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Novell Desktop To Standardize On Qt [updated]
Balinares writes "NewsForge reports that Novell has settled for Qt as its Linux desktop development environment, casting more light on their strategy to unify KDE and GNOME. This ought to be interesting. The prospect of using Mono to code against Qt makes me drool in advance. Maybe programming will suck no longer!" Update: 03/30 00:01 GMT by T : Sounds like that story doesn't quite hold water; Nat Friedman writes in this Slashdot comment that "We have not decided that we are standardizing on Qt for the desktop. ... We support development with a variety of toolkits, and our internal development is done using the right tool for the right problem. This includes Qt, Gtk, VCL, XUL and others, depending on the application."
Your arguments are quit compelling, and eloquently worded.
Your main point seems to be that commercial software, and free software are not mutually exclusive, and that sometimes software can be both free, and for profit. I disagree.
I believe that information wants to be free (Sorry to beat that dead horse again, but it is the best expression of the sentiment I know of), and that despite anyones best efforts to keep it from being free, it will inevitably find a way to become free. Code is just more information, and commercial software is an attempt to limit the availability of certain information (some would argue that code is not data, but instruction. I would argue that instruction is also data.). Any attempt to control the flow of information is doomed to fail (in the long run). Because of this, all efforts to make money by limiting the flow of information are fundamentally flawed, including the practice of withholding code from those unwilling or unable to pay for it. The only way to make money with information (in the long term) is to either generate new information, or provide a more efficient way to spread, gather, or copy information.
Recently the music, movies, and television industries have been hit with the revelation that their business models are no longer adequate. The entire reason that those systems are failing is because their primary source of income was in controlling the distribution channels the information used. Now the people have started to understand that audio and video are really just more information, and that it can be more easily/cheaply distributed without the middle men. The same thing has been happening with pay software for years, and is continuing to get 'worse' every year. The simple reason is that information wants to be free, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.
I would love to know how the first post can be modded "redundant".
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
In Soviet Russia, Slashdot trolls You!
IMHO it raises an interesting question.