideas of free software. I've noticed you on several mailing lists, and you seem to offer advice as much as you seek it. How do you find the time to run a company, develop software, and participate in the comminity?
The middle mind speaks!
As a commercial developer, I have been interested in moving some of my projects to Python. However, I have been dissuaded by the lack of a full-featured Python IDE with an extensive widget/GUI class set.
I took a look at BlackAdder, but was quite dissapointed in the actual functionality (Python/Qt integration is buggy) and available database widget set. When do you think that BlackAdder will have the kind of high-powered RAD functionality offered by products like JBuilder, Forte and Visual Studio?
-Josh
In the past interviews i've read from you it seems to me like you always end up talking about Ximian. Do you see Ximian as a direct competitor of the Kompany ? Are you concerned about Ximian's market share and strategy ?
Does theKompany believe that software should be Free? Also is that a reflection of the KDE community or a minority stance?
--Ben
What are the financial institutions responses to working with a program available on linux when you have tried to develop partnerships with them?
Have any of these instituions been completely unwilling to cooperate?
It seems with the demise of Eazel, and the impending death of VA LINUX open source model does not work for this deep recession that we are in. What are the challeges that your company face? How do you beat those expectaions? Do you realize that a recession is 2 consecutive quarters or more of negative growth. This isn't actually a recession, it is just that the economy is not doing incredibly well. Of course the way everything gets played up we'll continue to slid down due to a lack of consumer confidence that decreases spending. So how about this, everyone should go out this weekend and blow their paycheck to help the economy out.
Probably, the trolls beat them to it.
. ht ml
http://www.trolltech.com/company/announce/30pre
Database Programming
Qt 3.0 will include a platform- and database-independent API for accessing SQL databases. The API has both ODBC support and database-specific drivers for Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, and custom drivers may be added. Database-aware controls that provide automatic synchronization between GUI and database are included in Qt 3.0. The Qt Designer has full support for these new controls, resulting in a RAD solution for database applications
The truth is more important than the facts.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Hi Shawn,
First, I would like to bestow a heartfelt "thanks" to you and your company for all the wonderful work you do. Too often, you've had to defend yourself against the trolls who don't get economics 101. It's not often enough that I see people thanking you for the contributions you have given us. Thank you.
My question lies in the status of your projects. I'm sure some people here on Slashdot don't know about all of the software that you're working on. It would be neat if you could give us a status report on your projects as well as a brief summary of what they do and what we can expect in the future.
I'm especially interested in the integration of your work with KOffice. I know that you donated the base version of Kivio to KOffice (again, thanks) and I was wondering if you had similar plans for Aethera, Kugar and/or Rekall.
Best regards,
David
Is the Kompany profitable? If not, when do you expect it to be?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Do you think that creating products for the KDE audience is making it easier for the community to accept that some of them are closed-source? It's always seemed to me that KDE was more about "Let's make something cool that works well" than it is about typically GNU values and pure "free" software.
In fact, that's part of the reason I like it, and by the same token I'm glad to see your company making software even though it's closed source. (Certainly VMWare has shown us that closed source software can be equally high-quality to open source, though that's not generally the case.)
Since the Kompany is involved with Kivio, and I am currently going through a headache with several drawing packages at work (my currently limited choices are Canvas, Powerpoint, Visio, and Framemaker), I'm curious to know what your opinion is on the possibility of agreeing on common native file formats (especially for drawing, but also for other office data).
I've read a lot of OpenOffice.org documentation and it looks very promising. Do you see any limitations to the way they do it or difficulties in merging paths?
A perfect world in Office software for me would be a variety of applications, but everyone working on easily interchangeable data (forget filters altogether).
Thanks, dara
Well lets compare Ximian to the Kompany:
Ximian's desktop IS Free. They sell it too. And they want to make money. Nothing wrong with that.
Difference is that they dont distribute non-Free code (so far). They believe in selling Free software, whereas the Kompany believes in selling commercial software ( they also give away some Free software for free ).
Get it?
Hi.
I've notices previously that Korelib boasts support for AtheOS, which amazed when I noticed it. Now as someone who has been using AtheOS since 0.1.4, I have a few questions:
o What exactly is Korelib?
o How and why did you include AtheOS as a supported platform?
o What are your future plans for The Kompany and AtheOS?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
If you made an OpenSores calendar / to do list you could call it KPasa? --Joey
The GUI toolkit is almost as fundamental to applications developers as the C library and the kernel. Imagine where Linux would be today if everybody developing a commercial application for Linux would have to pay several thousand dollars to some small company somewhere? I think most of the commercial supports of Linux would have gone with BSD or something else instead; even developing for Windows is cheaper than that. Well, dual licensing the GUI toolkit is very close to that situation.
I fully agree with the goals of the GPL. But in some cases, for strategic reasons, another license is more sensible. The core GUI toolkit used for a desktop seems to me is such a case. That's why I think KDE's reliance on a GPL'ed toolkit ultimately dooms it to failure, no matter how nice the desktop itself may be.
You have not tried KDE 2.1.1 then. KDE 2.0 was a .0 release, so it contained lots of bugs, and roughness around te edges. KDE 2.1.1 crashes very rarely (WindowMaker in my experience crashes more often). Speed is much improved from KDE 2.0. Speed is even better with KDE 2.2-beta1 (eventhough the beta has lots of rough edges). It's not as fast as KDE 1.x, but that's not surpsing as they have added many new features.
It's decently fast (not fustratingly slow), on a PowerMac 4400/200 (200 MHz 603ev) with 96 MB of RAM. The slowest thing is app launching, and even that has improved dramatically since 2.0 (especially Konqueror). Once apps are started, I haven't noticed any thing slow about them. KDE 2.1 features a good spinning disk progress indicator in the taskbar while apps are starting, 2.2 additionaly has an (optional) flashing icon that follows your curser to let you know the apps starting. I know users who run KDE 2.1.1 on Pentium 166 with 64 MB without serious speed problems.
Before you complain, please give KDE 2.1.1 a shot. Also, please get more then 64 MB of RAM, it will help greatly. I don't forsee KDE memory requirements increasing from that number anytime in the near future -- as there no plans to add major new features that will slow things down -- just things like improvements on existing things, additional optional features, plugins, and the alike.
Here is a serious answer.
There are only so many operating systems that are even remotely viable. If you choose to write for Windows you will be competing with Microsoft eventually. It does not matter what your software does or how innovative it is. If it becomes viable Microsoft will enter the market and crush you with a free alternative which has a thousand highly trained programmers working on it. If you are making a "mee too" product you are competing against very well established companies which are already controlling the market and the mindshare of users.
You have a much better chance of success trying to be the big fish in a small pond. If you are able to succeed in the linux market and build a brand identity and a reputation you can then attempt to make inroads into the Mac or Windows markets.
Of course one out of three businesses fail in this country and your chances of actually surviving a few years is bleak at best but your bet chance to make it is going to be in the niches where Microsoft does not play.
Unless you are already established and have billions in cash it's suicidal to try and compete with Microsoft. Look at the long trail of dead companies MS has left in it's wake and how dominant they once were in their fields you think a small fry like the Kompany has a chance?
War is necrophilia.