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Bart Decrem on the Linux Business

Posted by michael on from the big-picture dept.

Anonymous Hero writes "Co-founder of Eazel and now vice president of Hancom Linux, Bart Decram gives his views on a whole lot of things related to desktop Linux in an interview at Linux and Main. He talks abour what went wrong with Eazel, why everyone should work together to build Microsoft Office filters, how anti-U.S. sentiment can be used to promote Linux throughout the world, and how he thinks KDE is 'butt-ugly.' Long read, but worth it."

4 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. The problem with the Linux business by Pay+The+Fuck+Up! · · Score: 1, Informative
    is that everyone's a cheap bastard. So unlike in the Microsoft world, where PHB types gladly bend over to pay more and more every year for "select" and other licensing schemes, in Linux land buyers think "Free as in el cheapo!" and don't support the developers. So companies like this go under, as we have seen time and time again.

    Just like slashdot. Only two percent of readers subscribe. Two percent! Do the other 98 percent just think they can get it all for free forever? That the bandwidth they consume is just there? Two percent. Ridiculous.

    Anyway, th

    --

    Pay the fuck up!
  2. clarification by bartdecrem · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi folks,

    I want to apologize to anyone who was offended by my line about some of the artwork in KDE. I do stand by the substance of my statement, but I could and should have said this a bit more delequately.

    In any event, while I can't blame the /. editors for singling out this colorful statement, I hope that you guys will read the entire article and realize that that particular line does not summarize my opinion about the KDE project. As I say in the article, I think KDE is a terrific project. Also, Qt is the building block for my employer's software, and it's a great piece of software. Please note also that the entire point of the "KDE is butt-ugly" line was to then state that Lycoris has done a wonderful job polishing KDE.

    But I do think that icons and other look & feel work ARE very important. At the end of the day, KDE is a DESKTOP and the artwork and look & feel is a key part of the desktop. It's what we look at all day long. Everyone's opinion about artwork is highly subjective of course, but in my opinion, the default icons and some of the other look & feel elements really are KDE's biggest weakness and the default icons that ship with KDE need a make-over. They're just not competitive with other desktops that regular folks (my wife, my parents) are used to looking at.

    Cheers,

    Bart

    1. Re:clarification by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 4, Informative

      You'll be happy to know that KDE 3 comes with an alternate icon set, iKons, in addition to the worked-over original set. Also, several others (slick and crystal come immediately to mind) are available at kde-look.org (a wonderful site that seems to have brought a kde themeing community out of the woodwork).

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    2. Re:clarification by tackat · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hi bArt,

      > but I could and should have said this a bit more delequately.

      I guess you are old enough to realize something like this _before_ or _during_ an interview, aren't you?

      > But I do think that icons and other look & feel
      > work ARE very important.

      > look & feel is a key part of the desktop.

      At least we agree on this point ;-)

      > the default icons and some of the other look & feel
      > elements really are KDE's biggest weakness and the
      > default icons that ship with KDE need a make-over.

      Well, I don't know if you already realized it but KDE makes much more use of more icons than other desktops. As a result there are a few thousand pixmaps in KDE which the artist team needs to take care of. As not all of those icons were made by artists the quality of the set of course varies from icon to icon a bit. There are some icons which I consider beautiful
      and others which I'd like to replace myself if I had the time.
      I painted most of the icons for KDE though and recently focused on mimetype-icons and toolbar-icons only. In my opinion these are excellent. For application-icons I agree with you: They certainly need a makeover. Most of the application-icons have been designed during KDE 2.0 or even before at a time when we didn't have alphablending.

      Also be aware that some people who are not satisfied with the looks of KDE icons don't realize that they use 32x32-versions of the icons (while Gnome uses 48x48-icons by default) - Of course you can choose 48x48 in KDE as well. Also some people don't have alphablending enabled (so they don't have smooth borders and lack shadows in the icons).

      Of course there are always some people who don't like the style of the icons. And of course you will find always people who don't consider a certain iconset professional enough.

      A lot of people don't like the Mac OS X icons because they are photographs instead of icons.
      A lot of people don't like Windows XP -icons because they are way too glaringly colorful and look too much like toys (taking the default wallpaper into account "teletubbies" come to my mind ...).
      A lot of people don't like Gnome icons because they look too muddy and rather focus on looking cool than on being usable (at least this was the case for Gnome 1.x - For Gnome 2.0 this has improved and as a result they look much more KDEish).
      A lot of people don't like KDE icons because they don't focus on looking "cool" and because they look too technical or too cartoonish.

      In the end you can't satisfy everybody.
      The current look of KDE's icons is a compromise between beauty and usability and it looks neutral and modern at the same time.
      You'll find some reasons for the current look of the default icons here:

      http://dot.kde.org/1012076875/

      Of course everyone's opinion about artwork is highly subjective. Therefore we rather chose something "neutral" for the default. Thanks to the fact that KDE is great software ;-) you can customize your icons in KDE to whatever you prefer:

      If you want KDE to look like Windows XP then you choose an icontheme like the one Lycoris is using. If you want something that looks rather photorealistic or like Mac OS X then you might want to try "Slick" or "Crystal". If you like Gnome then you can choose one of the gnome icon themes on KDE Look (http://www.kde-look.org).

      Actually I think that it's great that KDE 3.0 already offers so much choice that I can choose between all those great iconthemes depending on my mood.

      If you want to help improving icons in KDE feel free to write a mail to kde-artists@kde.org

      Cheers, Tackat,

      kde-artist team