Slashback: KDE, Tsunami Hacker, and Image Bugs

We Slashback, to provide updates to three recent stories. All happy news, for once. JoaoPinheiro writes "After last week's reports that Novell plans not to ship the KDE desktop on Novell and SUSE Enterprise products, the company got lots of feedback from its customers. Novell has listened to them and reconsidered its desktop strategy." Meanwhile, in the employment sector, sebFlyte writes "Daniel Cuthbert, recently a high-profile victim of the UK's outdated cybercrime laws, has found a job in the security industry." Finally, one less thing to worry about, as gUnit writes "eWeek is reporting that virus researchers at Trend Micro jumped the gun with a warning that a Trojan in the wild was capable of exploiting newly patched Windows security flaws. Just 24 hours after announcing the discovery of a proof-of-concept Trojan that supposedly exploits a trio of image-rendering vulnerabilities patched by Microsoft, Trend Micro is retreating from that claim and offering up a batch of excuses."

Comments

I hate excuses

[Serveert]

"Given the time we needed to react to this, we didn't analyze it thoroughly. We wanted to do something fast and perhaps we didn't spend sufficient time on it," Genes said in an interview."

EXCUSE

He said the company received the Trojan sample from a customer in Japan and, during the initial research, the code definitely crashed the "explorer.exe" and EMF File Viewer in unpatched Windows systems.

EXCUSE

"We're still working with Microsoft to clarify what it is exactly and how it will be categorized in relation to MS05-053. But it's not exactly as we originally described it," he added.

Ahh hah.

Re:What a flip-flop!

[bogaboga]

> Novell made what amounted to a mistake in the eyes of many of their users, and such users let Novell know that. So Novell did the responsible thing, listened to their users, and cleared up the problem. That's not a bad thing. They were being responsive to their customers needs.

If that were the case, then Novell should have adopted KDE ad the default desktop long ago. Some on-line survey indicated that SuSE had the best presentation of KDE and that it was why 76% of SuSE users were using KDE. In comments, an over whelming number suggested to Novell to adopt KDE as the default. Obviously, it never happened...! Now talk of Novell listening to its products' users and doing the right thing.

Slashback RFC

[Doc Ruby]

Internet reporting should have a way that retractions can't be buried. The technique of frontpaging war justifications, for example, then burying corrections, is an artifact of "front" pages and thick pads of printed paper. The new medium doesn't necessarily need to be limited that way. What can we invent to ensure that stories followed up by corrections are sure to feature the corrections in at least the same prominence? Maybe some kind of enhancement to RSS? Like requiring corrections to include a machine-readable reference to the original story, as part of the RDF? Then at least publishers have to relate the stories, in order to call them "corrections". Some publishers will probably just not follow that part of the spec, including "correction" labels in the freeform text without the required reference to the previous story. But those publishers that do implement the spec will be more reliable, and the ideas marketplace can choose among them.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[molnarcs]

How many times are you going to post that list?

Besides, half the apps on your list are toys ... nice toys for a home desktop (yes, amarok and k3b is lovely) but where are the more "serious" apps like scribus? Is there an gtk equivalent? Edutainment? I mention this last because linux might become more and more important in education, and only KDE offers a nice, integrated solution. In fact, I just read about a specific case where schools (in Germany) used KDE because of the edutainment package (was in one of the blogs on kdeplanet).

Which leads me to what I wanted to say originally: marketing. KDE did no or very little marketing, and almost no research of KDE deployment. That's where the "other" project excelled: marketing, case studies, success stories, etc... This way, it was relatively easy for ximian's people to convince Novell's management that they should standardize on GNOME. It was at this year's academy that they decided to form the KDE Marketing Working Group. And in just a few days, oh look: Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to KDE on Novell Linux Desktop that's bye bye for 1000 customers when the next upgrade cycle comes, if Novell standardized on GNOME. They use kiosk mode and the associated admin tools to lock the features - which seems to be a mature feature. In fact, here is an "enterprise ready" praise if there is any:"

At the moment, almost all shops in The Netherlands and Belgium already use the KDE Desktop. After that phase is complete, the migration team will go to Norway and Finland to migrate the PCs used by the Free Record Shop and Bravo chains. "It's a fun project" says Arrachart, "We can show that you can save costs with ICT, while at the same time allowing greater possibilities in the way the shops are organised."

And oh look, another two more cases (you have to scroll down). Quote:

on my right was a fellow who works for a company that makes linux based satelite t.v. transmission software (sky t.v. is amongst their clientelle) and they use qt for their in-house engineering tools. on my left were three men from a vienese company that writes kde software for a group of five private hospitals. these hospitals all run kde on the desktop and everything from patient records to x-rays is handled on them.

So someone (quess who) misrepresented KDE's readiness or usefulness - and the demand for it - in corporate environments. But the damage is already done. Who would trust novell on this now? I think most of the users in the past days were looking at distrowatch (or at the Kubuntu site) ... some of them would stay to watch and see. Others will make the switch - why stay indeed?

Re:KDE == Proprietary and expensive.

[arendjr]

So Linux development has been hijacked by people that can afford $6600 toolkits?

You keep repeating that $6600 number, but not even the most expensive option for Qt is that high. If you take a look at their pricing, you have a full desktop edition for 2630. Nor is anything being hijacked, cheaper options are available. And if you're really that anti-Qt, noone is saying you can't write a GTK application with KDE integration.

What's the point crippling KDE (and hence Linux) with Qt - IF NOBODY USES IT FOR COMMERCIAL APPS ON LINUX?

That point can easily be proven wrong. HP uses Qt for their printer utilities on Linux. Google Earth is being ported to Linux, and yes, it uses Qt. Another example is Skype, which works on Linux as well as it does on Windows, thanks to Qt.

And if time to market and quality of tools are the most important aspects, why are you not using either Microsoft Visual C# or Borland Delphi / C++ Builder?

Maybe because Qt can be considered on par with these solutions? Or because being cross-platform is important?

Re:KDE == Proprietary and expensive.

[Trejkaz]

If you care so much about Qt being proprietary (which it isn't, actually... it's free software), then I'm afraid you'll have to stop making proprietary software yourself, if you expect your arguments to hold any weight. But then again if you weren't making your own software proprietary, you wouldn't have to pay for Qt, would you?