arb writes "The Age has an interview with Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com where he discusses such issues as RedHat's focus on Gnome and the relegation of KDE 'to second best', other Gnome vs KDE issues, distributions including proprietary bits and so on."
Second best?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Why? I am fairly new to Linux, but I have to say that I always preferred KDE in RedHat 6.x and 7.x. When I upgraded to 8, I tried out Bluecurve or whatever they called their new desktop and hated it. It was slow, ugly, and just not up to the standard of KDE I was used to, so I bew it away and went back to KDE . I am much happier now...
So, my question is, why is KDE considered second best? Are there technical reasons, or political, or what?
Interesting company concept
by
sboyko
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Never mind the KDE/Gnome discussion, I found it fascinating to read how TheKompany.com is made up of people who have not all met face-to-face. The founder has only met one of his employees ever.
His employees were all basically referred and the traditional face-to-face interviews were obviously never done.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
-- SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
Re:Interesting company concept
by
pubjames
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Never mind the KDE/Gnome discussion, I found it fascinating to read how TheKompany.com is made up of people who have not all met face-to-face. The founder has only met one of his employees ever.
His employees were all basically referred and the traditional face-to-face interviews were obviously never done.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
Exactly what I thought when I read the article. I have often toyed with the idea of employing someone over the net, but I've never had the balls to actually do it. It seems to me it must be a very efficient way to run a business.
I'd be interested on what kind of contracts he uses. Does he employ these people full-time, or by project? Another issue - getting stuff delivered on time. I guess if you make products like theKompany.com, it doesn't matter if you slip. But working for clients, you have to deliver when you promised to, or you'll quickly go out of business. Is it practical to run a business this way if you need to deliver to clients with tight deadlines?
Write Once, Run Anywhere?
by
JBhoy
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Sound familiar? That's why Java is so popular. The very problems described in this interview are the kind of problems Java and its standard class libraries resolve.
Re:Embedded/Zaurus software
by
tweek
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I disagree. I'm a Kapital customer and even on Christmas eve, Shawn was responding to messages on the mailing list from users who had questions about Kapital.
He has consistantly listened to ideas from his customers and has discussed the feasability of each option.
There was a nice healthy discussion regarding distributing Kapital as a statically linked application recently. While I didn't like his answer or agree with the end result, he DID participate and give his reasoning in a clear manner and with extreme consideration to the customer.
-- "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!"
"Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Support QT.....
by
oliverthered
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Companies often use GTK because it's the non-cost closed source option.
With QT it's either open up you code under GPL, or pay us. Which I think is by far the best option.
Also QT runs on hand helds and the like and it's C++
-- thank God the internet isn't a human right.
He's lucky [was Re:Interesting company concept]
by
Christianfreak
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I worked for a company that tried this. We had IRC chats, phone conversations and later on even did have face to face meetings from time to time (we were all in the US).
It was a nightmare, communication was horrible. Sure a lot of problems boiled down to mis-management but it was certainly compounded by the fact that we were far apart, and people could basically do whatever they wanted and get paid for it. There was tons of turn over, they kept hiring incompetent people and firing them. Almost sort of an expensive trial and error.
Re:"Race KDE cannot win"
by
IamTheRealMike
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Lets face it, C is not well suited for window environments.
This FUD should have been dispelled a long time ago. The C++ bindings for GTK/GNOME are excellent, in fact they are mor C++ish than Qt, as they make proper use of the standard library, as opposed to Qt that reinvents a lot of it (QString et al) for portability to ancient platforms and needs stuff like a preprocessor for its object model. Check it out before you bash gnome again.
If you like C++, use it! Nobody is forcing you to use C. The fact that a lot of Gnome software is written in C is because the coders prefer C, that's it. No, really. They do. C++ is a hard, amazingly complex language that isn't to everybodies taste.
Look at Windows. MFC is just C++ classes aound C stuff.
The MFC is a good example of how NOT to make bindings, don't write off all language bindings because you had a bad experience with one.
What that the License gets you though, is the ability to ship the same high-grade apps on Windows as on Linux, Mac OS X, and whatever other platform you want.
Only if you stick to Qt of course, and pay up (a LOT of money) for each developer. If you want to use the KDE classes, not all of them are available on Windows or MacOS, so....
This could singlehandedly be the missing element to bring Linux to the masses.
Actually GTK apps are ported to Windows far more often, because you don't have to pay to do so. Try again.
BRING BACK HARMONY.
Oh yeah, that's nice. Why not, and destroy TrollTech at the same time. Do you have any idea how much effort would be required to recreate Qt? A widget toolkit is often many millions of lines of code, and Qt doesn't just do widgets, it does strings, threads and lots more.
The solution is to make GTK and Qt interoperate better, share theming engines and so on, then you can choose which toolkit you prefer. GTKmm and Qt are basically very similar anyway.
Re:I hope it goes well in the future.
by
TrekCycling
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You're joking, right? I like TKC's products. In fact I bought like 4 Zaurus apps in my life and I bought Quanta Gold. But Shawn isn't the king of people skills. If he's not lambasting people on the TKC mailing list he's laying into people on IRC for things they *didn't* say. So, no, I don't think he always presents himself in a good light. I would say that's probably something he needs to work on.
Re:Gnome winning?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
They have. It's called "Mozilla". Keep in mind the GTK started as a toolkit for one program.
There's a lot of misinformation about KDE.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Let's face it, most of the people out there bashing KDE all tht time are just misinformed and have never really spent much time with it and are still playing politics to this day because of personal biases.
With regard to Red Hat and Bluecurve... Those of use who use KDE do not think that everything was well in Red Hat 8. I'm a longtime Red Hat user. I installed Red Hat 8 and tried to make their KDE work. I gave up. I ended up going to ftp.kde.org to see if there was an "official" distribution of KDE and Qt for Red Hat 8 that would repair the obvious rendering bugs, have working fonts, either function with standard KDE icon themes or use a non-broken set of Bluecurve icons, and would actually use KDE applications for app-to-app functionality instead of GNOME ones.
But no dice, apparently the official KDE packages for Red Hat 8 are made by Red Hat, so the KDE I downloaded was essentially the same (and essentially as broken) as the KDE on the Red Hat 8 CDs. I switched back to Red Hat 7.
And what's with all the license complaining still? Qt is dual-licensed, GPL or commercial with paid development. This should be enough to keep the GPL zealots happy and the "GPL sucks for companies" people happy... but apparently some people will not rest until an inferior product, GNOME, has been declared the winner by the 800-lb gorillas of the Linux world and KDE has been marginalized.
The fact that KDE is still as good as it is and is still as popular as it is demonstrates just what a great product it can be (notice I said "can be" because we all now know just how much depends on distributors).
Re:Differences between GNOME and KDE
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Nice troll, but i'll bite.
Your comparisons are invalid. The KDE e.V. has never really done much. It was just made as a legal entity that dates to KDE/Trolltech deal that Qt would be automatically licensed under a BSD-type license under several conditions.
The KDE league is not affliated with the KDE project at all. Whether or not there was any accountability problems at itself is unknown.
Anyways, the KDE project is a lot less organized than the GNOME project. Why? Because there really hasn't been many reasons to in KDE. In the top of the KDE structure is the "release dude", and there are several people who run the CVS server, and create accounts and such. Then there are maintainers of individual projects (documented in the Maintainers.xml file).
IMHO, I don't see how you could characterize KDE as less as Free and Open than GNOME. It's quite easy to get a kde cvs account. If anything, KDE is more pragmatic than GNOME is, avoiding a whole bunch of red tape. IMHO, I think this is how most open source projects have been run for the last twenty years. By your chacterizations, it sounds like GNOME just seems to be more of a mini-Government than a free software project.
Anyways, the KDE project doen't need no stinkin' Foundation. We use what works -- public mailing lists (as does other big open projects such as Linux, XFree86, etc...)
Slashdot Mirror
Why? I am fairly new to Linux, but I have to say that I always preferred KDE in RedHat 6.x and 7.x. When I upgraded to 8, I tried out Bluecurve or whatever they called their new desktop and hated it. It was slow, ugly, and just not up to the standard of KDE I was used to, so I bew it away and went back to KDE . I am much happier now...
So, my question is, why is KDE considered second best? Are there technical reasons, or political, or what?
Never mind the KDE/Gnome discussion, I found it fascinating to read how TheKompany.com is made up of people who have not all met face-to-face. The founder has only met one of his employees ever.
His employees were all basically referred and the traditional face-to-face interviews were obviously never done.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
Sound familiar? That's why Java is so popular. The very problems described in this interview are the kind of problems Java and its standard class libraries resolve.
I disagree. I'm a Kapital customer and even on Christmas eve, Shawn was responding to messages on the mailing list from users who had questions about Kapital.
He has consistantly listened to ideas from his customers and has discussed the feasability of each option.
There was a nice healthy discussion regarding distributing Kapital as a statically linked application recently. While I didn't like his answer or agree with the end result, he DID participate and give his reasoning in a clear manner and with extreme consideration to the customer.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Companies often use GTK because it's the non-cost closed source option.
With QT it's either open up you code under GPL, or pay us. Which I think is by far the best option.
Also QT runs on hand helds and the like and it's C++
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I worked for a company that tried this. We had IRC chats, phone conversations and later on even did have face to face meetings from time to time (we were all in the US).
It was a nightmare, communication was horrible. Sure a lot of problems boiled down to mis-management but it was certainly compounded by the fact that we were far apart, and people could basically do whatever they wanted and get paid for it. There was tons of turn over, they kept hiring incompetent people and firing them. Almost sort of an expensive trial and error.
The Anti-Blog
This FUD should have been dispelled a long time ago. The C++ bindings for GTK/GNOME are excellent, in fact they are mor C++ish than Qt, as they make proper use of the standard library, as opposed to Qt that reinvents a lot of it (QString et al) for portability to ancient platforms and needs stuff like a preprocessor for its object model. Check it out before you bash gnome again.
If you like C++, use it! Nobody is forcing you to use C. The fact that a lot of Gnome software is written in C is because the coders prefer C, that's it. No, really. They do. C++ is a hard, amazingly complex language that isn't to everybodies taste.
Look at Windows. MFC is just C++ classes aound C stuff.
The MFC is a good example of how NOT to make bindings, don't write off all language bindings because you had a bad experience with one.
What that the License gets you though, is the ability to ship the same high-grade apps on Windows as on Linux, Mac OS X, and whatever other platform you want.
Only if you stick to Qt of course, and pay up (a LOT of money) for each developer. If you want to use the KDE classes, not all of them are available on Windows or MacOS, so....
This could singlehandedly be the missing element to bring Linux to the masses.
Actually GTK apps are ported to Windows far more often, because you don't have to pay to do so. Try again.
BRING BACK HARMONY.
Oh yeah, that's nice. Why not, and destroy TrollTech at the same time. Do you have any idea how much effort would be required to recreate Qt? A widget toolkit is often many millions of lines of code, and Qt doesn't just do widgets, it does strings, threads and lots more.
The solution is to make GTK and Qt interoperate better, share theming engines and so on, then you can choose which toolkit you prefer. GTKmm and Qt are basically very similar anyway.
You're joking, right? I like TKC's products. In fact I bought like 4 Zaurus apps in my life and I bought Quanta Gold. But Shawn isn't the king of people skills. If he's not lambasting people on the TKC mailing list he's laying into people on IRC for things they *didn't* say. So, no, I don't think he always presents himself in a good light. I would say that's probably something he needs to work on.
They have. It's called
"Mozilla". Keep in mind the GTK started as a toolkit for one program.
Let's face it, most of the people out there bashing KDE all tht time are just misinformed and have never really spent much time with it and are still playing politics to this day because of personal biases.
With regard to Red Hat and Bluecurve... Those of use who use KDE do not think that everything was well in Red Hat 8. I'm a longtime Red Hat user. I installed Red Hat 8 and tried to make their KDE work. I gave up. I ended up going to ftp.kde.org to see if there was an "official" distribution of KDE and Qt for Red Hat 8 that would repair the obvious rendering bugs, have working fonts, either function with standard KDE icon themes or use a non-broken set of Bluecurve icons, and would actually use KDE applications for app-to-app functionality instead of GNOME ones.
But no dice, apparently the official KDE packages for Red Hat 8 are made by Red Hat, so the KDE I downloaded was essentially the same (and essentially as broken) as the KDE on the Red Hat 8 CDs. I switched back to Red Hat 7.
And what's with all the license complaining still? Qt is dual-licensed, GPL or commercial with paid development. This should be enough to keep the GPL zealots happy and the "GPL sucks for companies" people happy... but apparently some people will not rest until an inferior product, GNOME, has been declared the winner by the 800-lb gorillas of the Linux world and KDE has been marginalized.
The fact that KDE is still as good as it is and is still as popular as it is demonstrates just what a great product it can be (notice I said "can be" because we all now know just how much depends on distributors).
Nice troll, but i'll bite.
Your comparisons are invalid. The KDE e.V. has never really done much. It was just made as a legal entity that dates to KDE/Trolltech deal that Qt would be automatically licensed under a BSD-type license under several conditions.
The KDE league is not affliated with the KDE project at all. Whether or not there was any accountability problems at itself is unknown.
Anyways, the KDE project is a lot less organized than the GNOME project. Why? Because there really hasn't been many reasons to in KDE. In the top of the KDE structure is the "release dude", and there are several people who run the CVS server, and create accounts and such. Then there are maintainers of individual projects (documented in the Maintainers.xml file).
IMHO, I don't see how you could characterize KDE as less as Free and Open than GNOME. It's quite easy to get a kde cvs account. If anything, KDE is more pragmatic than GNOME is, avoiding a whole bunch of red tape. IMHO, I think this is how most open source projects have been run for the last twenty years. By your chacterizations, it sounds like GNOME just seems to be more of a mini-Government than a free software project.
Anyways, the KDE project doen't need no stinkin' Foundation. We use what works -- public mailing lists (as does other big open projects such as Linux, XFree86, etc...)