Mosfet Contributes Code To KDE (Again)

davidsmind writes "Former KDE hacker and creator of the much acclaimed Liquid theme, Mosfet(AKA Daniel M. Duley ) is back in the spotlight. The Dot was the first one with the story. 'Many in the KDE community are aware of some rocky history between KDE hacker Mosfet and other KDE developers. Fortunately, it looks like things have taken a great turn for the better: Mosfet wrote in to tell us that "I've decided to donate 20 effects I ported to KDE/Qt for PixiePlus to KDE3." Waldo Bastian promptly added them to CVS.'" The list of effects is long, impressive, and under a BSD-style license. Mosfet has done a lot of the work that makes my desktop pretty, so I'm very happy to hear about this.

Comments

I propose a Mosfet section on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

But the icon may frighten off the readers :-)

Re:I propose a Mosfet section on Slashdot

[Otter]

Is this what Mosfet looks like? Is this him in drag? Who is that in the picture!?

Yes, that's him.

There are some more pictures in his PixiePlus screenshots.

The pictures of the blonde woman in a dress? That's his girlfriend, IIRC. So if you single guys out there were wondering what you're doing wrong, you might want to consider long green hair, green lipstick and periodic feuding with the core KDE developers. Apparently there's more to know than just what's in Eric Raymond's sex tips HOWTO...

Not just a large contribution

[jonathan_ingram]

Mosfet writes some good code, but don't go away thinking that KDE is lost without him (particularly not because of this recent contributution of some effects ripped from imagemagick). This is so far away from the truth as to be laughable.

One of the biggest things to happen to KDE in last year has been the rewrite of KDE's printing support, by Michael Goffioul. No-one goes around proclaiming Michael as a coding god, because he just got on with it and produced something very impressive (and that has got even more impressive in KDE 3).

Similarly for the developer(s) of Kate, KDE's text editor. Or the developers of Konqueror, who have equalled Mozilla with a twentieth of the personnel and a thousandth of the money.

Similarly for all the people that don't code, but instead translate KDE into 15 million languages.

KDE is a true team effort and can do without coding primadonnas.

Re:Not just a large contribution

[anfloga]

I work professionally as a GUI developer, and can add one more reason why it's probable that Mosfet is getting so much attention, relative to the other equally worthy programmers out there.

You can see what he's done. It's obvious, it just jumps right out at you, because it's GUI work. For better or worse, GUI programmers have this extra responsibility.

Erik

Re:Not just a large contribution

[krogoth]

"particularly not because of this recent contributution of some effects ripped from imagemagick"

Are you saying that he used Open-Source code in an Open-Source project? *gasp*

If he didn't credit the source that's understandable, but if this is brought to his attention and he fixes it, it could be a mistake (although since I'm sure you've never made any, you wouldn't understand).

Re:Not just a large contribution

[Yosho]

I don't believe he said what you think he said. Konqueror is fine for an everyday web browser; Mozilla is as feature-rich as one could imagine, including reading mail and news as well as using IRC. Believe it or not, some people like that.

He didn't say one is better than the other; for what they were intended for, they're both excellent. Nonetheless, they *are* in different leagues -- to further the analogy, Konqueror is a flyweight to Mozilla's super heavyweight. Saying that the Konqueror coders have created an equivalent to Mozilla is pure fallacy.

As a sidenote, the interfaces are even more up to opinion than the rest of the features -- I, personally, find Konqueror to be quite ugly compared to Mozilla. However, that's just my opinion, and has no place in a qualitative comparison of the browsers.

Re:Not just a large contribution

[Zapman]

Or the developers of Konqueror [konqueror.org], who have equalled Mozilla with a twentieth of the personnel and a thousandth of the money.

All preferences asside, both are fantastic browsers, however, saying konq has equaled mozilla is like saying a pear has equaled an orange because they are both fruit. Konq has a goal of being a fantastic browser for kde. This it has done. Mozilla has a goal of being a fantastic CROSS-PLATFORM browser. This it has done. It's quite accurate to say that they arn't in the same league, so long as you realize the leagues you're talking about are the NBA and the NFL, for example

Re:What's the story?

[Nevrar]

http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=mosfet might help...

Re:What's the story?

[ThatComputerGuy]

I'm not exactly sure of the specifics, but I do know that mosfet had a falling out earlier with the rest of the KDE developers.

He's done some cool stuff for KDE, but from what I heard, he appeared to not work well as a team and could possibly have been a hindrance to KDE's progress. This is mostly what I read from KDE's other developers.

Mosfet took his code and began developing separately from KDE, and KDE developers allegedly began forking his code, sometimes even claiming that mosfet's code was forked.

He then had some trouble with FutureTech, but that's not directly related to the KDE team at all.

So, that's what I know. Basically some stuff I've read from mosfet, kde developers, and 3rd parties.

No, it cannot

[Anonymous Coward]

Another /.er said:
"KDE can do without coding primadonnas".

Sorry, I think I disagree.

Primadonnas are a pain in the ass, ok.

But in the final count, you must kneel and ask them to come back on stage (hear the fine music about primadonnas from Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera").

Some primaddonnas have a contribution, a good contribution for that matter -- and *we* cannot afford being egocentric -- even and mainly if they are!

In the famous Lee Iacocca autobiographic book, he tells about having colleagues who complained about hardtimes with other people. He used to say, jokingly I guess, "Too bad, this company doesn't hire monkeys, or gorillas or tigers, we just got people!"

And that's it, to put it simply.

KDE is not just about technology. Ok, it is a very advanced project and what I like in the Linux world is that we progress faster than most other alternatives, be it commercial or not.

But KDE _is_ about people, too. Don't throw away competent people. Instead, put some buffer around their idiosyncrasies.

Heck, keep them in an asylum if you need, but don't disregard their work. We lost too many geniuses because they were gay, and now we regret it.

So, get two people, the primadonna and someone who can interface him/her to the world.

Now, to Mosfet and Rasterman, you can sing very well -- but what is a singer without an audience.

Have patience with those who must have patience with you.

From a friend.

The Odd Thing About Open Source

[quakeaddict]

The odd thing about open source is that the few who get paid doing it can be just as unreliable as a corporation. Its amazing to me watching how people fall over guys like Mosfet, in gratitude, after he basically walked out on the project a few months earlier saying "its my ball and i'm going home."

Let us not forget ...

[ez76]

Nobody doubts the impact Mosfet has had on KDE, but we would be remiss if we neglected the many contributions of Bipolar and Jfet as well.

They too have played a big role in making KDE what it is today.

Hurrah!

[sgage]

Everybody's carrying on as if this is some sort of important event in the history of KDE. The Liquid theme is pretty, but jaysus, it's a friggin' theme! Let's get some perspective.