Plasma Active, Sailfish, and Ubuntu Phone Developers Discussing Common APIs

Jolla's Sailfish, Canonical's recently announced Ubuntu Phone, and KDE's Plasma Active environments are all using Qt5's QML for interface design. Unfortunately, the set of UI components provided by each, although similar, are incompatible with the others. After a chat on IRC between developers of all three platforms, they've decided to discuss the reasons behind each implementation, in the hopes that they can work toward a common architecture. "There are also discussions underway regarding other aspects of the bigger puzzle such as common package formats and delivery strategies. We are poised, should we keep our heads straight and our feet moving, to evolve that holiest of grails in the mobile space: an open and vendor neutral application development strategy built around the commonality of QtQuick and Linux. This is our Rome, which will not be built in a day, but which can become something significant in the world if we keep our heads and follow through."

Comments

Great news

[Noughmad]

I was pleasantly surprised to see Ubuntu pushing QML/QtQuick on its phone, it's really a great platform.

A great advantage of using pure QML for apps is that it requires no linking, just source compatibility. So Ubuntu's GUI elements could look very different from KDE's, but using the same property names a single app would work and look native on both. If only they agreed on this, it's probably the only way anyone except free software enthusiasts would write software for any of these platforms.

Visigoths

[girlintraining]

This is our Rome, which will not be built in a day, but which can become something significant in the world if we keep our heads and follow through."

Rome died due to lead poisoning and excessive military expenditures. If we're going to become Rome, I suggest BSD instead -- their mascots are a bit more menacing than a penguin. Also, the licensing terms are less restrictive.

Re:Visigoths

[girlintraining]

Rome is still there. If you are speaking of the Roman empire, it existed for over a thousand years. A feat yet to be achieved.

The Caliphates that lived next door would dispute that. But I can understand ignoring Islamic achievements like that since Rome was the quintessential western empire and the Caliphates only spanned three continents and had a far greater population. It also lasted nearly twice as long as the Roman empire, which actually didn't last over a thousand years... since the empire kept fracturing and falling into chaos over that timeframe while the Caliphates remained largely stable... and existed until the last century (1924, if you need a year).

Re:Visigoths

[alen]

The original Muslims were conquered by the Mongols and the Turks who later converted to Islam and took on their customs. A lot of the Turkish people were Jewish at the time they conquered the arabs

Their empire did not last longer than Rome

Re:Visigoths

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, the Caliphate was totally stable! Except it wasn't. Guess what? Your history sucks just as bad as his does.

That's why assassinations, coups, and civil wars were common, and there was very little common "thread" binding together the various caliphates. See: Umayyad dynasty 7th-8th centuries; Abbasid dynasty (incidentally, they overthrew the Umayyad dynasty), 8th-13th century; Fatimid caliphate, which was coincidental with the Abbasid dynasty because it broke off from the Abbasids; the conquest of Baghdad by Mongols around 1250, after which the Caliph became more or less a titular figure who existed in secret, with absolutely no power, until the rise of the Ottomans in the 1500's.

But you know, aside from all those civil wars, rebellions, warring dynasties, and an interruption of 300 years or so under Mongol rule... the Caliphates were totally stable and long-lived. As far as spanning three continents - you're aware that the Roman empire also "spanned three continents" - in fact, the same continents that the Caliphates did? And, in fact, that's pretty much table stakes for any "empire" operating in or near the central or eastern mediterranean? Africa on the south, Europe on the north, and Asia on the East means you're on a new continent pretty much any direction you go in.

If you're going to consider the Caliphates a single, monolithic entity, then you have to also consider Rome to be one: the Roman Republic (est. ~500 BC), the Western Roman Empire (~25BC - ~500 AD), and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, which endured from about 350 AD to ca. 1450 AD. In all, that's nearly 2000 years of Roman rule.

But I'm sure the Prophet and his followers greatly value your white knighting of their achievements. No doubt they'll install you as the next Caliph in this mythical long, unbroken line of urbane civilization and democratic governance. At best, the Caliphates existed from about 650 AD to 1924. That's about 1300 years. Comparison of ~1950 years to ~1300 years to determine which is a longer period of time is left as an exercise for you, dear reader.

Re:Visigoths

[UnknownSoldier]

Ah, let's conveniently ignore India, China, and Egypt so we can make our lie look believable.

Re:Visigoths

[G-forze]

I'll just leave this here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt

Re:Visigoths

[Microlith]

In the case of Google, MeeGo/Sailfish and WebOS I think there's an interest in having the product open-source.

And in the case of MeeGo/Sailfish, they actively use GPL projects. Google actively avoids and replaces them, other than the kernel. Handset vendors, however, have a perverse fetish for releasing as little as they can get away with.

Re: Phone manufacturers won't like it

[bill_mcgonigle]

A common architecture would mean the phone manufactures couldn't keep their users locked to the platform where they have all their apps.

Which is why Android has been such a market failure.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

umm...

I can only guess at this, but your comment seems to be lacking vast amounts of FACT... being that I have used Windows for ages and have used MANY different UI's... so saying using Windows is being forced into one UI is a very incorrect statement, and sadly shows great amounts of ignorance on your part (using an alternative UI at the moment on Windows 8 even)

If you where looking for an options limited OS, Mac and iOS are where you need to look. IIRC there where a few for an older version of Mac, but I know of none that fit the definition for iOS

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize it's possible for two different pieces of software to have quite different UIs, even if they use the same base set of widgets to build that UI, right?

Oh, you're bitching about whether or not the window chrome suits your preferred aesthetics? Then we can safely disregard your bitching in its entirety.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

being that I have used Windows for ages and have used MANY different UI's... so saying using Windows is being forced into one UI is a very incorrect statement

This is why Windows will never be ready for the desktop, with its fragmented UI. Until all the developers working on different UIs for Windows standardize on a single UI it'll just never take off.

The holiest of grails?

[caywen]

an open and vendor neutral application development strategy

That sounds like the near future of HTML5 and more advanced browsers. But when you add...

... around the commonality of QtQuick and Linux

... well, hmm, ok, the first part sounded great. What's with the second part?