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Corporate KDE
roomisigloomis writes "This article at CNET shows some headway being made in KDE development with aims at the corporate desktop. It's cool that it's funded by the German government."
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Good to know that there are responsible governments who make a lot better use of their taxpayer's money.
The Raven
I have tried 3.1 betas and release candidates, and I'd say it's definitely coming along as far as desktop usability. I've been using it as my primary desktop at home for a couple years now.
But, with 3.1, it has been an easy switch to convert my entire household to it. This conversion includes my barely computer literate wife, my 7 year old son and 3.5 year old daughter.
The Kroupware project is what will make it ultimately challenging to MS to compete. Replacing Exchange is the turning point for most corporate uses.
Hmm, I see it the other way round. Why should MY government (which is, by strange coincidence, the German government) pay MY tax dollars^H^H^Heuros for commercial software, which doesn't benefit me in any way, instead of funding the development of something which might be of good use for me personally (and, of course, others, but this doesn't hurt me at all).
You bring up an interesting point. I'm glad MY government doesn't fund open source projects. Why should MY tax dollars fund development that is going to be used by people who don't pay taxes to the US?
This is just one more thing that the government has no business wasting my money on.
You're probably just a troll, but for all those readers who may be swayed by your amazingly bad attitude, let me explain why governemt funding of open source software is a very good thing.
We live in a global economy. If the U.S. takes an economic plunge, the world feels it. The same is true (although perhaps less strongly felt) for other countries, especially Europe and Japan. IANAE (I am not an economist), but doesn't it make sense that one government's expenses to benefit its own economy have an effect on the global economy? How much money has the U.S. governemt spent on technological research? Doesn't technology benefit the world? What about medical research? How much has government-funded research improved the quality of medical care around the world?
Now consider this: Would you rather the government 1) pay an international tax to some software developer in another country, or 2) develop their own software (which they can maintain total control of and don't have to pay an international company to use) while benefitting their own people by providing great free software and employing software designers?
There was a great interview with Andreas Pour of KDE where he talked about government funding of open source projects. The section is too long to quote here (I hate those super-long comments...) but here's a small chunk:
If you will, you can liken a desktop infrastructure as society's infrastructure, not so different from roads, schools, universities and emergency services. These types of infrastructure are inherently monopolistic since economic (development cost, transaction costs, return on investment, etc.) and "moral" factors (freedom, equality, etc.) are such that the use of taxes for creating and maintaining them is universal.
The most difficult challenge to obtaining substantial financial contributions for FS / OS projects is that the person making the contribution does not, in general, obtain a proportionately larger benefit. So currently financial contributions (including hiring developers or releasing proprietary code to the FS / OS communities) are made mainly when the cost to the bottom line is reasonable (e.g., a company may conclude that releasing a product which it was already distributing for free would reduce its development costs without impacting its revenues, and perhaps also increase market share for the proprietary enhancements). But it is far less likely that a company will on its own fund the development of a widely-used product with no particular benefit to it.
As with roads and schools, however, Governments need not concern themselves with questions of direct returns on investment. Improvements in the general welfare alone justify public expenditures. Rather than seek to reap profits for some relatively small set of owners, the purpose of Government spending is to improve the quality of life for all their citizens. Moreover, a large part of the Government's historic economic role was to spread costs among its citizens where the benefits would be shared largely by all and the economics of development made other forms of construction less practical. Finally, Governments of free nations dedicated to the principles of freedom, democracy and choice have traditionally allocated resources to important public projects that promote or preserve these essential human rights.
Surely any believer in free government must consider this a powerful argument in favor of governemt funding for open source. Would you rather the government pay to fix bugs in MS software? That's being done as well, so stop complaining or CowboyNeal will eat you.