Bart Decrem on the Linux Business

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."

Comments

On the subject of Eazel...

[PeterClark]

I was a little surprised that the interviewer didn't turn up the heat a bit and ask just how Eazel managed to burn through all the investment money so fast. My question, for all you armchair pundits out there, is why was Eazel so dependent upon the reports of IDC? For those that didn't read the article, Bart basically said that IDC revised their forecasts for the desktop to one third the original number, the investors got scared, and Eazel failed to get funded and promptly died. Then IDC turns around a couple of months later and revises those forecasts once again, tripling their prediction (remember, 48.2% of all forecasts are pulled ourt of thin air). By my (admittably simple) mind, it would be good business practice to always have a little nest egg to help tide you in such times.

Of course, it was nice of them to release Nautilus under the GPL, so that the community could take a bloated and slow program and actually make it work. :)

:Peter

Re:clarification

[10Ghz]

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

So change them! In my KDE I use the nice Crystal iconset I got from www.kde-look.org. Installation took about 2 minutes.

You seem to love the underlying technology of KDE but hate the looks. Well thank god for that, since it would be really difficult to change the technology, whereas you can change the appearance in just few minutes. Saying that "KDE is ugly" is not a valid reason not to use it, since you can change the way it looks