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Public Beta For OpenDesk
Isaac-Lew wrote to us pointing out that Opendesk.com has gone into public beta. From the looks of it, they are trying to implement an Office-like suite of features on the Web. Word Processor and such are still forthcoming, but they have got calendering tools, web mail and other "applications" in place. One of the most interesting aspects is that they claim to be open sourcing the project. I can't quite tell if it's a Sun-style commuity source licensem, or a GPL [?] style license.
The app is only as valuable as the data. This is the key to web services - tying services to data on a server.
/proc directory is an example of non-standard filing for Linux.) Then all you need to do to the app is add some ability to find your data remotely without memorizing some long filepath, and you have all the functionality you want out of a web app.
No, that's the key to internet services. The two are not synonymous. Mr. Carmack's product, Quake, understands the internet quite well. Playing Quake deathmatches with people hundreds or thousands of miles away uses internet connectivity.
Web connectivity, on the other hand, implies a web-based application such as a java applet or HTML forms. Web applets are good for small, frequently changing or only briefly-used apps. Not for word processors, at least not at current bandwidths.
To give a desktop application web connectivity you don't really even need to change the application itself much, at least with file systems like Linux and (yes) Windows. What you need to upgrade is the file system, to allow remotely stored data to look like local files, with read and write via the standard mechanisms. (Windows' namespacing allows this, and Linux's
Both models have their pluses and minuses. I wouldn't want to have to download and install a problem to do many of the things web applets do. On the other hand, I'm not looking to play Quake in a Mozilla window.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I've got to admit, I was pretty surprised to see an advertisement for /. there. I'm still trying to figure out if it's meaningful or not:
/. have "ethical" advertising policy (ie. only clear sites, only opensource software) - I'm not even sure if this is important or not
/. linking to a site that contains their own ads. (Though this doesn't make much sense in being beneficial as they've have to pay more $$ for page views of people who already read /.).
1) Should
2)
Weird stuff, just a weird coincidence I guess
>>No-one's stuff works with anyone else's
>
>Come on. That's a teeny bit exaggerated. Yes
>there are problems, but these are small compared
>to using say C or C++ to develop the average
>serious cross-platform app.
Ah, but when I mail NetBeans about the fact that the NetBeans IDE doesn't work with kaffe, they tell me, "Use the Blackdown JVM, it's the only one we support." But the speed on my 450a is not acceptable with Blackdown's interpreter. NetBeans doesn't work right with IBM's JITC either. The NetBeans people themselves told me "We recommend our customers turn off JITC."
C'mon, that's sad.
Sure, porting an app between compilers sucks. But for God's sake, when it's done, it works. I can give you a Windows or Linux binary and you can expect it to work. Period. I don't consider dumping this problem off on the user a solution; nor do I expect companies to continually assure compliance with every JVM that comes out. It's a problem you should have to solve once, rather than continually reinventing the wheel.
...
I don't deny, Java has some worthwhile concepts in it. But it doesn't live up to the promise. It's not fast enough to use, and it's not even delivering cross-platform support, due to the difficulty of adhering bug-for-bug exactly to the reference implementation (even worse when each app developer supports a different reference JVM).
Maybe that's why Java has had such slow uptake, according to that recent programmer poll. It's just not that good at getting solutions done yet. Maybe that will change, but I have yet to see the cross-platform major application done successfully in Java. The only use I've seen for it so far is as a toy. C/C++ is a proven solution for a reason.
BTW I know Gtk+ has major problems in its Win32 support that makes it a poor choice for that platform. But it has excellent support (as in perfect) across all Unices, which does cover a lot of ground. I agree that there's still no good way to write completely cross-platform WIMP apps yet.
It's a serious problem.
But I don't see slowing my machine down to the speed of a 486 as a solution. We could also all just buy and use 486s, but no one's suggesting that, either.
...
Coding in assembler can make you a cool hacker. But big assembly projects usually end up as messes -- there's too much detail, and it's too hard to abstract. That's why OSs stopped being written in assembler 25 years ago.
On the other hand, being cross-platform in a large C/C++ project forces some things that are very good for large object models:
- It forces you to abstract design blocks that are not consistent across platforms. This can be a very useful thing since those non-standardized blocks are the ones most likely to change in the future, in which case the abstraction can pay off.
- It forces you to avoid clever hacks and tricks and compiler quirks that really don't belong in any significant project, since they're much harder to understand and maintain later. It'll also make your life much easier when your compiler changes major versions.
this is way offtopic. woohoo!
Is it just me, or do chartruese and light yellow look really really bad on a white background?
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
It took me some time to figure out what they were doing. It is not really an office suite, but a set of applications running on a web site.
Hopefully Corel's recent experience with licence clashes will convince them to go with an existing choice (preferably GPL, LGPL or XFree) rather than inventing YAL. I have argued previously on Slashdot that the whole QPL 'you give us rights to do what we like with your modificiations' thing is unnecessary, since companies require copyright assignment for legal security in any case.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
http://www.opendesk.com/Login/vslicens e.html
In a nutshell, they haven't decided on their final license yet. They state that whatever license they decide on, it will be OSI-friendly.
slashdot broke my sig
"OpenDesk.com public license (ODPL), and the SmartWorker public license (SWPL). The former covers applications written and hosted within OpenDesk.com. The latter covers our open source application framework, SmartWorker.
The two licenses differ in the following ways:
1. SWPL applies to the core API that OpenDesk.com is built on. However, it can also be used for
non-OpenDesk.com software and, therefore, must be flexible to accommodate other uses. The SWPL will
be similar in intent and structure to the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL, available at http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/lesser.html). This means that it will allow linking with non Open Source code while always remaining free and Open Source itself.
2. ODPL is more strict than SWPL insofar as it does not allow linking to non-Open Source code. Anyone
who uses ODPL covered code in either a new distribution or a new server application must release the source code to their software under ODPL. While the GNU General Public License (GPL, available at http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html) was considered, we are finalizing a license closer to the Mozilla Public License (MPL, available at http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.0.html) as it is clearer about uses of source code in server applications, as well as including the aforementioned patent and copyright infringement clauses."
From the looks of it, it's a thing where you set up "your desktop" on thier web server, and thus can access "your desktop" through a browser from anywhere....
Maybe I'm wrong here, but this isn't the next KDE/Gnome... It's a weird spin on client/server "work environments." And, I'll add to that, I'd much rather have a nice big server on a local LAN and do "X -query server" ;-) for a more traditional way of keeping all my work in one place and accessing it from anywhere (locally, bandwidth allowing ;-)
They also make it seem that it is imposible to get your password because they use challenge-responce. Let's get real, look at NT!
Frankly, it doesn't make sense to try to emualte the old user metaphor onto the new one. Most unix users never became tied to the desktop metaphor (as unix traditionally never had a strong desktop), so I see these services as training wheels for mac and win98 users.
The problem I have with these services is that you can already get email, calendaring, message boards, etc. at a number of sites (yahoo, excite, lycos, aol) in a much more lightweight fashion - straight html with forms.
While I found desktop.com to be quite cute, it wasn't nearly speedy enough to be really useable...and since I was never a Mac or Windows user, I was never tied very strongly to the desktop metaphor. As a unix user, client server has always felt natural to me.
If I ran something like this, I would want it be on a local server. For some reason this reminds me of Domino, only OSS and web-based.
I have been doing alot of reading about DHTML and HTML 4.0 recently and I can't help but think that most of the technologies exist to implement something like this: XML data files, Javascript/DHTML window messaging, CSS desktop preferences, and your choice of web server backend. The weakest area seems to be in graphics, where one is limited to gif and java applets.
The problem is not the web, it's the browsers - the only way I could see something really coming together is if a really good, but extremely lightweight open source browser would come into being. Where the hell is mozilla and is it DHTML/JScript/CSS capable now?
I don't want to run apps that suck.
:)
This includes, dismissively (evidence the the contrary lacking completely, in my experience)
- all wordprocessors, IDEs, and anything else written in Java. Too many compatibility problems with JITC (no one's stuff works with anyone else's), and otherwise way too slow.
Forget it.
- any app run through a web browser. Come on, the web browser is the single flakiest app on my machine. Slow, bloated, crashy. IE5 is better than Netscape but not so much so that I'd want my productivity to depend on a web based desktop.
Also forget it.
A call to application developers:
There is, to paraphrase Carmack, a self-imposed discipline that comes from supporting multiple platforms. Get yourself a nice cross-platform widget library, Gtk+ (1.0 works in win32, but they need to spend the time to get 1.2 to win32 perfectly), wxWindows, Qt and pay for it, I don't care.
No Motif. Period.
No MFC. Period.
Anything you write should run beautifully on my SPARC 5 85MHz. Period. Nothing useful may ever require more power than that.
...
The OpenDesktop song is pretty good tho
Hey, I'm one of the core developers of the system, and I'm currently in charge of the Crypto modules. In one of the following versions, you will be able to encrypt your data on the server, using an algorithm of your choice (3DES, Blowfish, etc.).
I'm sorry, just didn't see the email you sent.
"Code free or die!"
While I realize that this is still in development and we should offer the benefit of a doubt, let's keep in mind the consequences of the 'office suite' mentality.
There was a time when many products flourished in the traditional categories of productivity software (processing words, spreading sheets, basing data) and customers had a choice between competing 'best of breed' products. The monolithic all-in-one (and preloaded) office suite changed that, and I believe for the worse.
It was now possible for inferior products to 'inherit' market share through bundling with more competitive products, after all who would spend extra money and effort to use a better DBMS if the one included was (almost, if buggily and painfully) not too bad? Perversely, this bundling did nothing to reduce feature bloat (table management in word processors, sorting in spreadsheets, etc) since each product was originally developed separately, and in fact was still required to be used stand-alone.
Thus we landed in a market where vendors who essentially did one thing and did it well (WordPerfect, for instance), and vendors who did several things well at good prices (Borland), were marginalized into near oblivion. The characteristics of the current market leader in desktop office suites are well documented here and elsewhere, how much of those problems are inherent in the concept of the one-stop-shopping software experience?
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John 3:16 - God's Public License
This is odd considering that as a group, you already make extensive use of a web message board technology by virtue of using this site.
While I don't agree with the "web site as desktop" metaphor, there is obvious power in website as applications.
I've never seen "desktop applications" as terribly useful - I get around, and I need data to be accessible from wherever I am. Web email, file storage, and messaging apps are crucial to me.
I can't even remember the hassles of having to haul around my own laptop in order to see my data.
I understand there are security concerns. Use sites that emply ssl, pick your password intelligently - you'll be fine.
When I see people devoting their time to making calendar apps for KDE or GTK, I can't help but think that these folks just don't understand. Even though it sounds pithy, Sun is correct - "the network is the computer".