Slashdot Mirror
Novell to Standardize on GNOME
Motor writes "In what must be one of the least unexpected announcements of recent times, Novell says that they are standardizing on one desktop rather than supporting two different codebases. From the article: 'Novell is making one large strategic change. The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell Linux Desktop line. KDE libraries will be supplied on both, but the bulk of Novell's interface moving forward will be on GNOME.'"
Not being able to have propritary applications run/interact on KDE without a license to TrollTech is a problem. It gives too much control to them and limits the potential of people choosing closed alternatives (games etc.) from intracting fully. What stops TrollTech from charging super high prices if/when Linux becomes popular? Too much uncertainty for SuSE/RedHat to be at their mercy.
There is no reason why Gnome cannot be as good as KDE given enough time and resources, assuming it is not as good as or better than KDE now.
You know, you'd have a point if "standardizing" was a US invention, but it isn't; it's a traditional British spelling that's still correct even in Britain. And it probably has fallen into disuse simply because easily irritated people like you are trying desparately to find an identity for Britain separate from the US.
Oh. Yeah, Great. business buys desktop solutions because they can be easier used by the blind. I don't want to be cynical, it is important to improve accesibility, but... Who cares about it. It might be a surplus for some.
- Back when Qt was not GPL-compatible, the KDE developers ignored the problem. "Qt is cool!" they thought, while taking GPL software from other people and porting it to KDE. For this, we ought to throw the bastards out of the free/open community. Heck, we could sue them.
- For years, the KDE developers thumbed their noses at everything but C++. Even the Win32 API is based on C, with MFC on top, and GNOME's gtkmm over gtk is a similar situation. Deliberate and somewhat hostile exclusion of so much of the free/open software world is disgusting.
- Now you can get a GPL version of Qt. This is enough to shut up RMS, perhaps because RMS himself is enough of a bastard to put the GPL on popular libraries like libgtop and libreadline. It's not really friendly though. The LGPL is most appropriate for libraries. (some of the Creative Commons and MPL-like licenses are OK too, but why be complicated?) With the LGPL, the library itself has GPL-like protection for itself without infecting library users. This is very fair, and a rather well-accepted compromise between GPL and BSD. If we allow Qt to become the standard, then Troll Tech gets to collect a tax from every proprietary developer. Now, maybe collecting such a tax isn't bad, but annointing Troll Tech as tax collector is more than a bit unfair.
There are plenty of alternatives, so it's not as if GNOME could halt development now. GNOME is just the best. We also have GNUstep and XFCE, plus the perfectly servicable traditional setup.