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

Hmm.

[qslack]

...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.

Hmm, I seem to remember a site with a bunch of essays like that. It's something like Slashdot or something similar. :) :)

Re:Hmm.

[SkulkCU]

I seem to remember ... a bunch of essays like that

It gets a little redundant, but suggestions from the community (peer review) is how this 'open-sorce' thingy gets to a dope zen-like all-powerful existance. Or, at least, marginally improved. I firmly beleive that in another 11 years, people will wonder what happened to Windows, and Bill Gates will be alone in an alley with nothing but a stuffed tux doll for a pillow. Muhahahahahah!

Everytime I make a joke, I get modded to insightful, and it's starting to scare me.

Build Office filters?

[tutal]

I'm not quite sure if that is the right route to go. As MS continues down the sprial path of proprietary software, shouldn't the open source community develope open standards for documents, spread sheets, and presentations rather than endlessly chasing after the newest service release that "fixes" compatibility issues?

Re:Build Office filters?

[Tim Colgate]

What he says is:

I think we have to build this middle layer, this XML layer, and everybody exports to that and imports from that. In the short term it always feels good to keep making your current filters just a little bit better, but I think if you take like a three-year view, then I think StarOffice and us and KOffice and GNOME Office, if we all worked on the same thing, then we'd all be much better off in a couple years.

. The point is, you've got 4 main groups (Star/OpenOffice, Hancom, KDE, GNOME) all developing filters for e.g. MS Office, RTF, Lotus 123, WordPerfect etc. And then each group has its own native format as well, so for full interoperability, you've got a lot of filters. It would make more sense in the longer term to have a common intermediate format. Maybe we should just use OpenOffice as the standard format(s), and turn the OpenOffice filters into a library. Then if Kword wants to read MS Word it just uses the OpenOffice filters. Of course there are some plans along these lines already - just look at the DTD - 200K! There are also a lot of good links on this page (scroll down)

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:On the subject of Eazel...

[Ed Avis]

Eazel failed because it is only one letter away from Etzel, which is German for Edsel (== Attila). All these things have a rational explanation if you look hard enough.

putting a face to the words

[__aanonl8035]

For some reason, I always like to get a visual of who is being interviewed... so I searched around and found his home page with some pictures here

Re:Oxymoron

[Waffle Iron]

Linux buisness? Business of something free? Wow. I'm starting a sunlight buisness.

Good plan. Businesses that use sunlight (farming, tourism, sports, photography, etc.) are huge.

StarOffice

[CmdrSanity]

LaM: And with StarOffice it's fairly easy to change the underlying operating system.
Decrem: That's the beauty of it.

Not true! The beauty of StarOffice is in the load time -- it gives me a moment to reflect...clean under my keybord...wash the car...take the kids to soccer practice...eat dinner...call my mom...watch Farscape...sleep. Then I wake up refreshed with no chores or distractions and StarOffice is ready to go!

Re:He'd better get used to KDE...

[cscx]

But aesthetics does have a real effect on your attitude while using a computer

Well, when you reflect on it, looking at CDE on a SparcStation for too long makes me want to throw the box at the wall. And you have to love the CDE color schemes as well... let's see there is the 'bright pink on dark purple, no.... dark blue on bright purple, no.... fuscia on pink, no..... bright gold on blue, no....'

Personally I think whoever designed CDE didn't really give a shit, as compared to Microsoft and Apple who practically give people psychological tests when designing the GUIs. Shoot, I remember that Microsoft once conducted a large-scale survey to see if people liked the shadows better on one side of the icon or the other. Freakin' shadows! And all this time the CDE people are like, "purple it is, we don't care, we're not changin' it."

clarification

[bartdecrem]

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

Re:clarification

[Spy Hunter]

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).

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

Royalties

[Ian Peon]

Compaq paid like a zillion dollars in royalties last year to Microsoft.

Such misinformation! Compaq paid no more than 12.4 ba-jillion dollars last year, not even close to a zillion...