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UserLinux Continues Debate Over GUI
An anonymous reader writes "Following up the earlier Slashdot item on this, LinuxWorld is carrying both sides of the discussion as to whether UserLinux GUI should be GNOME only, as Bruce Perens last week decided "by fiat," or include KDE."
how bout a slashdot poll? 1. Gnome 2. Kde 3. Command line 4. Wine version of XP 5. Cowboyneil is my interface
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
If you don't like the distribution, don't use it. Simple as that. Keeping the OS simple and maintainable as a laudable goal, and I would find it difficult to argue with them just because my personal choice GUI wasn't included (though neither Gnome or KDE are *my* personal choice :-)).
The beauty of open source is that anyone can do this -- if you really disagree with their choice on which GUI to include, make your own distribution and include just KDE with it.
I sense another Holy War incoming over this. In all honesty, while having a single interface to deal with would be easier, I don't feel the GNOME ca claim to be it. Nor can KDE, but shortening the field by including only one in this project is a bit anti-competitive, and OSS has allways thrived on the competition between similar projects.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
I really don't get it. UserLinux seems targeted towards a very specific goal that KDE cannot meet because of the Qt widget set. That's that, right? What is the big deal? Why does it matter to KDE ppl anyway? Why is it so important a matter that it has required months of discussion to no end except bitching and fantasy conceptions of what KDE will someday be?
They're targeting the enterprise market -- defined explicitly by Peren's whitepaper as (paraphrasing) the market that Red Hat gets $$$ in support fees for.
I just don't see companies who want that level of support settling for "here's our linux distro, and if you want support, uh... here's a list of 3rd party providers." Remember LinuxCare? They're still around, but only because they moved away from providing third-party support solutions.
I prefer gnome to KDE. And I see that KDE is more advanced.
;)
by Bruce's decision I see some hope for gnome to speed their development. That's why I think it is good.
I also hope that decision about mozilla and gumeric + OOffice will solve their greatest problem: its own widget set. (I prefer galeon to mozilla - mainly because of native widget set == less bloated)
to conclude: I think that Bruce made the best possible decissions, and I really hope it will be a great success.
(btw, sawfish is my WM, not gnome, which for me is too bloated
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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please dont start the KDE vs Gnome war... KDE and Gnome should both do everything they can to get better while sharing between them as much as it's possible without removing their individuality. . I would prefer to have not one but two great desktop environments to choose from.
Try to find a commercial Gtk app. After googling, you'll perhaps find some from Ximian ( which can arguably be ruled out ), and perhaps a few more. Now try to find a commercial Qt app. You'll find hundreds ( including high-profile ones from Adobe and others ).
This means that commercial developers are willing to pay for a quality toolkit, as much so on Linux as on other OSs. Free software folk needn't worry either, as Qt on X is free as in both.
Sigh. It's all here: On the GUI Selection in UserLinux.
I've said it before. I agree 100% with including only one GUI. The reason for Gnome over KDE is simply a license issue. I personnaly like KDE better and it is what I will continue to use, as I am not the target "user" of userlinux.
One reason may be the 1,200 USD per developer to develope closed source apps for KDE.
Gnome doesn't have such a charge.
So it's anti-competitive to prefer one option for doing the job that you want done? Was I anti-competitive for un-selecting the KDE checkbox when I did my minimalist install? As I see it, this is a prime example of competition that they can thrive on - they both have to prove their case and one gets included - if thats not competition then I don't see what is.
Why do people always have to argue that you should use this or that? The beauty of it all is that you can choose, if you do not like a distribution that ships with only Gnome then don't use it. If it's based on debian you might just as well install debian and KDE (if that's what you like) or grab a source-dpkg or a dpkg and install KDE on UserLinux afterwards. I realize that many see the need for a common environment with less choice. Mostly to make it easier to move from some other OS to GNU/Linux. But those who want KDE in UserLinux are probably competent enough to get it on their own or use another distribution, they probably won't have a problem choosing between Gnome and KDE. :)
Arguing can be interesting and sometimes good, but this just seems like a pointless discussion to me.
apt-get install kde.
For those users stuck inside the default gui and without knowledge of the command line (the real target audience of "UserLinux"), I am sure there will be a front-end installer to add new packages. Just include alternate guis as optional packages to be added at the users' descretion. Why stop at KDE? You could include any number add-in optional packages that are not "default". Anyway..., multiple packages that all do the same thing (like guis) will simply increase the complexity, bloat, and confusion for the target audience. Select one good one, and they can add others if they so desire.
This whole debate sounds to me like what the BSDers call "bikeshedding". Arguing ad nauseam over minor details like colors because the deep-down architectural stuff is beyond intelligent discussion for most folks.
Please ! Stop to feed the troll !
.doc is the winner of the .sxw/.abw war !
The mailing list becomes really full of this old and crappy Troll...
There's no place for two DE in UserLinux... So there's a choice. If KDE was choosen, all gnome's fans will stand up !
I talk a lot about the Desktop and I continue to receive comments about that.
Well ! everyone has is own choice.. We don't have to speak so long about it !
Who is the winner of the Gnome/KDE war ? MS Windows of course ! Like
Ploum.net.
Back on topic. I have to say it is really sad to see KDE left out (and I say this as a long time gnome user). KDE is definitely the more mature and enterprise ready project. But then I can see Bruce's point of view. It doesn't make sense to support both, and Qt's licensing could easily put off commercial/proprietary developers.
Had the KDE and GNOME teams not thumbed their noses at each other for so long, and actually worked on interoperability issues (remember all the bitching when Redhat released bluecurve), all this could have been avoided. I mean, in that case it wouldn't have been difficult to support both.
Still, its very early in the game and there's miles to go, and both projects can compete if they work with a unified vision. Its encouraging to see that they're doing just that. The KDE proposal, for example, was big on integration (GTK, OO.o, mozilla).
Also, nobody is stopping a KDE/debian enterprise collaboration, which seems to be on the cards. On the whole the commercial interest from the big vendors has helped greatly. So while the userlinux decision is definitely a sad thing, the future looks bright.
Uhh.., looks like this is my 500th post! Excuse me while I go out and get a breath of fresh air :)
No, the real question is: why do any of us give a rat's ass what GUI a vaporware Linux distro uses? Are we suddently experiencing a shortage of prepackaged binary distros or easy-to-build source-based distros? Personally, if it had only KDE I wouldn't touch it, except if it were Knoppix. And Knoppix is already Knoppix, so I don't need UserLinux to be Knoppix for me. I use one K-program in my daily life, KMail, and even that doesn't really excite me-- I'd switch but the momentum for doing so is just not quite there. So I think your assertion that KDE beats GNOME hands down is not a "fact", rather an "opinion".
For my part, I think GNOME beats KDE by a long shot because it is based on C and not C++. The number of competetent C developers far outweighs the number of competent C++ developers. C is certainly more common on the rest of a Linux system. Finally, I am given to understand that in terms on internationalization support and various accessibility functions, GNOME is ahead of KDE (or was momentarily). I think there are a lot of factors that you may not have had to consider when choosing a GUI that someone attempting to make an "enterprise" distro would think of.
If someone wants to recomplile their own version of UserLinux, can't they? Why not start a spinoff project - call it UserLinux - K Edition or whatever? This was done with Knoppix (Gnoppix).
Seriously, what's the big dealio? It's all open source!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The Linux that gains acceptance will be wrapped around one way of doing things. This is how business works. The beautiful thing about this is that a major corpororate/development workstation distribution can rise that major software developers can target and business can point to as their distribution of choice due to it's uniformity. There will always be the ability to roll your own and as long as people like Mr Volkerding want to keep alternate distributions going we will have other choices too.
Just what is wrong with this approach? KDE decided to write KHTML instead of using Gecko, whilst GNOME is now going to use Gecko as their primary HTML layout engine in the DE. Which is better? I'd say Gecko is much more standards compliant than KHTML, even with the latest patches. The point is that for really huge projects like a HTML layout engine, you need huge resources. A lot of KDE developers work on KHTML when if they'd used Gecko, they could be working on far more interesting things.
Also, surely it's better than free software projects share code. So many people are put off GNU/Linux & BSD by the fact there are 500 different text editors and not one of them works properly (except vi
In conclusion, you're a troll. Have a nice day.
if you really disagree with their choice on which GUI to include, make your own distribution and include just KDE with it.
What's better, you can just apt-get kde on UserLinux.
Gnome will be the default, supported option. It's sensible to pick only one to "officially support", and let the hackers use the other to their heart's content.
Gnome is the better "supported" option because it doesn't require royalties for closed source development. This matters in countries where you can buy 3 developer months for single license of Qt (and for 3 developers, you need 3 licenses).
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Bruce Perens is making a GNOME-only linux distro. There's no reason for you to try to stop him. It isn't like there aren't 9000 other distros to choose from. Heck, it isn't even like there aren't ten to thirty other linux standardization movements similar to what Perens is doing.
Perens is convinced that in order to do what he wants this distro to do, he needs to choose one desktop environment and focus to it. He's also convinced that GNOME was the right choice for this. You know what? If he's wrong, all that will happen is that his distro will fail. Life will go on, and only Bruce Perens will have lost any time from it. In the meantime, if you like, you can go and make a KDE-only linux distro of your own, and it will succeed or fail or whatever.
I think Perens has an interesting little experiment going on here. If he's wrong, he's wrong, and if he's right, you know what? Once he has something good, you can take what he did, fork it, and add/insert KDE. Huzzah. In the meantime, who cares?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
...until somebody makes a choice you disagree with, apparently.
We're all aware that the whole point of this "free software" exercise is that people are free to do whatever they want with it as long as they share, right? Even if other people think it's a bad decision?
Mike Hoye
I sense another Holy War incoming over this.
So you are saying that a holy war between Gnome and KDE will be coming? Proponents of various desktops trolling and flaming each other on Slashdot?
We are truly living interesting times.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Nuts. Choices like that cost money. If a business lets their employees choose either KDE or Gnome, then that business has to spend money supporting both KDE and Gnome. Why would a sensible business do that?
Business users, regardless of the operating system and regardless of the "desktop environment", typically use a very few applications, day in and day out. The rest of their "desktop" sits there, unused.
A smart business will lock down the desktops of their employees as much as possible, providing access to only the applications emloyees are authorized to use.
All this adolescent whimpering about "choice" is silly and completely beside the point.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
[Reads article.. geez, the things I admit to doing around here...]
Yep, I don't see any holy war material either, even tho I like KDE and detest Gnome. What Bruce says boils down to "All right, I'm tired of arguing about this, it's time to pick ONE (because this here project is partly about a focused direction instead of including everything plus a dozen kitchen sinks), and this here SDK is what I prefer for those there reasons. So we'll go with the desktop that matches this here SDK."
Perfectly reasonable as a project decision, even if I personally disagree with the choice it led to.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The argument is this :
... and ...
SCO's bosses at Canopy controls Trolltech which controls Qt which controls KDE.
(do an nslookup of www.trolltech.com and www.kde.org to verify that last bit of logic)
The second contention that's a touchy subject is "Canopy controls Trolltech". Somebody is going to post a link to the trolltech site that says "only 8% of Trolltech is controlled by SCO/Canopy".
Then what the hell is Ralph Yarro (Darl Macbride's boss) doing on the board directors of Trolltech?
Link here for the skeptical.
The issues is real simple. If Canopy doesn't control Trolltech and Trolltech support Linux, then why haven't they
1) Come clean on exactly what their relationship is with Canopy
2) Voted Ralph Yarro of the board.
Trolltech should come clean. What is their relationship with Canopy? Does canopy have contractual rights to sit on the board? Do they owe debt to Canopy? Does Canopy have warrants on Trolltech? The silence is deafing. Speak Trolltech, tell us the truth.
The sad thing is QT is a good product. They could increase their respect and marketshare by telling the Canopy chumps to take a hike.
Its an interesting point - GNOME was originally started because Qt, which KDE was based on, wasn't "free software". But now it seems KDE is more "free software" than GNOME is.
Remember part of the point of free software is not just that its free to use, but free to modify and use the code for new programs. The only "drawback" being that if you base your software on free software, you are required to make your modification free software too.
Perens says in the article that his decision is not because of one being technically superior, but because you can make proprietary GNOME software for free, but if you make KDE software it has to be either GPL or you pay a lot of money to the makers of Qt.
The reason for this, I assume, and I haven't got the time to check it out, is because GNOME libraries are mostly LGPL, whereas the core Qt library for KDE is GPL only. The "Lesser" LGPL license lets you make proprietary software by screwing over free software developers and using their libraries without giving anything back to the community that provided the entire platform you are developing on. Even GNU says you should not license you're free software libraries LGPL.
The irony is that, as you point out, GNOME was supposed to be a "free" alternative to KDE, with all the GNU zealots following behind it for that reason. But now it seems the GNOME developers are getting fucked by the "open source" crew that were originally blamed for the travesty of KDE using a non-free development kit.
Its just like you can simply download and install mozilla/firebird/opera/etc on any windows machine - internet explorer would only be the default. You dont have to use it.
UserLinux is targeted at the enterprise community. It probably (and hopefuly) be used by non-geeky types who simply use what is installed on their computers. You can see KDE go the same way as netscape if UserLinux ever becomes popular.
I am not sure what the right approach would be though. It makes sense for an OS to have a consistent "face" to a non-techie user. Though choice is great (and it is the reason why I use linux), it can be a hinderance for someone who is not inclined to try out 5 different window managers before she decides which one to use!!
Don't Panic
If UserLinux was an end user-oriented distribution, it surely had to pick KDE instead of Gnome, since KDE is the more integrated and stable GUI and is less messy in the architecture underneath (while Gnome/GTK has the lead in 3rd-party applications and, since recently, UI polish).
But for a "Free Enterprise Linux", there must not be any hidden costs for enterprise software development. This demands that libraries and SDKs should, where possible, be LGPL- or BSD-licensed, and not GPLed with for-pay-exceptions (like in Qt and MySQL).
Of course, the question remains if, due to its proprietary-friendly licensing and relatively conservative (=stable) design process, FreeBSD wouldn't be the better "Enterprise Linux" anyway. After all, the GPLed Linux kernel could be ditched in favor of a BSD kernel with almost the same arguments the UserLinux project now ditched the GPLed KDE libraries in favor of the LPGLed Gnome libraries.
But since Linux is all the hype even where it doesn't make too much sense (like in PDAs, for which Minix would be much better suited), it's good that the "UserLinux" project attempts to prevent that commercial distributors do the same horrible mistakes with Linux and their "enterprise" distributions the proprietary Unix vendors made in the 1990s.
-F
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
Not if you are *forced* by your companys IT dept. to use the only linux distribution they will support. A vast majority would not even know there are other linux distributions!!
Don't Panic
why is "choice" good. I am serious here. For me, and my coworkers, all non geeks, having a single OS/office , eg windows 2000/XP and office 2000/xp is great - a guy emails me a complex doc, and it opens without problems, all of the support staff everywhere know this system, I have never run across an unsupported peripheral piece of hardware (dont flame me - i am a typical user and this is my experience). It is really not clear to me that I, personnally, gain anything by having choice. True, I gain "freedom" to have my desktop do something else, but I loose "freedom" of interaction with others, the freedom have most of the IT people able to help me, the freedom to have plug and play (true, ms is not 100% great, but I will wager it will always be better then a fragmetned open source movement). I guess "choice" of "freedom" from the evil MS empire is just not that important to me. I turn off my computer at the end of the day, go home, and don't worry about it. It is just not that big a deal. And as for the "ethical" issues, as long as there are starving children in the world, worrying about the gates monopoly is way way down on the list As for the cost, if you factor in what I am paid, and how we work, and the cost of support and all that, at least for my company (we have a high proportion of high paid engineeers and scientists) the cost differential (only the diff is important right ?) is just not that important.
Bruce writes:
It is possible for us to make our system entirely royalty-free for solution developers, both Free and proprietary. This dictates some software choices: GNOME and PostgreSQL rather than KDE and MySQL, simply because of the way those products license proprietary developers. This will support a large ecosystem of both Free and proprietary solution developers by lowering the financial barriers to entry all the way to zero.
So, let me get this straight - he wants to discourage the use of GPL'd code in UserLinux in order to have businesses create proprietary applications that can not in turn be included into UserLinux because they will not be free?
Sounds like an interesting one-sided ecosystem.
If he took this commercial-friendly argument to its logical conclusion he would dump the GPL'd Linux from UserLinux in favour of BSD. But then it would not be much of a UserLinux, would it?
It's actually pretty simple. Both GNOME and KDE are quite good and equally comparable as far as features and usability. Sometimes one may be better in one area and worse in the other, but they pretty much stack up well against each other.
The difference is that KDE uses QT which is GPL and GNOME uses GTK which is LGPL. The LGPL is more friendly towards proprietary software which is something that the target audience of UserLinux(corporations) will want.
So UserLinix has chosen GNOME.
It's not the desktop at issue, it's the library licensing.
According to the article he mentions that UserLinux is intended to be based upon Debian. The reason why is extremely important to understand:
We are looking at what is best described as an evolutionary process of development. This follows a more organic than Project Management path.
In the beginning there was Minix and it was expensive and not free but it worked well enough. Following this was the development of a free replacement called Linux.
Some time after that came Applixware, an Office Products Suite. It was expensive but it worked. Following this was StarOffice and now OpenOffice.
Given these two, we have evolved the software industry to such a point that there is now a very adequate if not excellent free software which can provide us with:
- A base Operating System: Linux
- A very suitable browser: Mozilla
- A very suitable Office environment: OpenOffice
But before each of these could exist, there was a non-free proprietary variant. Not always the case: Xfree, Postgresql, vi, emacs, and so on. But they do exist.The point that is so important here to understand and except is that Open Source, Free, non-Proprietary software is getting really good all the time.
Distributions themselves are following the same path. SuSE and RedHat cost money, but Debian and it's variants are getting better and gaining a larger percentage of users who consider these to be "good enough" to use every day.
In order to effectively provide a "good enough" solution to the Businesses, Open Source communities have to provide all of their free software as easily as possible. But it is extremely important to make it possible for someone to develop a proprietary software solution to fill in the niches that Debian is missing today so that Free Software, as a whole, can move into an ever increasing circle of "good enough" for users.
If there are any barriers of any kind to that entrance it will hurt the overall effectiveness of this process. Any questions or concerns, current or future, about the licensing of software development under Qt, MySQL or anything else, will only make it less attractive to a developer to invest in making a product for UnitedLinux only to have it completely fucked up by a bunch of whining lawyers.
Personally, I'm rather surprised that he didn't select GNUstep as the desktop of choice. Long term, it might be the best of the three options mentioned.
Choice like this for regular users is unnecessary. I think most regular users will use whatever they are given, and once used to it they will choose it over others (Put a Windows user on a Mac and watch them cry, for example.) The future Linux users won't care what deskotp they use, as long as it lets them use their computer. If they do care, they are most likely advanced users (a minority), and they can go install KDE, just like I can go install Fluxbox or Enlightenment under Redhat.
And since when is making a default choice a removal of choice from a Linux user? When the KDE people didn't like what Redhat did with KDE, stock KDE Redhat RPMS showed up. If people want KDE on this UserLinux, it is available. That's the whole point of Open Source/Free Software.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Funny that the KDE developers' argument boils down to: "We have these proposed applications, most of them aren't finished yet, or haven't even been started, but they're going to be really great and integrate well with an enterprise desktop, so you should choose KDE and ditch Gnome."
Thing is, Gnome has the applications NOW, already integrated and complying to a well tested Human Interface Guide.
Further more, nobody ever said UserLinux wouldn't include KDE apps. There is no reason their "killer apps", should they ever reach a usable state, couldn't be included. The decision is to go with Gnome as the default desktop, and these KDE developers have shown no reasons why this isn't the best choice. There is no need to include both desktops, as a user can only be running one at a time anyway.
Finally, if you don't like the decision, don't use the distribution! There are plenty of other distributions out there, at least two of which still use KDE as the default desktop (Mandrake and Suse). Funny that you don't see Gnome developers demanding that these distros switch to Gnome.
Let the whining and flaming commence!
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
" My understanding is this is to be an enterprise user system, not a home user or personal user. The whole point is enterprise management and distribution management. "
'Zakly.
What is it that GNOME has to offer in this regard?
1.
KDE Kiosk Mode, also known as lock-down mode, makes it possible to restrict the capabilities of the KDE3 environment in powerful and flexible ways including but not limited to the ability to:
1. Restrict desktop, application, and printing actions.
2. Restrict internet access on a URL basis at a desktop-wide level.
3. Restrict desktop resource customizations.
Such functionality is invaluable for unattended operation of UserLinux in a kiosk setting as well as for wide-scale enterprise deployment of a controlled environment.
2.
A new easy-to-use administration tool, yet in the stages of development, will build on top of the KDE Kiosk Mode and expand upon the features in an exciting direction. The tool will enable scalable management of users, their settings and IT privileges. The design goals include:
1. Full scalability from medium to large organisations.
2. Usable by both KDE and non-KDE applications.
3. Seamless integration into existing IT infrastructure.
4. Roaming support.
Please expect more detail and an official announcement in 2004 Q1.
3.
An Integrated Terminal Server and Client employing a new and highly efficient X compression technology thereby enabling seamless desktop integration of applications based on a remote compute server. This feature will be in addition to KDE's existing remote desktop support (VNC and RDP) and is especially exciting in light of the fact that it enables a satisfying desktop experience on a thin client even with a low-bandwidth connection (e.g. dialup) to the application server. The technology will bring us on par with Citrix, Tarantella, SunRay and Windows Terminal Server offerings.
4.
KDE Print: Enterprise-grade technology for intimate management of printers and print jobs, adaptable to innumerable creative tasks.
5.
KDE Core Killer Apps: Whilst too numerous to list here, we expect to leverage core KDE applications where appropriate. In addition to the well-known applications several pertain directly to the enterprise including:
1. The upcoming Kontact, an integrated personal information management suite, which in conjunction with the Kolab Server will provide a powerful standards-based groupware solution.
2. The upcoming KERP, an Enterprise Resource Planner.
3. A set of financial trading tools currently in development.
ISVs in particular will be pleased to note that the KDE/Qt environment sports a rich body of development tools that leverage the elegant and powerful framework provided by KDE/Qt as well as tools enabling development in areas ranging from HTML production to UML modelling, CAD design and document publishing.
6.
KDE brings an impressive body of localization and internationalization effort to the table. With over 80 translation teams and KDE 3.2.x to be available in an estimated 50+ languages, KDE is a compelling choice for an enterprise desktop with an international audience.
Where is GNOME's visionary roadmap for a subsystem as powerful as that?
Thought so.
Errm, pardon me, but who in holy hell are these UserLinux people and who's this Bruce Perens guy?
/. about a topic you admit you know nothing about?
If you don't know that Bruce Perens is a former Debian Project Leader and the primary author for the Debian Social Contract and the Debian Free Software Guidelines (which was reworked into the OSI's Open Source Definition, a group he co-founded), or that UserLinux is his attempt to provide an DFSG-compliant reference distribution to high-priced Enterprise Linux solutions that can be developed and extended by Linux vendors, then why should I care who you are or why you felt the need to mindlessly babble on
I'm a GNOME user, but to be honest, I'm not losing any sleep over UserLinux's decision to pick GNOME over KDE because I'm not the target market for the distribution (although the use of GNOME means I may be more likely to look at early builds and see if I can contribute); Bruce has his goals, they're clearly outlined on the UserLinux site, and if can't come to some kind of accomodation with that, you're welcome to not contribute to the project.
Jay (=
As someone who have read almost all the mails in the list so far, I think the decision to go with GNOME was taken in a BAD way atleast. First there was a lot of discussion about the technical merits of these 2 and later it was decided to go with GNOME based almost solely on "proprietory friendly" license of GTK. If that was the only criteria for selecting the softwares, then what is the purpose of discussion? its easy to compile a list softwares with the above license. Also, as far as I understand(someone correct me if I am wrong in this please) QT has been adopted by the ISVs far more than the GTK. It boasts of a customer base including IBM, Adobe , Samsung and many many other high profile companies. So if all these companies have found the technical mertis of QT(better documented APIs, more powerfull, architectural superiority etc.) more than the "proprietory unfriendly"[sic] nature of the license, then why the same logic does not apply to Userlinux? . The same goes with Epiphany also. It seems to be (not finalized though) decided that Epiphany would be the default browser. There was a lot of discussions about browser choice also. Mostly it was agreed that Mozilla firebird was the best choice . But then at the end Epiphany was chosen(?) based solely on the "better GNOME integration".Again why there needs to be a lot of discussion about the technical merits if at the end some criteria like "proprietory friendly" nature of the license and "Gnome integration" are going to be the sole criteria. Is these 2 factors so important to give such a huge weightage over technical merits and everything else ? After carefully reading all the mails also, I have not found a good answer for these concerns. Perhaps I am missing something. But anyway I wish all the best for Bruce and his effort.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
Companies don't want to support multiple versions of Linux. Thus a single version is going to be what drives Linux in business.
There will be at least RHEL, SUSE, and now UL.
So much for Open Source ideals.
I don't see any conflict with OSS ideals. You are not forced to use UL, it's all Open Source, you can install whatever you want, you can install UL apps on other Linux platforms, etc.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Choice is good mostly because it promotes competition. As a user in a business environment, choice isn't good because you want to unify the experience. So your systems admin should be choosing for you.
But outside that environment you need choices so that you can be gauranteed of getting the best quality.
It's like, why do we need any other car company except for Ford? Well, because if no other car company came into existance we'd probably still be driving around in model T's. Instead we have many car companies each of which is trying to get us to use their product. They do that by being "newer and better" than the other guy.
Competition drives innovation.
get working on building the KDE add-on.
I'm pretty much a gnome-only fellow; gnome 2.4 on this gentoo box and dropline gnome on my slackware laptop. That said, I still need qt and the kde-libs. I rarely use them (well, I really only use them for lyx and k3b as there isn't anything like k3b for gtk) but I still need them.
Stop arguing some stupid holy war (I like gnome and I'm not moving and I have friends that swear by KDE and aren't moving). If United isn't going to take KDE, someone needs to build a dropline-ese KDE that will bold right on.
I don't mean to stalk you in this story!
You can see KDE go the same way as netscape if UserLinux ever becomes popular.
KDE made a choice when it based itself on Qt. Times change and KDE's problems have changed - KDE is a good Free Software* desktop environment. But because Qt is GPL'd, it presents a barrier to proprietary development that is against the goals of UserLinux.
If being the default desktop of UserLinux is so important to KDE, why don't they re-implement their desktop ontop of an LGLP'd toolkit?
If it's not so important that they are willing to do that, then people should stop being upset. In the choice of a default there will be a winner and one or more losers. XFCE lost here too, but they're not whining. Only one desktop can be the default!
As for the Netscape comparison, I think there were other factors which led to Netscape's demise, like a bloated product (Communicator). Look how people prefer Firebird over Mozilla. There's still time for IE to be ousted - all the time in the world, from now to the end of time.
* Or is it? Look at what TrollTech say here - TT don't want you using Free Qt on inhouse projects, but the GPL says you can. This makes me distrust TrollTech.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Well then, lets put it on the table. This project is not by or for the community. Yet it depends on the contributions of a huge number of developers.
When, oh when will people realize that the future of Linux and Open Source is dependent on corporate adoption? Bruce says it himself - widespread corporate adoption is necessary to combat the sw patent and other (idiotic) legal threats.
If the corps are not with us, they will be on the other side and we will lose.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I can understand the business decision to go with one DE over the others... this makes good sense. What I *don't* understand is why Perens refuses to include the KDE libs by default. Including the libs and a few choice applications to fill the gaps where kde apps outperform what gnome offers (k3b and others) would do a lot for improving the total package of UserLinux and keep some of the critics at bay.
If I can put on my tinfoil hat for a second here, the best reason I can think of for not including the KDE libs is to stir up the traditional KDE/GNOME debate and get more coverage on slashdot and other sites. Trolling for media coverage, it's the wave of the future!
501 Not Implemented
But if a Company chooses UserLinux, the User is the Company, not the employee! When I go to my day-job I am a member of staff, not a customer of software houses. I do what is expected of me contractually using the tools I am provided with; I don't complain if I don't like the colour of the tool.
(OK I do complain and I might bring in my own tool, but I don't believe I occupy the moral high ground by doing so, in fact I consider myself a but of a chancer and it's my good fortune to get away with it).
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
But now it seems KDE is more "free software" than GNOME is.
It's more RMS, not more free. GPL is not more free than e.g. LGPL or BSD, it's exactly the opposite.
The "Lesser" LGPL license lets you make proprietary software by screwing over free software developers and using their libraries without giving anything back to the community that provided the entire platform you are developing on.
It's in the interest of a library developer to have as many users as possible, proprietary or not. LGPL is in fact a recommended license for libraries, and GPL libs should be reserved for tasks where nothing else will do.
The idea of a UI toolkit is not to offer anything revolutionary that would warrant GPL - just to offer a standard useful API to do the obvious. If you can only use the API to do GPL applications, well, that sucks.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
This is a better link to the GNU perspective on the matter.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
I am not denying Qt licensing issues. They are real. And since KDE is based on Qt, it goes against them.
The point I wanted to make was why the KDE team was so concerned about not being included in UserLinux. If Userlinux is ever to become as popular as they hope it would (and it does not include KDE), it would be a big loss for KDE.
Don't Panic
Lord, this arcane bickering seems pointless. From my reading Perens' goal is to develop a distro that "just works" for the average corporate user.
I just wrapped up my semi-annual "download a linux distro and see if the damned thing will work" exercise, and once again I'm falling back on Win2K, which does everthing that I need, and does it with a minimum of BS.
Over the last few years I've tried RedHat, Mandrake, and a half dozen other distros, on both bare machines and dual boot systems. In every case I hit the wall when trying to implement some simple or essential feature. Every time I found myself led into that arcane and recursive hell known as man pages and how-tos. (and mailing lists, and discussion groups and...)
I'm good with hardware, and can make Windows do anything I need. I have managed to troubleshoot some exceedingly obscure problems in the past. Still, once again I've abandoned Linux because I can't afford to invest weeks of obscure research just to do day to day work.
I really want to be rid of Microsoft products. I find them more irritating than useful, and surely don't like MS' business practices.
I love OpenOffice and have pretty much abandoned MS Office. I like Mozilla, and use a wide variety of freeware and open source products.
I would in a minute abandon MS Windows if it were practical, but to do that I need a distro that will do what Windows does:
Find and configure all my hardware, set up internet access and networking to allow all of the computers on our system to share files, and easily allow others to use the printers attached to my PC, easily set up my two video cards and monitors, set up to sync my PalmPilot.
And have decent looking fonts.
So far every distro I have tried has blown at least two of these basic goals and has offered no easy way to achieve them.
Again, I cannot afford to spend days or weeks tracking down the obscure solution to make something like HotSync work.
It does not matter to me whether this happens with GNOME or KDE. If I can boot from CD and have all of these things come up working, I'll buy it.
If including only GNOME allows Perens' the time to make a truly reliable installer, then I'm for it.
Three Squirrels
...companies like Boeing, Daimler Chrysler, Disney, Fujitsu, General Electric, Hitachi, Honda, HP, IBM, Intel etc. have developed QT based applications. Why not many GTK based applications ?
That's fine, but that's their choice; they can still do that under a Gnome-default UserLinux. But do you think it would be right for UserLinux to encourage a TrollTech "tax" by choosing KDE? I don't.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Quite; note that the specific reason Gnome chose LGPL for it's libraries was to encourage popularity!
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Strawman. The point from the pro-KDE proponents was that it's better for Userlinux to at least also include the KDE libraries and QT. Then the market can decide.
Userlinux is free to choose whatever they want into their distro, it's just that they should not pretend to (strive to) be _the_ Free linux enterprise distribution.
UserLinux doesn't even *exist* yet. That's a far cry from having a monopolist's power to "persuade" 90plus percent of the market to switch over to using Internet Destroyer instead of Netscape more or less overnight (as they upgrade from windose95 to 98 or 2000).
There are no grounds to make an MS - UserLinux comparison. In fact it's ludicrous.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
It's funny that one would exclude the top C++ GUI toolkit for commercial development for the purpose of making the distribution friendly for commercial development.
Bruce says he wants to provide as default enterprise class support for one (1) desktop environment.
In his words: Because these service providers are basing their business upon a commodity product, there are already economic limits upon how profitable they can be. The difference between one and two GUIs may spell profitability or bankruptcy for some of our service providers. In a similar vein, internal support and engineering staff at businesses that employ UserLinux would like to have only one GUI SDK to develop for and maintain.
He also says that anyone is free to install Qt/KDE and the vendors are free to sell support for it if they so choose.
Now, I don't see how he can do fairer than this without compromising the stated aims of the project.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Nice story, but it's bullshit. Gnumeric couldn't have borrowed code because there was no one to borrow from. Neither KSpread nor OpenOffice Calc were around: Gnumeric was the first of the modern Linux spreadsheets. The only options around at that time Oleo and Siag. You don't get an app of Gnumeric's quality (it's probably the best OSS spreadsheet around, including OO.o) by copying all your code from Siag and Oleo.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
My point remains that for the target use of userlinux, this system should concentrate on 1 WM. Perens has made it very clear that the choice simply came down to the license issue.
There are dozens of distributions out there with different motives. The most successful distributions make clear and solid guidelines and stick to these. I like the fact that Perens has very clearly stated these directives and he should stick to them religously.
Again, I use KDE and love it. But this issue/choice is not about what environment works better or has feature x. It really boils down to licensing.
If you haven't seen this before, then you haven't been watching the distributions. Lots of the smaller distributions have only shipped with their favored window manager. (Possibly because the guy that put them together couldn't be bothered with one he didn't use.)
UserLinux is making a bigger splash than most of these...but this doesn't really mean that it will go anywhere. Who's going to adopt it? Why?
Well, nobody who likes KDE will adopt it. Nobody who likes blackbox. Or TWM. Or...
So it will only be adopted by those individuals who already like Gnome. OK. What's the first step towards getting Linux into a corporation? Somebody puts it on his computer to check it out! So from the start they've limited their initial penetration. Now if they do a good enough job, this may get enough good PR that others will check it out. But if they don't like Gnome, they probably won't like this. So they'll go back to SuSE or Mandrake or Debian or...
Basically, then, this is intended to take customers from either MSWindows, or from a distribution that normally runs under Gnome. Like Red Hat.
I'll be surprised if this is a good enough distribution to succeed, but there's nothing wrong with him trying.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I am not trying to be a smart ass, but I would really appreciate it if you would enlighten me on this issue. I may be victim to the slashdot-fiction as IANAL and I have not studied either license in detail.
My understanding from what I have read is that if you are going to make a commercial product with QT, you need to buy a royalty license. Is that not the case?
This is absolutely true.
From my experience, people will prefer KDE over GNOME (I don't know what you're talking about the beauty of GNOME, yes, so it's streamlined - that in my experience, is lack of options - but is ugly, not customizable, it's file manager is anything but usefull to real work, it's applications are not so good and it is slooow...
And let me explain my experience. A year ago (I used RedHat 8) i installed in my organization (a non-profit one, 10 computer seats) an LTSP server. The users had no previous experience in Linux and not that much experience with Windows anyway (they're just users, they don't go about configuring anything). When asked to make a choice, they choose KDE. Over the relative slow network (a switched 100Mbit network, with realy low hardware for X stations - P2-266 and 64Mb Ram, and a not so great server - Athlon 1,2 Ghz) KDE 3.1 runs a lot faster than GNOME (quite smooth, actualy), feels integrated, Konqueror rules (they use it for file management and web browsing), kmail is just right to them, it has integrated image and PDF viewer, very easy printing with preview, and, once again, I repeat, QT runs faster than GTK, XUL and VCL (I wish kde.openoffice.org would finish the integration very soon, it's just what we need). Also, I don't know why everyone is complaining about Kcontrol, it's a non-issue here. After I showed them how to use it and where to start, they're quite comfortable with changing settings (mostly visuals - icons, backgrounds, window decorations and styles).
And, because I'm a web developer, I can use Quanta and KDE's transparent network integration to work over fish on the webserver, running, of course, under WindowMaker
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
(UserLinux == user_riendly) ? (KDE || GNOME) : all_others;
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
"a payment to an author or composer for each copy of a work sold or to an inventor for each item sold under a patent"
Does Qt require royalty payments? No.
However, if you make a commercial closed source product (and do not wish to use the GPL) you will need to buy a one-time commercial Qt license for the developers that work on your product.
You can read more about commercial Qt licensing here.
So next time you hear someone talk about Qt royalties you now know that that person either doesn't know what he is talking about or he is trying to sell you a bridge.
"My understanding of Bruce's goal is that UserLinux will be the one distribution that all comercial software and hardware makers will chose as a point of reference."
If hardware makers support it, then, because it is just re-packaged Debian, that support will be available for any Distribution out there.
If software makers support it, then, because it is just re-packaged Debian, the KDE people can add it to KDE.
"I fear a future in which all comercial developers will only support UserLinux."
Why? It's just re-packaged Debian. What are you afraid of?
"I believe this is what the KDE developers fear also."
Afraid of what, SPECIFICALLY?
Appearantly, but when you look at the realities of the market place you will notice that commercial software developers gladly pay this license fee in order to use a better toolkit.
That's were it starts to smell a bit fishy. When given the choice, commercial software developers prefer to use Qt and here comes Bruce who says, I know better, commercial software developers should use GTK because it is better for them. Dunno about you, but I always become highly suspicious when other people start telling me what is supposed to be in my interest.
How many times does this need to be pointed out? QT/KDE does NOT require the purchase of a licence to be used in developing commercial products!!
Read the QT FAQ. You can freely (free as in speech and as in beer) develop software for whatever purpose you desire using QT, including commercial purposes. Millions of people use software developed with free QT for commercial purposes every day.
To make this even more clear: QT is released under the GPL. The GPL forbids anyone from restricting the use of QT or products derived from QT under that licence. In other words, you CANNOT develop a product derived from GPL'd code and say "you can only use this for non-commecial purposes."
The GPL is an excellent licence for commercial software for reasons to numerous to mention, vastly superior to, say, a typical Microsoft licence.
Lets say a business has to choose between two software products with equal capability but different licences. The first product is free to use, can be used on many machines, comes with its source code, and can be modified and redistributed. The second product needs to be licenced seperately for each machine it runs on, cannot be copied internal let alone redistributed externaly, and does not even reveal its source let alone allow for it to be modified. Which is product is superior for commercial purposes?
I think this confusion about licencing arises because far too many people confuse COMMERCIAL software development with CLOSED SOURCE software development. COMMERCIAL does not equal CLOSED SOURCE!!! I use Free (open source) Software every day for commercial purposes. Millions of people do.
Now, for those people who want to write a closed source software product, they can also use QT for this purpose... however in that case they must purchase a commercial licence from TrollTech, instead of licencing it under the GPL. This is only logical... if you want to sell a software product under a closed source, proprietary licence, and not allow your customers to get the source or have the right to freely use it, why the hell should Trolltech (and other developers of Free software) have to give you THEIR source for free?
This is why I think that QT/KDE has a SUPERIOR licencing scheme to that of GTK/Gnome... QT/KDE allows for closed source development but ENCOURAGES open source.
I have great respect for Bruce Perens, but he is way off base on this. If there must be only one desktop environment in UserLinux it should be KDE. It is very disapointing to see him get behind the platform that is LESS beneficial to free software.
If this means that all UserLinux-specific scripts ini the distribution will be written in Python, that's fine. If it means that Perl won't even be in the distribution, he's nuts.
There are certain things that pretty much everyone assumes are available on Linux systems, and Perl is one of them.
The business world already was offered Unix systems with one choice for everything (that's how most commercial Unix systems worked), and Linux is kicking their asses, and one of the reasons is that Linux includes all these alternatives.
Picking one GUI for users is one thing, but for things that are used by programs rather than directly by users, a good Linux-for-business distribution should have them all.
If you can, there's something wrong. You can't kill a free software project like that. It only dies if it no longer serves the developers goals.
Personally, I'd rather see them adopt GNUStep than either one - and if enough folk agree with me we might see another project taking that route. I'm sure there will continue to be other distros that choose to support KDE. It's not the end of the world, because free software is not the same world as the one where your expectations were formed.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why? YOu can always use a commercial qt license and release your code under any license you wish. It's your code after all. You can even modify the commercial qt and ship the modfified qt with your closed source product. Also you can use GPL code on MacOSX, EMbedded, all Unix/Linux and Windows using X+Cygwin. Which is pretty much 100 % of all relevant OS.
The KDE camp still refuse to admit they made an unholy alliance with the devil and will forever be damned for it. The GNOME camp saved the Free Software world by realizing the danger and running balls to the wall to quickly organize themselves and catch up close enough to KDE/Qt to prevent it from ever becoming a defacto standard.
The Gnome camp should be thanked for making TrollTech give us qt under the linux license GPL. Mission accomplished, I'd say. Of course, if Miguel de Icaza had worked on Harmony, the free qt replacement instead of using the gimp motif ripoff toolkit in C with OO latched on top to code a crappy second Desktop environment, we would also have just KDE today, using Qt under GPL as well.
GNOME has produced some nice software, but without dotcom money, it probably won't be able to keep up with the technically superior QT/KDE system. Basing the so-called "user"-linux on Redhat's and Ximian's GNOME and excluding Qt/KDE is a waste of everyone's time.
Moritz
The license issue is not an issue for any business. I mean come on. We are talking about people who use windows for most of their work. Sure, in theory you can develop on windows without Visual Studio, but how many enterprises actually do? The Qt closed-source license fee is less then the cost of VS.net, and hell It's only about half a days worth of Programmer salary anyway. If you can afford to pay programmers, you can easily afford to buy Qt licenses. Or, you can run GTK apps in KDE. It's not like its difficult.
the cost of Qt is a complete non-issue for enterprise software.
Finally, if you are actually developing your own software, for release you're probably not going to need the same kind of 'hand holding' support packages from these companies.
You really think someone running windows isn't going to avoid KDE because the GPL isn't "free" enough for them, that they need LGPL?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What is becoming apparent is that a smallish, vocal fanboy group is prepared to tear any project apart if they do not include their favorite project. The people surrounding the KDE project is actually the largest reason I have never considered using it "for real".
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
SCO's bosses at Canopy controls Trolltech
Not according to Trolltech's investor list, which claims that the employees own nearly two-thirds of the stock. Even Borland owns more than Canopy and SCO, which put together control less than 6 percent of Trolltech.
Of greater moment is the choice of database library. PostgreSQL is enormously more complete and standard-compliant than MySQL, and (for years, now) faster, and is committed to the more liberal license that Bruce has demanded. MySQL (like KDE) is straight GPL in release 4.x, and lacks many important enterprise features.
Odd, isn't it, that we don't see flame wars over the database? Probably they will switch quietly to PostgreSQL once they get around to the matter, and nobody will make a fuss.
This just in: Bruce Perens has decided that UserLinux will be built on top of Microsoft Windows instead of using the traditional Linux kernel. Perens, famed founder and leader of the Debian project, said yesterday: "Just like Qt, the Linux kernel is released under a GPL license, which requires developers modifying it to release their source code under the GPL. This prevents commercial solution developers from creating closed-source, proprietery kernel modifications, which would inhibit the adoption of UserLinux."
Perens reportedly approached Linux founder Linus Torvalds to request that he change the Linux kernel license from GPL to LGPL, in order to be more consistent with the GNOME license. Mr. Torvalds apparently refused, at which time Perens managed to negotiate favorable kernel licensing terms from Microsoft.
Mr. Perens had no comment in response to the claim by a spokesperson for TrollTech, the Norway-based company that develops Qt, that their code was actually "freer than Linux", since unlike the Linux kernel, developers can choose to license thier applications under either the GPL or TrollTech's proprietary license that allows close-source development.
"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." -- Olin Miller
Having worked for a bunch of companies, I can tell you that's not the way things work.
A lot of corporate development is in-house. The Troll Tech license and license fees mattter a great deal for that. They matter not only because of the short-term cost, but they also matter because of the long-term control Troll Tech gets over commercial applications.
In fact, Troll Tech's control is a problem even for "free software folks", because the design and direction of Qt is ultimately driven by Troll Tech's commercial interests. And you can't weasel your way out of that fact by arguing that if Troll Tech starts going down the wrong path, people can just fork the GPL'ed version of Qt because the very reason for choosing Qt is KDE's assertion that no open source project could deliver a toolkit of comparable quality.
In fact, another strike against KDE and Qt is the fact that KDE already screwed up big time once. Far from being the result of a careful plan, the current dual-licensing scheme for Qt is the result of Troll Tech averting disaster by changing their license after KDE went on for a couple of years merrily developing software under an open source license incompatible with the QPL. The impression one gets as an outside is that KDE doesn't know what the hell they are doing with licenses. And it doesn't help either that Troll Tech is clearly responsible for killing the Harmony Project, an attempt to develop a more liberally licensed Qt-compatible license, because it would cut into their sales. Neither of those is a big recommendation for KDE or Qt.
And, in fact, some of those in-house applications later become open source. But the decision to open source is not something companies make at the start of a project--it takes time to deal with lawyers and business people. With Qt, we'd have had to pay Troll Tech for commercial development licenses just so that we could start developing only to have wasted that money later when we get the corporate OK to open source.
So, why is it that, so far, there are more commercial Qt applications than Gtk+ applications? Well, first of all, I'm not sure that's true--where is the data? Secondly, the Qt applications I have seen are usually from companies like Adobe, whose Linux offerings basically suck.
But, in any case, until maybe last year, Gtk+ really was behind Qt (after all, it started later as well), but it has now caught up. But before then, there were already plenty of commercial projects in toolkits like Tcl/Tk and wxWindows, both of which have even more liberal licenses than Gtk+.
In my own experience, Qt's license is deeply harmful to Qt's acceptance for commercial projects: many commercial developers just don't want that sort of dependence on a software vendor, let alone a little company from Norway, even if the money didn't matter. But the money does matter. And Qt's license is also harmful to Qt's use for open source projects.
This isn't high school. People will use KDE as long as KDE is the best solution for them.
Rather than worrying about losing popularity, try focusing on making KDE the best it can be.
Like I pointed out, installing KDE on UserLinux should be a single command.
apt-get install kde
As for the developers, I don't see what you're worried about. They are the ones making KDE into what they want it to be. Why would they abandon their project?
And the commercial support? Well, only time will tell for that. But the commercial support is usually pretty easy to predict. Give them the best environment for their products and they'll move to it.
If you cannot make KDE a better choice for end users, developers and commercial interests, then why not let those groups make their OWN CHOICE about what to use, develop and develop for?
Open Source is not about lock-in.
So, let me get this straight - he wants to discourage the use of GPL'd code in UserLinux in order to have businesses create proprietary applications that can not in turn be included into UserLinux because they will not be free?
Sounds like an interesting one-sided ecosystem.
If he took this commercial-friendly argument to its logical conclusion he would dump the GPL'd Linux from UserLinux in favour of BSD. But then it would not be much of a UserLinux, would it?
The basic argument is that a GUI toolkit may be a very unimportant part of the application - applications companies would simply not GPL because their apps do damn smart, trade secret stuff and they'd want it closed. And yet, these programs will need a GUI - even if it's just a bunch of plain objects (buttons, checkboxes, radioboxes, text labels etc.) Don't think of a yet another mp3 player, think projects where 98% of the work is non-GUI.
As such, they don't have a problem with contributing to Gnome, or to the Linux kernel - that's just improving their toolbox. What they want to keep out and proprietary is their own code, interfacing with the toolkit. If you want a similar example, take OS X. They've been voluntarily contributing back to the underlying system, and those using Gnome (and must do so according to the LGPL) are unlikely to have any problem with doing that either.
That being said, I don't think the QT licence is that bad and expensive for a large company. As long as those licenced for QT get to develop with it a lot. It's for the small companies where the QT guy is also the "everything else" guy, that it gets real expensive. And I'd really not want to try a start-up of some small-time shareware using QT. Maybe, if there is a proprietary culture, the devs will go to QT because "Why should these companies profit from MY work?" As of yet though, I don't really see many proprietary Gnome-based apps, so no one is getting an itch from it. But it'll come if the big money starts flowing...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings