Miguel de Icaza's startup

El Volio writes "Yahoo is running a story about Miguel de Icaza's new company, focusing on GNOME software development." The new company's called "Helix Code", although that name's temporary. The plan is for all the products to be given away for free, and then charge for support, a common revenue model.

Comments

Not to be negative, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

This honestly seems like a looooooooooooong shot in hell. There are already *so* many linux support companies around, its getting quite crowded. Good luck I guess.

Re:Not to be negative, but..

[nd]

I think this is different because they're providing specialized support for primarily the software that THEY produce.

Re:Not to be negative, but..

[lizrd]

This business model kind of concerns me. If all of your revenue is derived from supporting a product there just doesn't seem to be all that much motivation to make the user interface everything that it could be. Ideally a piece of software shouldn't require any support at all. But if your only shot at eating next week it to make the user interface akward, the commands cryptic and the documentation sparce then that's probably what you're going to do.

Personally, I'd much rather pay for a piece of software that works right the first time. I want to be able to install software and then use it. I don't want to have to send 2 dozen e-mail messages and play phone tag just to get something to work properly.

Seems to me that the software industry would be better motivated to make quality products if supporting broken products were an expense rather than an asset.

These are just my thoughts on the matter. Let me know what you think.

Re:Not to be negative, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

if your only shot at eating next week it to make the user interface akward, the commands cryptic and the documentation sparce then that's probably what you're going to do.

That's naive. First, they won't build up much of a market at all unless their products are exceptional, far better than MS Office. Releasing intentionally clumsy products would doom the company from the start.

And second, a huge chunk of the support business is customization or features-for-hire. Miguel et al are likely to build a brand and sell boxed software and/or sell support/customization contracts to big companies.

Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Benley]

I'm still waiting for all apps to work together to have cut 'n paste support as well as Windows has. E.G. you can select ANY text, almost anywhere, right click, and hit copy. Then you can paste it into ANY text box, anywhere in the system. Can this happen in Linux?

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been around forever. Highlight the text, the middle click to paste.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Benley]

I mean a real implementation, not just GPM stuff. Last time I checked, it was annoyingly difficult to get a block of text from, say, kedit, into, say... this box that I'm typing into right now.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not gpm, its X. It really isn't that difficult, you highlight the text with a mouse. To highlight text with a mouse, you hold down button 1, and drag the cursor over the desired text. Then, you click button 2 on the location you want the text to appear, and wala, copy & paste!.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[cybaea]

This has been around forever. Highlight the text, the middle click to paste.

Only works with text. The point, surely, is to be able to drang-and-drop and cut-and-paste objects and components. Text is so old-fashioned.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[matman]

Well, while they're making a new clipboard... hehe. 'they' being whomever of course ;) they should make it so that u can do instead of only ctl c ctl v or whatever... it shoulb be ctl c and a number or something like that, so that u can store it in clipboard 1 or 2 or 3 or 4. and paste 3 then 1 or 2 hehe :)

that'd be really really sweet. :)

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Text may be old-fashioned, but try to communicate useful information by drawing? As nice as graphics are they just almost never add any information.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Otter]

I'm still waiting for all apps to work together to have cut 'n paste support as well as Windows has. E.G. you can select ANY text, almost anywhere, right click, and hit copy. Then you can paste it into ANY text box, anywhere in the system.

Even more so in MacOS -- cut'n'paste there is as universal and robust as standard input/output is in Unix, I imagine because the system was designed around it. Meanwhile, in Linux, I feel lucky when cutting and pasting between apps works the way I expect. Why should I be unable to copy text from KFM to Kdevelop?

Hopefully this is something that can be improved without tearing X to pieces...

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Daniel]

Funny, I'm still waiting for Windows and MacOS to support cut'n'paste as well as Linux does. Fiddling with keys in between the cut and paste is a waste of time.

To each his own, I suppose.

Daniel

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Todd Stewart]

You forgot the :) You were joking? I hope so.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Jamie Zawinski]

Only works with text.

You are mistaken. The X selection mechanism is actually one of the few parts of X that I think was done exceptionally well. It's very powerful and uses bandwidth intelligently without getting in the way too much.

Now, it happens that there is a dramatic lack of applications out there that are capable of cutting and pasting types of data that are not text. But they do exist (Lucid's Energize did it, and XEmacs has APIs for asserting selection values of arbitrary types -- though I don't think any emacs-lisp applications take advantage of that, either.)

(By the way, the "primary selection" (the click-and-drag-with-left, paste-with-middle thing) and the "clipboard" (the File/Cut, File/Paste thing) are the same thing in different namespaces: they work exactly the same way.)

The point, surely, is to be able to drang-and-drop and cut-and-paste objects and components.

Drag-and-drop and cut-and-paste aren't exactly the same thing, but the X selection mechanism can (and should) be used to implement them both. That's what it's for...

I actually never learned how Motif drag-and-drop works, but I would expect that it uses selections inside.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Jamie Zawinski]

By the way, if you're interested in playing with selections, XEmacs is a great way to do it, since it provides direct low-level access, which otherwise you'd have to write C code to get. For example:

In a Netscape window, select some text with the mouse.

Fire up XEmacs, and switch to the *scratch* buffer. (This is a lisp-interaction buffer, if you type a lisp expression and then type Ctrl-j after it, it will evaluate it and show you the result.)

• (x-get-selection-internal 'PRIMARY 'TARGETS)
  [TARGETS TIMESTAMP TEXT STRING LENGTH FILE_NAME OWNER_OS
  HOST_NAME USER CLASS NAME CLIENT_WINDOW PROCESS COMPOUND_TEXT]

That just asked Netscape what data types it is capable of converting the PRIMARY selection to. The list was returned. Let's try type TEXT:

• (x-get-selection-internal 'PRIMARY 'TEXT)
  "xterm"

There's the text I selected in Netscape. Pretty basic, let's try another:

• (x-get-selection-internal 'PRIMARY 'LENGTH)
  (0 . 5)

That says that 5 characters are selected (for not very good reasons, it's returning the high and low 16 bits of the 32-bit number as a pair of shorts. This is an emacs quirk.)

• (x-get-selection-internal 'PRIMARY 'FILE_NAME)
  "file:/tmp/foo.html"

That's the URL of the document in which the selection exists.

• (x-get-selection-internal 'PRIMARY 'TIMESTAMP)
  (19110 . 3060)

That's a time_t of when the selection was made.

And so on... By letting the owner announce the types to which the selection can be converted, and letting the requester of the selection look at that list and decide which one they would prefer, very complex and efficient interations are possible. It allows format negotiation, and good decisions about pass-by-reference versus pass-by-value (e.g., if an image is selected, do you want its name, or its bits?)

Wouldn't it be nice if when you selected some text in Netscape, and you pasted it into a text editor, it was pasted as plain-text, but when you pasted it into an HTML editor, it was pasted as raw HTML, with formatting intact? Sadly, Netscape doesn't do that, but that's the sort of thing the X selection mechanism is for.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[warmi]

Hehehe.. Nice try dude.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Helge Hafting]

He has a point, actually.
Not all linux apps have good cut & past abilities, but the kind of cut & paste found in xterm is something windows lacks for sure.

Xterm (and several others) let me mark text with the mouse, and then paste it anywhere by middle-clicking. This works wery well for a lot of things, where windows sometimes force me to press 4 keys (ctrl+insert, shift+insert) in addition to selecting the other app with the mouse. Windows force keyboard usage, which is bad. Having the option of using the keyboard in linux would be good, but no forcing please.

And why did they make it shift-insert? Only insert would be quicker, toggling insert mode is such a rare occurence that it could be moved to a more complex key combination. cut & paste is the most used features, except from typing.

Re:Maybe now we can have a common clipboard?

[Daniel]

Actually, only halfway. The point is that there's nothing inherently easy about the Windows cut-and-paste system, or inherently difficult about the X system, they're just different. Which isn't to say that there aren't particular points which could be improved (for example, it might be nice to select a picture and middle-click paste it into the Gimp), but the overall interface is fine -- and in practice no-one really uses the more complex features of Windows/MacOS cut-and-paste anyway. [1] Frankly, most UI-complaints you hear are just "it doesn't do it how I learned!" rather than observations of significant interface flaws (which do exist, more's the pity).
And in any event, the original poster was just talking about text, which X already does problemlos. [2]

For the record, I learned Windows and MacOS long before touching X.

Daniel

[1] Before you flame me, I'm sure that you, your kid sister, and your dog all spend all your time cutting and pasting images, spreadsheets, and birthday cards between programs -- but how often do *most people* do this?

[2] OpenView programs seem to be broken in this regard, and of course Netscape is but Netscape is just broken in general. Everything else I've tried works nicely.

What happened to X Windows?

[cybaea]

We are creating applications like Microsoft Office, for GNOME

Is this a good idea? Do we really need yet another war over how the desktop should look, or could we please agree to disagree and make our applications independent of the window manager and GUI classes? Are we just re-inventing our own MFC with associated incomapabilities and holy wars?

When will Linux split into KDE/Gnome/whatever camps that are mutually exclusive and can not share applications?

Anyhow, who wants to pay for an office package when StarOffice is free???

Re:What happened to X Windows?

[DarkClown]

Ummm... they are giving the applications away and selling support.

Best wishes to Miguel, Nat and anyone else involved...

Re:What happened to X Windows?

[Stinking Pig]

For home use? Not me. I read or write a StarOffice doc about once every two weeks on my home machine, so the incredible slowness is alright.

For work use? I'd pay for a Linux office suite with the speed of any of the big three from Windowsworld (MS, Corel, Lotus). Work (for me) means producing big and complex Excel, Word, and Visio files. That's why work happens on my NT Workstation, and everything else happens on Linux -- I'd be losing money if I put up with StarOffice every time I wanted to write a 30 page scope of work.

Granted, my NT laptop dualboots to Linux so I can use nmap, tcpdump, and similar tools that just don't exist in Windowsworld :-) But that angle of my work doesn't happen as much as the writing, PDF'ing, and mailing of documents.

Point & Klik

[Yebyen]

Since when is it gnome that gives Linux a point-and-click interface? I didn't notice any reference to the fact that gnome is not "the official GUI of linux". As we know, there is none. Most people use XF86, which Gnome plugs into. More people use KDE than Gnome too, last I heard. I for instance don't use Gnome or KDE. I use E. IMHO (dont flame me for this) E is the most stable, powerful, and fast GUI I've ever used. Most people would disagree with me [laff] but that's my opinion. The point of my post though, is that this article seems to make Gnome out to be the only solution for a GUI in linux. That's not so :-).

Re:Point & Klik

[Anonymous Coward]

powerful perhaps, stable and fast, your delusional.

Re:Point & Klik

[Anonymous Coward]

You are severely dillusional. Not only is GNOME and KDE *not* competing with E, but you can use GNOME, KDE *and* E at the same time!

(Yes, E is the WM of the future)

Revenue models and consumer benefit

[Oliver Lineham]

The plan is for all the products to be given away for free, and then charge for support, a common revenue model.

While I support this model as the way of the future for the software industry.. it occurs to me that it may or may not be whats best for the consumer.

On the one hand, the company would wish to make a good product so that more people are using it (and potentially purchasing support). On the other hand, the company has less incentive to make the product easier to use - since the more intuitive it is, the less is the demand for support (resulting in lower revenues).

Not a big issue at the moment, since most open source software isn't aimed at the "average user". But this could be something to watch for the future. Particularly in areas such as this one - "Office" type applications.

Re:Revenue models and consumer benefit

[DarkClown]

On the one hand, the company would wish to make a good product so that more people are using it (and potentially purchasing support). On the other hand, the company has less incentive to make the product easier to use - since the more intuitive it is, the less is the demand for support (resulting in lower revenues).

Interestong point, but from what I've seen and experienced, applications that Miguel has been involved in have been mostly bug-free and don't have much of a learning curve. You yalk about the average user- and yeah, I agree, I've never spent a dime personally on support for an application for home use- but in the workplace I sure as hell have. So, let's see- the education system in the country of mexico, burlington coat factory, home depot, etc.... See what I'm saying? This company will have no problem whatsoever obtaining support contracts for superb software

Re:Revenue models and consumer benefit

[Stinking Pig]

>> applications that Miguel has been involved in have been mostly bug-free and don't have much of a learning curve.

Then what the hell happened to the Gnome code that shipped with RedHat 6.0 ??? I understand that October Gnome is supposed to be better, but I haven't used it yet.

Small to medium sized American businesses are willing to pay for code, and support, though the latter is a harder sell. Mainly because they buy support once from Microsoft or Compaq and they get the brush off for their trouble. But we all see companies daily where everyone complains about MS instabilities and can show you several any time you want, but everyone also upgrades to every new MS release in the hope that the problems will be lessened. That just goes to show that you can build a successful business out of purposefully shipping lousy products, which makes you wonder why take the trouble to write good products. Unless for OSS bragging rights?

Re:Revenue models and consumer benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

He might be able to make money by writing a series of "Dummy's or Idiot's" type guide books.

Re:Revenue models and consumer benefit

[Djaak]

As many people have pointed out, the give-it-away-then-charge-for-support (maybe we need a cool acronym for this :-) ) is mainly aimed at corporate users. When the big corporate bosses decide to use a product, they don't say "OK let's try this thing, if it's not easy-to-use then we'll pay for support".

No. They will almost automatically buy support. Actually if nobody supports the soft they won't even bother taking a look at it.

Why ? Because they think no product is perfectly 'easy-to-use', and they might be right.
Because no how user-friendly the stuff is, you will always have to take the time to learn about it (RTFM ;-) ) when you want to do unusual things with it. Because there will always be bugs and obscure features even in the best products.

One could argue that with open-source software users should learn by themselves or take a look at the code to debug it themselves. But corporate users, even if they had any clue how to do this, aren't paid for that. They're paid to use the product to work for their company.

So I don't think it's a good idea to make a crappy product in order to increase the demand for support. If the soft is bad then nobody will use it, which means no support deals at all - Microsoft software is another problem, because of their monopoly situation.

And this is a bad thing because...... ?

[Benley]

The way I see it, the more support for Linux there is, the better it is for all of us. Since when is anything about Linux supposed to revolve around one (or just a few) sources?

It's existed about as long as X has...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever tried middle-clicking?

I don't like it as much as Windows's copy-paste scheme, though. Things I don't like about it:

1. You have to use the mouse -- no copy/pasting without the mouse, which is a HORRIBLE inconvenience for those of us who realize that they keyboard is usually much faster than the mouse.

2. If you highlight ANYTHING ELSE, the text is no longer copied. Quite often, I want to copy an URL and paste it into the address bar of Netscape or something -- OOOOOPS, when I highlighted the current URL in the address bar of Netscape to copy over it, the text in another window that I DID have highlighted stopped being such, and I can no longer copy it. The FASTEST way to replace text is to paste over it, but that's not possible with X. The fastest way to get rid of text is to highlight it and backspace, but that's not possible with X if you already have something highlighted that you want in that space!! You have to go through the AGONIZINGLY slow process of using the backspace or delete key and waiting for each and every character to be deleted individually.

That's one of the things I hate most about X, although I'll admit it could be nice at times. I DO wish there were a TRUE global clipboard, that stored text regardless of whether or not it was still highlighted, and text has to be deliberately replaced there -- control-c or something standard like that. (What's this alt-c garbage Netscape does?)

Ah well. It'll never happen. And Netscape menues will never be accessible via the keyboard. Arggh.

It's still better than Microsoft!!!

Re:It's existed about as long as X has...

[Benley]

YES, THIS is what I am talking about! Thank you for explaining it better than I could.

Re:It's existed about as long as X has...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you run xclipboard, most of this will be solved, but you are right, it is a hassle to use the mouse.

Re:It's existed about as long as X has...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops, I meant, xclipboard is something of a workaround for it.

Re:It's existed about as long as X has...

[Guy Harris]

You have to go through the AGONIZINGLY slow process of using the backspace or delete key and waiting for each and every character to be deleted individually.

Some (but not all) applications and/or toolkits support control-U as a way of erasing an entire text field (Netscape on UNIX being one of them; the GTK+ toolkit does as well).

I DO wish there were a TRUE global clipboard, that stored text regardless of whether or not it was still highlighted, and text has to be deliberately replaced there...

You mean like the X CLIPBOARD selection, which many - but, alas, not all - applications support. (Then again, not all applications necessarily support "paste primary selection" - the mechanism you describe, which is quite often mislabeled "cut and paste" - either.)

...control-c or something standard like that. (What's this alt-c garbage Netscape does?

I don't know why Netscape insists on using Alt for so many keyboard accelerators, unless it's an attempt to avoid colliding with the Emacs key bindings it offers in some situations. GTK+, at least for some text widgets, binds "copy to the CLIPBOARD selection" to...

...control-C. For example, you can use control-C to copy text from a text field, control-X to cut text from a text field, and control-V to paste text into a text field.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that Qt did so as well, at least when configured to provide a Windows-style UI (I think Motif might use some other bindings for cut/copy/paste - I heard a claim that they were pre-Windows 3.1 keys, used by Windows in an attempt to avoid getting beaten up by Apple, who appear to use +{C,V,X} for hose functions, and that 3.1 went to Control-{C,V,X} when Apple's suit ceased to be a threat - so maybe Qt uses those bindings when configured to provide a Motif-style UI).

Re:It's existed about as long as X has...

[UnkyHerb]

I just learned a shortcut for this the other day. I found out that you can simply middle-click anywhere in the Netscape window and it'll paste it in the Location bar and bring you
there right away. Talk about a hidden feature!

Okay now right click on a link, and hold the right button down, see where it says "Open Link in new window Button 2" ?....middle button = button 2, talk about hidden features!..Hehe sorry I couldn't resist myself.

Re:It's existed about as long as X has...

[Jamie Zawinski]

I don't know why Netscape insists on using Alt for so many keyboard accelerators, unless it's an attempt to avoid colliding with the Emacs key bindings it offers in some situations.

That's exactly why. Having basic Emacs keybindings in all text areas was a hard requirement from day one, so the keyboard accelerators for the menu items couldn't take over the Control key.

An unfortunate byproduct of this business model

[CoughDropAddict]

The problem I see with the idea of making money off support of a product is this: The more stable and easy-to-use your product is, the less money you make! This is an ironic situation, whereby overwhelming success in the ease-of-use department could almost be your undoing.

"I hear it's really easy to use. Do I even NEED support?"

Re:An unfortunate byproduct of this business model

[Chandon Seldon]

As easy to use as you make an app, some people are still going to want tech support and hand-holding.

There's no way that they'll make as much money as Microsoft makes from MS-Office, but they shouldn't have any problems making enough to live on.

Re:An unfortunate byproduct of this business model

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way that they'll make as much money as Microsoft makes from MS-Office, but they shouldn't have any problems making enough to live on.

I don't think there is enough info to make such an assertion. If his target is enterprise customers, maybe it will work. If his target is individuals, this venture will go belly up as soon as VC funding is exhausted.

Re:An unfortunate byproduct of this business model

[JordanH]

• The more stable and easy-to-use your product is, the less money you make!

The corollary to this is that if you make unstable software that is in constant need of an incompatible upgrade, then you can make tons of money. That's the Microsoft business model.

I think this business model is less about building software than it is about finding specific customer needs to address.

If this build-it-for-support-contracts model is to work, then the actual product is just a big marketing tool for your contract support. End users won't be buying your support much, but I could certainly see the Linux distro companies paying to make sure that the hot products worked seemlessly in their latest releases.

The other business opportunity for this business model would be in customization. Say, for example, that the Government decides to fund a big Gnome for the visually handicapped development. Or, say, some PDA vendor wants a Gnome compatible API for PDA applications, then these could be big opportunities.

I say could as this business model has not yet born itself out, certainly not in broadly horizontal apps like desktops managers and OS's.

I know of one consultant who has more consulting than he can handle in integrating and supporting his Open Source (GPL) package. I'm sure there are others. This is not really surprising as in vertical applications there's always been a lot of money in integration, consulting and support.

I'm hoping that Open Source will move the focus of software developers away from big software systems with the, largely unnecessary, every other year upgrade and into vertical application consulting, integration and support. I think that this would be a good thing for the economy.

I'm not sure that much value is generated in a software upgrade that has more marketing check boxes filled in. I'm much more comfortable about people getting paid to make an application work for a given customer. This is where the rubber hits the road. Customers won't pay someone for a package that isn't generating revenue for them, but somehow, they are convinced that they must move to the latest Windows release out of fear of being left behind.

Re:An unfortunate byproduct of this business model

[Anonymous Coward]

The corollary to this is that if you make unstable software that is in constant need of an incompatible upgrade, then you can make tons of money. That's the Microsoft business model.

While Microsoft's use of incompatible file formats is part of their strategy, the unstable software part is not. That is simply a byproduct of the COM/OLE object strategy. Unfortunately, the Linux desktop folks are headed that way, but at least in Linux if the desktop dies the rest of the machine does not go along with it.

Re:An unfortunate byproduct of this business model

[JordanH]

• While Microsoft's use of incompatible file formats is part of their strategy, the unstable software part is not. That is simply a byproduct of the COM/OLE object strategy. Unfortunately, the Linux desktop folks are headed that way, but at least in Linux if the desktop dies the rest of the machine does not go along with it.

It may not have been a conscious strategy on the part of Microsoft management, but bloatware and getting releases out to schedule rather than due to engineering criteria leads to instability. Perhaps the Linux desktop people are doing the bloatware part, but I don't see anyone pushing out new kernels on the public before they are stable.

Re:An unfortunate byproduct of this business model

[Helge Hafting]

The problem I see with the idea of making money off support of a product is this: The more stable and easy-to-use your product is, the less money you make! This is an ironic situation, whereby overwhelming success in the ease-of-use department could almost be your undoing.

Nope. The more stable your product - the more people use it. Lots of users means more support. Some will want a support contract just to be on the safe side. Some are dumb enough to want support even for notepad. And there will always be someone who want help on some really advanced feature. Or maybe even request something new and pay extra to get it on top of the to-do list. (Assuming you want to implement their suggestion at all).

How is he going to make money?

[cybaea]

De Icaza said he has been working on applications that run in the GNOME environment, such as a spreadsheet, called Gnumeric, which can now perform more financial functions that Microsoft's Excel, thanks to the vast network of programmers contributing to the code. He said he hopes to have the first batch of applications ready next March.

So he understands, or the article implies, that software development can only be done efficiently on a large scale in an open source community model. That is a good observation.

But then how is he going to make any money? If he can't develop he can't sell (the code is open source) so he'll have to rely on service contracts. Is that the deal? If so, do count me as an investor in the IPO. There can only be so many Red Hats, and the market is looking increasingly crowded.

Am I missing something obvious?

Re:How is he going to make money?

[roomfull of blues]

It seems to me that this business model (we'll give it away, but you pay for support) ignores one simple fact that should make life a whole lot simpler: the GPL places no restrictions on selling open source software. In fact, you could sell some software for a million dollars if there was a market for it. All the GPL says is that the code must be free.

De Icaza, or Red Hat for that matter, shouldn't *stop* selling support, but support doesn't have to be the totality of their revenue.

It *worked*!

[jfunk]

I can't believe it, it worked!

I opened up KWrite, typed `funk` and did what you said. It actually worked.

I've never been able to paste text into Netscape. You cannot use the menu options or shortcut keys to paste text from KWrite to Netscape. For large pieces of text, I would open up the file in Netscape and copy it using the shortcut keys.

Now, why didn't I *know* this other way? I've been using Linux since 1993. Maybe we need an X tutorial?

Hmmm?

Re:It *worked*!

[Guy Harris]

I've never been able to paste text into Netscape. You cannot use the menu options or shortcut keys to paste text from KWrite to Netscape.

If control-C copies text in KWrite, try using control-C to copy text in KWrite and using Alt+V to paste it in Netscape. Control-C copies text in GTK+, so I copied a bit of text from a GTK+ application using control-C, and pasted it to Netscape using Alt+V. (The text was "eat me", a phrase that sums up my personal attitude towards Netscape's Alt-oriented key bindings.... Yes, there's presumably some reason why Netscape works that way. That's unlikely to make those key bindings less irritating to me....)

Now, why didn't I *know* this other way? I've been using Linux since 1993. Maybe we need an X tutorial?

Probably not a bad idea.

Note that "X" has many levels - the core X protocol only specifies, as I remember, that the notion of "selections" exist, and the ICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCM (Inter-Client Communications Conventions Manual, or so) specifies only that there exist selections with names such as PRIMARY ("the stuff that's inverse video because you selected it"), SECONDARY (does anything use this other than XView?), and CLIPBOARD ("the stuff that got copied to the clipboard, unless the CLIPBOARD selection holder exited - xclipboard will at least allow that to survive said owner exiting, although it may only preserver the text version of it) and, I think, the way they're intended to be used.

It's the toolkits and applications that implement stuff such as control-{X,C,V} as cut/copy/paste, and "paste primary selection" with the middle mouse button, so not everything running on X necessarily implements all those conventions, or implements them using the same mouse and keyboard bindings (for example, XView, being an OPEN LOOK toolkit, has its own keyboard and mouse bindings; the middle button, as I remember, means "extend selection" there, rather than "paste current selection").

Re:It *worked*!

[jfunk]

If control-C copies text in KWrite, try using control-C to copy text in KWrite and using Alt+V to paste it in Netscape.

Nope. Doesn't work in KDE. Only the last thing I copied in Netscape gets pasted. I haven't tried it in KDE 2 yet, though. Maybe they fixed it.

Just tried something: ran xclipboard to see what was there. It was the last thing I copied in Netscape. I copied something in KWrite and when I ran xclipboard again, it was empty... Interesting.

As for alt-vs-ctrl in Netscape: Why??? I can't think of any reason why alt would be used rather than ctrl.

Maybe it's a Motif quirk? As time progresses, I hate Motif more and more...

Re:It *worked*!

[C.Lee]

>Now, why didn't I *know* this other way? I've been using Linux since >1993. Maybe we need an X tutorial?

Maybe you need to actually *READ* the X tutorials that's already out.

Re:It *worked*!

[Guy Harris]

Nope. Doesn't work in KDE.

Sigh. Maybe Qt doesn't use the CLIPBOARD selection the way other toolkits/applications expect.

In fact, a quick look at the Qt 1.44 source suggests that the only selection it does anything with is the primary selection, and the same appears to apply to Qt 2.0.2, so if KDE 1.x or 2.x uses the CLIPBOARD selection, it's done by KDE code rather than Qt code.

For some reason, there's no XA_CLIPBOARD atom for the CLIPBOARD selection, as there are for the PRIMARY and SECONDARY selections - but the ICCCM does discuss the CLIPBOARD selection (section L.2.6.1.3, "The CLIPBOARD Selection", in the X11R5 version of the X Protocol Reference Manual in the O'Reilly series of X manuals), so the lack of an XA_CLIPBOARD atom is insufficient reason not to use that selection....

As for alt-vs-ctrl in Netscape: Why??? I can't think of any reason why alt would be used rather than ctrl.

Maybe it's a Motif quirk?

The Motif 1.2 Style Guide says, in section 4.3.1 Clipboard Transfer, that the "Cut" key (which they seem to imply could be implemented by a combination of other keys) or Shift+Delete "must cut selected elements of the target component to the clipboard", the "Copy" key or Ctrl+Insert "must copy selected elements of the target component to the clipboard", and the "Paste" key or Shift+Insert "must paste the contents of the clipboard at the insertion position of the target component", so it seems to be inclined towards Shift+Delete rather than Control+X or Alt+X for Cut, Ctrl+Insert rather than Control+C or Alt+C for Copy, and Shift+Insert rather than Control+V orAlt+V for Paste, so I don't think it's a Motif quirk - I think it's a Netscape quirk.

Re:It *worked*!

[ajf]

Netscape's clipboard handling is ... quirky. It seems to have its own internal clipboard (which corresponds to the Edit menu Cut/Copy/Paste), and that seems to be completely independent of the X clipboard functionality: you can select text in a browser window, then paste it to the editor using the middle button, but if you want to use Edit/Paste (or Alt+V) you have to do Edit/Copy (Alt+C) first.

As for alt-vs-ctrl in Netscape: Why??? I can't think of any reason why alt would be used rather than ctrl

ISTR reading that they use Alt for the accelerators instead of Ctrl because Unix users are probably familiar with, and would want to use, Ctrl+A to move to the start of the line, Ctrl+E to move to the end of the line, Ctrl+K to delete to the end of the line, that sort of thing. This would clash with the menu accelerator keys if they hadn't used Alt for them instead.

Re:It *worked*!

[Jamie Zawinski]

Netscape's clipboard handling is ... quirky. It seems to have its own internal clipboard (which corresponds to the Edit menu Cut/Copy/Paste), and that seems to be completely independent of the X clipboard functionality: you can select text in a browser window, then paste it to the editor using the middle button, but if you want to use Edit/Paste (or Alt+V) you have to do Edit/Copy (Alt+C) first.

This is not quirky, this is how X selections work.

Think of it this way: you drag out some text. That's the "primary selection." Now you do "File/Copy". That copies the primary selection to the clipboard selection.

Middle-click pastes the primary selection. File/Paste pastes the clipboard selection.

To get Mac behavior, eliminate the middle mouse button (that is, give access only to the clipboard selection, not the primary selection.)

People often confuse the primary selection and the clipboard for the simple reason that xterm doesn't have a menubar, and therfore doesn't have File/Paste, so people raised on Unix instead of real GUIs tend not to notice that the clipboard selection exists at all.

Re:It *worked*!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was raised on GEM & MacOS and quite quickly discovered the standard X cut & paste facilities. I merely explored the interface rather than just assuming that some new interface would magically conform to some old thing I had been used to.

What might just be Unixisms don't make a Unix GUI any less 'real'. That's just your questionable biases showing again.

Neither cut/paste style is definitively better than the other. I myself find instances where I prefer one or the other.

jedi@geek-compound

This may put the idea to a test

[bafful]

Spend lots of money to develop Gnome, then give it away and hope to make money on support? Well, everyone at Slashdot seems to think that's the business model of the future, but I don't think it will succeed. I'll take every bet they will end up doing some SCSL-like licensing tricks in the end, or completely drop the whole Gnome thing and just use the name to do some other business (did anyone say Transmeta?).

that's fair as long as...

[matman]

I think that charging for support is quite fair as long as that technology thats given away includes full documentation. I mean, it'd be bad for a company to sell a product that does stuff, that wont work unless u call to learn how to use it.

arrogance in general

[Anonymous Coward]

``In 14 months, he led 300 programmers all over the world to create a product that makes Windows 95 looks crude; it's restful, it's aesthetic,'' said Frederick Berenstein, co-chairman of the Linux Fund, which is investing in de Icaza's company. GNOME makes Windows 95 look crude? Definitely not. IMHO Windows Explorer is a great file manager, very intuitive and user friendly. GMC pales in comparison. Windows 95 is a rocket on my P75 w/40 megs of ram. The GNOME panel takes so long for the "main" menu to pop up compared to how long it takes for the start menu to pop up. Changes the color schemes in Windows 95 is simple and painless, in GNOME it takes forever, limiting you to only the pre-defined bloat (except for the swing metal one )themes that it comes with, or else you need to spend too much time making your own theme. Not that GNOME doesn't have its own merits, like lots of configurability, neat applets for the bar, etc. but it does not make Windows 95 seem crude in comparison. I'm sure this will get moderated down as flame bait because I disagree with the general consensus here at /. But lets face, its simply ridiculous to make statements like the one above, and to then tirelessly back it up because someone else disagrees with you and seems to favor the evil evil Microsoft design. The arrogance and self righteousness of the linux community will eventually destroy itself. It is already causing people to move to other alternatives, ones that aren't surrounded by people with unjustified superiority complex's. So moderate this down to a -20, but mark my words. The arrogance of the linux community will destroy itself.

Re:arrogance in general

[boc]

If you turn on the "keep menus in memory" option in the global panel preferences the menus come up right away.

This was originally disabled by default, but in October GNOME it is now enabled by default since the memory costs aren't as high as were thought.

Re:arrogance in general

[matman]

Well, I'd have to say that I sort of agree with you. I would moderate you up, but I already posted in this thread and I cant moderate a thread that ive posted in. sorry :)

Windows 95 does have a very good, user friendly look and feel. Gnome, who's purpose it is to look good, is not as good as Windows 95's GUI. MS has put tonnes of work into their GUIs. I see most linux programs trying to copy the MS GUI concepts.

Where linux has not been concentrating so much on the GUI, it has concentrated quite intensely on the behind the scenes code. If you notice, most of the linux apps around are still in their 1 versions. That sorta means that they're still working on the inner workings... the GUI should generally come last anyways. So there is still some time for GUI stuff to be developed. Its going to be a while until linux develops a really mature gui system that is extensable (different rendering engines, themes, etc). But at least the work has started.

Lets not say that the project is done and good before it really is even done. Put some work into it and make it really robust.

Also, developing for one widget set is dumb... there should be some kind of abstration layer between GUI and internals.

Re:arrogance in general

[ColinG]

Have you tried optimizing your configuration of gnome? Install a colour based instead of pixmap based GTK theme, just as win 95 has. Now have your panel ONLY have the pager app and the clock and the foot/start button menu. Now boot. Hrm... seems to be running a little faster than Windows Explorer to me....

Now, I'll just customize a few things here and a few things there... put a nice e theme in... tweak some more...

Hey! Cool! I have now a *cool* looking and relatively safe (ie: no BSoD) and streamlined desktop!

If you were to run the various pixmap window tweakers on the windows machine, you'd be running slower, too.

Anyway, my point is, don't expect magic out of a linux system just because it's a linux system... expect magic out of it because it's been engineered that way, and yet still remains within the actual things you can actually do wth the limited number of cycles on your processor.

Re:arrogance in general

[j a w a d]

Not to be offtopic, but...

Well, I'd have to say that I sort of agree with you. I would moderate you up,...

Moderation isn't about pushing someone up that you agree with! It's about promoting meaningful discussion! Don't moderate people down if you don't agree with them, moderate them down if they truly *are* trolling, or offtopic.

That said, here's my attempt to bring this back ontopic. I agree with the above poster : Windows 9x/2000/NT is a very good GUI. It's a good answer to the question of how a user should interact with an Operating System. That doesn't mean its the ONLY answer!

Keep that in mind.


jawad

Re:arrogance in general

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Explorer sucks for consistency. Depending on where you drag a file to or from, it might be a copy or a move. Extremely annoying. Other than that I don't have much of a problem with it.

Re:arrogance in general

[extrasolar]

I'm sure this will get moderated down as flame bait because I disagree with the general consensus here at /.

So moderate this down to a -20, but mark my words. The arrogance of the linux community will destroy itself.

ARRRRGGGG! I hate it when people do this. Play the rebel annd show everyone you are breaking the trend. If someone moderates you down then they are evil conformosts.

I think the slashdot community is perhaps the most open minded. You wouldn't have been moderated down even without the pleeinng. And conformity is something most slashdotters dislike and you won't be demoted for being different.

Even if someone does moderate you down, slashdot has this nice moderator check to double check against unfair moderation. Beleive it or not but sometimes the system works.

Now I would like to respond to your comment. GNOME looks ten times better than Windows using a really nice theme. I do digress that Windows is faster. October GNOME is much faster than that ucky 1.0.0 release. Unless you have started Netscape, GNOME is really responsive. I think the fault lies with X because the GUI is slow even without GNOME. Then again someone commented a while ago how Windows uses hardware accels for its fine GUI performance.

You do have a point about GNOME not having simple color schemes. I wonder how difficult it would be for their to be a way to change the colors of the default theme.

***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!

Re:arrogance in general

[TurkishGeek]

Umm, not really. I would like to cut this short since it's not related to the subject; but posting anything favoring a Microsoft product over an Open Source package is almost always a sure way of getting yourself moderated down in Slashdot.

So is conformity really something most Slashdotters dislike? I don't think so. I agree posts that make any sense will eventually get moderated up, but only after being moderated down by several people, which prevents the article from even being seen by many others. I've seen many quite insightful posts discussing MS Internet Explorer vs. Netscape, or ASP vs. CGI/PHP moderated down as "troll". And I'm not talking about pointless, real flamebait posts or those including profanity.Perhaps this supports the original poster's opinion of the arrogance of Linux community-he definitely has a point.

On the other hand, strange as it seems, saying "go moderate this down" seems to cause the post o be moderated up.

Re:arrogance in general

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, GMC sucks, but console MC is awesome. I think that both GNOME and KDE shouldn't be concentrating on the panel type configuration. I mean, maybe a few attempts to add something different would be cool, but nothing really, although configuring the panels is pretty neat, like having a corner panel with apps, then one on the bottom with some monitors. I'm pretty sick of the whole taskbar thing in general though.

Re:arrogance in general

[Daniel]

I think the slashdot community is perhaps the most open minded.

In my observation a great deal of /. has the attitude of "be an individualist, just like everyone else", which looks very open-minded if you happen to agree with them. On the other hand I agree that the moderators seem to be reasonably fair-handed and this kind of posturing is (a) repetitive and (b) annoying.

Back on-topic for this off-topic thread, I think the only real problem with
the Gnome stuff is that way too many widgets default to way too large a size.
I think this is slated to be fixed in Gnome 2.0, but who knows when that'll
be out. Easy color changes would be nice, but ThinIce is quick and nifty enough
for me for now.. :)

Also: on my hardware at least, Windows is not faster than X, it is
*more responsive* -- so it *feels* faster even when it isn't! For example, in X
the mouse cursor hiccups when your computer is doing extra calculation; in
Windows the cursor is (I suspect) updated from an interrupt routine, so it moves
at a steady speed regardless of CPU load. On the other hand, I've run games in
X inside windows (using SHM extensions and the like) that Windows would never
be able to handle *inside windows*. Of course, fullscreen mode in Windows
clobbers X -- but the fair comparison is to svgalib, and it's fairly even there.

Daniel

Re:arrogance in general

[warmi]

Oh really? And what is SHM extension ?
Shared memory , right ?
Windows by default uses this kind of approach, no need to use "extension".
Direct X will work in window but even without it there is DIB copying function which basically is just as fast as you can go using hardware supported BitBlit ( in 8 bit mode it used to be neccesary to create indentity palette but with 16 + modes it makes no difference anymore)

The point is, windows can run anything as fast or faster then X ( main difference is that X can work over network)

Re:arrogance in general

[ianezz]

> Windows by default uses this kind of approach, no need to use "extension"

FYI, at the time X11 was first released (1987), designers were broaded-mind enough to leave room for extensions of the protocol and of transport means. Today, SHM support is a de-facto standard on X servers (both commercial and XFree86), but it is still called 'extension' with respect to the protocol as defined in 1987.

Btw, I'd suggest you to not underestimate the capability of working over networks. That is exactly what many companies are wanting to sell as an innovation (see Windows Terminal server, Metaframe, PC/Anywhere, thin clients and so on), and X protocol is definitively faster (because only primitives has to be transfered, not bitmaps) on this side. Have a nice day.

Re:arrogance in general

[Black Parrot]

> IMHO Windows Explorer is a great file manager, very intuitive and user friendly.

It was also the application that caused more reboots than any other on my Windows 95 system.

> So moderate this down to a -20, but mark my words.

A fine thing to say in a rant about arrogonce.

--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?

Trying to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he'll start writing documentation for GNOME and sell it? I can't see good documentation for GNOME. Ever seen a decent README inside a tarball? Good luck...

Re:Trying to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he has been planning to offer support for a long time. By cleverly never releasing any useful documentation for Gnome it makes support more appealing ;)

Good luck, Miguel...

[Millennium]

I hope the future's bright for Helix. Admittedly, I'm not certain that he'll be able to support the company completely on support contracts (I'm more in favor of the consulting approach; charcing to write entirely new OSS or add major features to existing OSS). But I wish them the best anyway

What is the difference?

[Woodrow Stool]

If you sell software, sometimes with source (in the case of developer's controls/libraries) and provide free technical support, you are a commercial bad guy who doesn't "get it".

Give software away, sometimes with source, but charge $$$ for each technical support question/incident, you are a open source angel with nothing but good vibes and intentions for all mankind.

It seems like one of these business models promotes shipping stable useful code, and one of these models only makes money when users have problems.

Am I missing something here?

Re:What is the difference?

[Jules Bean]

Yeah, you're missing something.

Free software isn't about not paying for it. If miguel sells his apps, that'd be fine. As long as he doesn't stop people from passing on the apps, including source code (and modifying them, of course).

Remember, RMS used to make money by selling emacs tapes.

Now if Miguel gives or sells his software (with source), and charges for technical support, this *is* better. This is better because I don't have to go to Miguel for technical support - so I only will if he's good. And I can choose to provide my own technical support on his products for my clients. Furthermore, I can improve his software, for the benefit of my clients - or, heaven forbid, even my friends.

Free software is about the freedom to copy and modify. Money doesn't come into it...

Jules

Re:What is the difference?

[j a w a d]

Interesting point...

Does that mean that when Linux is an absolute breeze to set up, RedHat stock will crash because no one will need technical support?


jawad

Re:What is the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

The two are totally different, moron. An OS is much more far reaching and complex, than some little email program that Miguel writes.

Re:What is the difference?

[The Other JoshG]

No, because some things probably won't ever be a breeze to set up. Installing an enterprise-wide computer network will need to be done by specialists for the forseeable future.

Making De Money

[Angwe]

Okay, so all of you wondering why a company would concern itself with developing intuitiveness into an app whose only money garnering feature is the possiblity of securing a support contract haven't worked with enough users.

How do I know this?

I work in the school computer labs. I've seen the brightest people working with highly intuitive interfaces (Kai Krause is the master, all bow down.) and still struggle.

Trust me, even if he manages to develop the most intuitive tools possible, the company'll still get support contracts from paranoid businessmen (or frustrated IT people).

I would buy for sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would spend money on a word processing program for GNOME, which integrates the same way into the linux environment as M$ word does under Win. I don't like Star Office cause it needs a big window to live in, among many other things, I dont like.

cool.. but in mass

[josepha48]

Wow in cambridge. I thought he was from Mexico, I hope he likes snow. I am looking forward to his next releases of GNOME adn the apps. I hope though that there will be XML support in these apps, as well as Word 6, 7, 8, and wordpad files support. Yes I nkow that Corel has this support but not all the Word files I have can be read by Corel. If GNOME were to offere an alternative to Word, it would surely be a bigger hit than it already is. I do like som eof the GNOME apps.

send flames > /dev/null

Re:cool.. but in mass

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: Abi. they make a GTK and soon GNOME-compatible WP. GPLed. Want a gnome wp? There ya go.

Re:cool.. but in mass

[josepha48]

I tried Abi Source and Abi word, I could not use images in it so it was not that good. I know it will get better and satisfy most of my needs, but it needs to be abel to export common formats like rtf, and unfortunately also like word 6, 7, 8, and wordpad files. People wont switch if they cannot wread the word files they get in the mail.

send flames > /dev/null

free product, charge for tech support reminds me..

[confidential]

of microsoft if ms would give it out for free... you all know what i mean, make a shoddy product that wont work, then charge $30.00 a minute for support.
now i'm not saying it'l be like that, thats just what pops into my head

all aside, i wish helix and Miguel both luck



-confidential

AIM: confdntl98 ICQ: 150685 E-Mail: above... you can figure it out ^_~

I suspect you should read the GPL

[Colin Smith]

Have a look at the GPL please.

You'll find that from now and forever more, the source is free.

Conflict in Business Model? No.

[Tiamat]

There seems to be some concern that the support-based business model contains within it a conflict of interest: that businesses which rely on support won't 'want' to make their products easy to use. These fears seem to assume that this business model is targeting the basic user who wants to center paragraphs, bold text and send one-page memos.

These support arrangements seem to me primarly to offer support to corporations and "Power Users". Clearly, corporations are willing to pay for the peace of mind that comes from guaranteed support -- does anyone remember when "no one was ever fired for buying IBM?"

Power Users are willing to pay to have developers help them to do things that 99.9% of the other users of the program wouldn't dream of doing. (How do I get this mail merge to take data directly from a relational database? How can I ensure that page 425 of my dissertation is formatted using this 'style'? Etc, etc.)

The best thing about this business model is that it provides that large base of basic, individual users the legal right freely to use a very efficient, and very Inuitive program. The kind of conspiracy theory that holds that Miguel would be involved in a project to deliberately confuse users is more than ridiculous.

David

Re:Conflict in Business Model? No.

[arielb]

I don't think there's a conspiracy to make things confusing on purpose but there are many usability problems with many programs already and I doubt people will invest the time to make them easier if they adopt this model.

Re:Conflict in Business Model? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

a very efficient, and very Inuitive program

You mean we all have to live in Igloos ?

Re:Conflict in Business Model? No.

[Tiamat]

That's genuinely funny. Thanks.

What is this linuxfund.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know anything about linuxfund.com? Not to be confused with linuxfund.org. From reading the sparse web-site, it sounds like their goal is to make it possible for the small investor to participate in the venture-capital game for linux start-ups.

But, there has been practically no talk about them on slashdot, usenet, or much of anywhere else I did a search on them. Just how legit are they?

Re:What is this linuxfund.com?

[unitron]

As I recall there wasn't exactly a consensus (as if there ever is around here)but many were skeptical, to put it charitably, and many other postings were along the lines of "fly-by-night", "bandwagon jumpers", "get rich quick schemes", and such, and few, if any, expressed any belief that one should risk one's money with them.

Home users don't buy support contracts

[Watts Martin]

The title of this comment may be a little facetious, but for the most part it's true. Most home office users don't buy support contracts, either. Not even all small offices do, unless it comes with the site license.

The entire "give the software away for free and charge for support" concept--it seems to me--came from people used to the traditional market for Unix software and applications: enterprise customers, research facilities and universities. In those markets, commercial software is supported constantly by the vendor. It's most of what you're paying for--you're more or less buying the support for $20,000 (or whatever) a year and that includes "free" updates to the systems you've purchased. In this environment, charging for support for open source software is pretty natural.

In home and SOHO environments, though, this model is unprecedented, in a canonical sense of the term. Some software comes with 90 days of free technical support, and some companies have a "knowledge base" of software. And that's it.

The question is: are people really crying out to change that? Don't give me a "yes" answer too fast. Even most newbie Linux users are net-savvy enough to find a newsgroup to ask for support on or to use Red Hat's free knowledge base, and anyone can manage to get to their local Borders and pick up "Linux for Dummies."

And this is just for the operating system, which is generally the most complex piece of a desktop OS. The chances are that most users aren't going to have any problems with a desktop app that require a support contract--they might have trouble with installation, but that's it. Nearly anything else they can ask a friend, find a web page, get a book, post a message on a news group, and so on.

At risk of sounding doom-and-gloom, this is a problem I see with the entire "give it away" philosophy. Flame if you will, but as has been observed before, all software has development costs associated with it; the free software world has had the fortune that most of those costs have effectively been eaten by universities and a select few companies.

When you try to make money by starting commercial projects as open source, though, they need to end up paying their way somehow. Red Hat and Linux distributors to date have essentially sold neither software nor support, they've sold convenience. Red Hat wants to move to a subscription-based model, it seems, and that's understandable--each "unofficial Red Hat" CD someone buys with no support is an indirect material harm to their business. (Again, that sounds harsh, but if you sell at a profit margin of 50% and 60% of your potential customers get your product without giving you money for it, you're losing money.)

But can that really work for a "desktop application"? I'm not sure that it can't... but I'm not convinced that it can, either.

Re:Home users don't buy support contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

(Again, that sounds harsh, but if you sell at a profit margin of 50% and 60% of your potential customers get your product without giving you money for it, you're losing money.)

This ignores the fact that reproducing software is "practically free". Its not like cars for example. Suppose RedHat spends 10 million in development, marketing, sales and support. They earn 15 million by selling RedHat Packages and support to 300,000 users at 50$ a pop. They still makes a profit regardless of the fact that 500 million people have downloaded it for free from the FTP server. Or am I missing something?

Re:Home users don't buy support contracts

[Foogle]

Yeah, you're missing something. It doesn't cost them anything to reproduce the software, but it costs a crapload to develop it in the first place. Redhat is doing good, but does Icaza really have what it takes? I'm not sure. First he has to develop something interesting, because what's out now isn't going to cut it. Yeah, Gnumeric is good, but nobody would buy support for just that.

They're going to need to bring together a whole suite of software that is freakin' excellent. I mean, really really good. That's expensive -- even when you've got open source developers working with you.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Re:Home users don't buy support contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

I also thought no home user in their right mind would by support contracts, however a few of my friends in retail sales quickly changed my mind. They insist that they sell support/warranty contract to 3/5 customers purchasing pc's. Even if it's 1/5, their seems to be a market I guess.

Re:Home users don't buy support contracts

[costas]

You're right; the idea of charging support for something that is build to make the users' life easier is a paradox. I believe that GPL'ed software has a place in the SOHO/Home market with some other business model: either charge for specialized "components" (say an analysis package for Gnumeric) or per use of higher-level functions.

I.e. give away the base software for free and charge people to use extensions/rarely used functions/"plus services".

Just my $0.002


engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

Re:Home users don't buy support contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are my moderator points when I need them? What kind of a screwed up system is this? I've got a karma of 30 and I get +1 added to all my posts, but i've only ever moderated once. :)

You can do this slightly better

[Mawbid]

Use Alt-L to bring up the Open Page dialog, in which you can paste the URL with Ctrl-Insert.

Alternatively, paste the URL leftmost in the Location field and press Ctrl-K to kill to eol, which gets rid of the old url (the cursor will be in the right place).

Note that I'm absolutely not trying to downplay the problems with Linux's "select'n'paste" method.
--

Star Office? WP 2000 (Upcoming) (oftopic)

[pol-pot]

There are a lot of officetools around... If U goto sun or corel (WordPerfect) U can get some office warez allready.

Re:Star Office? WP 2000 (Upcoming) (oftopic)

[xim]

Sun or Corel offers target only for i386 Linux. So what about the freedom? What about the freedom to choose your architecture, freedom to share the code?

Linux is not only a i386 thing.

Already possible?

[JamesKPolk]

If you mean copying from app to app, within one X session, that's already possible. (Most apps will copy to the clipboard by simply selecting text, and paste from the clipboard with the middle mouse button.)

Qt (and thus KDE) has a class which allows for the sending of text to the X clipboard.

My guess is that Motif, Gtk+, and all the other widget sets and toolkits give the developer convenient access to the X clipboard, as well. And, if not, one can always use the X library functions themselves!

If, however, you are referring to copying and pasting from one VC to another, that would probably require kernel-level support. This would be non-portable and, therefore, not popular for developers of portable systems like GNOME. (unless I'm off, and Solaris, *BSD, and the rest already have such a feature.)

Re:Already possible?

[Guy Harris]

Most apps will copy to the clipboard by simply selecting text, and paste from the clipboard with the middle mouse button.

They set the primary selection by selecting text, and paste the primary selection with the middle mouse button.

The primary selection is not the clipboard; I just tested that with both the Motif-based Netscape and the GTK+-based Ethereal; selecting text, doing Alt+C in Netscape or Ctrl+C in Ethereal, and then selecting some different text caused the latter text - i.e., the primary selection - to be pasted with the middle mouse button and the former text - i.e., the clipboard - to be pasted with Alt+V in Netscape and Ctrl+V in Ethereal.

Running xclipboard while doing this also indicated that selecting text does not copy it to the clipboard, but Alt+C/Ctrl+C does.

And, yes, the distinction is relevant - the person who complained that paste-current-selection requires you to clear the field to which you want to paste it (rather than just selecting and pasting the clipboard, which replaces the selected text with the clipboard) was complaining about not being able to copy to the clipboard so that you can paste it and replace the currently selected text. (Yes, many applications let you clear the target of the paste-current-selection with Ctrl+U, but....)

Qt (and thus KDE) has a class which allows for the sending of text to the X clipboard.

Indeed? I didn't find the string "CLIPBOARD" anywhere in the Qt 1.44 or Qt 2.0.2 source; it may be called QClipboard, but it only appears to refer to the PRIMARY selection, not the CLIPBOARD selection.

My guess is that Motif, Gtk+, and all the other widget sets and toolkits give the developer convenient access to the X clipboard, as well

Motif - yes, as I remember. GTK+ - GtkEditable and its subclasses appear to copy to the clipboard, and "gtk/gtkeditable.c" definitely interns the CLIPBOARD atom. I can't speak for other toolkits, although it'd be nice if they all did (including Qt...).

The GPL only protects today's code...

[bafful]

...and the contributions by others. If the Gnome people decide to make a new version that's not under GPL, they just have to get rid of other people's code, and nobody can stop them.

Re:The GPL only protects today's code...

[lostpasswd]

of course no one would use this new version the current, free one already exists. Not to mention the fact that if you "just" cut out the others code, you would be loosing the vast majority of the system. Yeah right.

Netscape tricks!

[dosowski]

Quite often, I want to copy an URL and paste it into the address bar of Netscape or something -- OOOOOPS, when I highlighted the current URL in the address bar of Netscape to copy over it, the text in another window that I DID have highlighted stopped being such, and I can no longer copy it.

I just learned a shortcut for this the other day. I found out that you can simply middle-click anywhere in the Netscape window and it'll paste it in the Location bar and bring you there right away. Talk about a hidden feature!

And Netscape menues will never be accessible via the keyboard. Arggh.

Well, here's another suprise I discovered just yestarday. I had my keyboard on my lap, and it slipped down and hit the bottom of my desk, hitting a few keys on the way. A netscape menu popped up! Trying a few keys in the general area where this happened, I discovered that the F10 key brings up the Netscape menus.

Re:Netscape tricks!

[SPorter]

Actually, if you middle click on a link, it will open in a new window.

Re:Netscape tricks!

[Patrik Nordebo]

You can bring up the menus with F10, but you can't select in them unless the thing you want to do has an accelerator key. That's annoying. Or am I just missing something?

Re:Netscape tricks!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can erase the line of text in the address bar by hitting ctrl-U.

Middle click hidden feature?? Try right clicking in Netscape, a menu will pop-up containing the
open-new window item which has middle button as
shortcut.

And it's a damn shame the middle button shorcut
doesn't work in the Windows version.

Re:Netscape tricks!

[Jamie Zawinski]

You can bring up the menus with F10, but you can't select in them unless the thing you want to do has an accelerator key. That's annoying. Or am I just missing something?

Hit F10 to bring up the menu. Use the left and right arrows to select the menu you want. Hit Enter to pop down the menu. Note that all the menu items on the menu have one character underlined. If you type that character, it's the same as selecting that menu item.

The difference between these underlined characters (called "mnemonics") and the global keybindings (called "accelerators", and listed on the right side of each menu) is that accelerators have to be global to the application, and mnemonics only have to be unique within their menu. Also mnemonics are single characters and accelerators are usually chorded (being Control or Alt or Shift keys.)

I think you're supposed to be able to use the cursor keys to move around on the menu and then hit return to select one, but that doesn't seem to work for some reason. I'm not sure why.

Re:Netscape tricks!

[dosowski]

No, this isn't middle-clicking on a link in the Netscape window. This is selecting a URL in another program (perhaps an email client or something) and then middle clicking on the Netscape window. The URL you selected in the other program will now load in the current Netscape window.

Re:Netscape tricks!

[eman21]

I am glad that someone took the time to post this info. I find little "kernels" of knowledge of this type very helpful, as most would not bother sharing this trivial piece of info.

You don't get it ...

[Woodrow Stool]

>>> If miguel sells his apps ...

If Miguel sells his apps, he's not going to let you pass your copy on to other people. If he makes his money from sales, he can't let you do that - it ultimately destroys his revenue stream.

>>> Money doesn't come into it...

Money comes into _every_ equation, unless your planet doesn't use it. This one (earth) does.

Re:You don't get it ...

[fader]

If Miguel sells his apps, he's not going to let you pass your copy on to other people. If he makes his money from sales, he can't let you do that - it ultimately destroys his revenue stream.

Uh-oh... somebody better tell RedHat to get out of the Linux game quick! It seems that they're selling something that other people are giving away *for free*! *gasp* I don't get it... somehow they manage to make money even though they're selling a freely available product, and indeed giving it away for free themselves! (Check ftp.redhat.com if you don't believe me)

Re:You don't get it ...

[mochaone]

If that's your only revenue stream. Let's face it. Brand is where it's at. Why do you think people shop at The Gap? Because the clothes are of high quality? Nope. We shop there because we'll learn how to dance really cool and sing in a boring, monotone that will annoy the hell out of everyone.

Uh...where was I going. Ah, yes. The Brand. If Miguel creates a strong brand for his company, people may prefer buying it from him so they can say "Hey...look at what I got...I got the Icaza that comes with the poster!"

Re:You don't get it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing OS support with support for some little office app that Miguel writes is just plain silly.

For this kind of software, pay support is useless. The company lasts maybe 1 year.

Re:You don't get it ...

[IntlHarvester]

In agreement, I recall when Slashdot was in an uproar because Bill Gates declared that MS Office didn't have many bugs, because users never called in to report them.

The fact is that if 'Office' software craps out on you, you're probably just going to cuss at it and get on with your day. You can call Microsoft and get brushed off, or you can call your IT department and maybe get the lowest level guy they got to look at it.

On the other hand, if you can make a good technical case that either BIND or Microsoft DynamicDNS doesn't work right, you'll get a good response from the technical vendors, open source or commercial.

(Or another case-in-point, WordPerfect used to be known for it's quality free technical support. Didn't stop people from switching to MS Word.)
--

Re:You don't get it ...

[Jonas �berg]

No, that's not true. If Miguel would sell his applications, provided they are free software, people would still buy them from him (even when they can get it cheaper from someone else) because they want to further the development of the product. The normal rules of economics don't apply to free software.

Re:You don't get it ...

[warmi]

"The normal rules of economics don't apply to free software."

Heheh.. so what does then ??

Unless you can make pigs fly, of course ...

Re:You don't get it ...

[warmi]

RH doesn't make money. The only money they made was from IPO.

Agreed - support model is naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Most home and small business users would rather ask the neighbor's kid or go to Amazon and get a "Dummies" book than get involved with a formal support contract.

Also, you have to question the efficacy of GNOME if it requires professional ongoing support just to operate.

On top of all of this, he's promoting the support of standalone desktop apps - a model that is now looking old and is starting to be bypassed by the web/network paradigm.

I firmly believe that everyone who wants a word processors already has one.

Graphics certainly do convey information!

[198348726583297634]

Just the other day I was trying to explain a stance from my martial art to a friend over IRC, and he couldn't picture it and couldn't picture it, so I sketched him something in xpaint, dcc'd it to him, and a minute later he said, "Ohh!!"

See? ;)

Who will take hime to court?

[billgate]

MS might take hime to court or kill the kid.

PHB buy support for Oracle, nor word processing

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're being slightly optimistic here.

Firstly, almost every office of any size already uses Microsoft Office for office-like functionality and they likely won't be switching soon.

Added to which, they aren't paying for support on small productivity apps - the type of lucrative contracts you are talking about have to do with things like Oracle and SAP, where the support contract really is crucial.

Take a look at wilberworks.com

[heroine]

Remember wilberworks.com? The company which went into business in 1997 with the intention of sustaining itself solely by offering support for The Gimp. Well take a look at it and see how booming their business has been.

Re:Take a look at wilberworks.com

[mochaone]

Uh, how booming has their business been. I can't tell what position you're taking on this issue.

Re:Take a look at wilberworks.com

[Mr. Piccolo]

Well,

a. They're still in business, so business must be doing OK.

b. They've moved into customization (if indeed their original business was ONLY support), so there must be a market there too.

Also, slight error: The company was founded February 1998.

Its obvious!

[urgleburgle]

They are positioning them selves to be bought up by Red Hat.

Great thinking, IMNSHO

clipboard, drag&drop and basic GUI

[mcc]

more widespread, standard clipboard would be nice, yes.
what i think would be _really_ nice in linux, or at least in the GNOME environment, is better support for drag&drop between apps along the lines the mac os uses. This is the one thing i really miss in X more than anything else. (and, for that matter, i miss it in windows, although there it's no so bad becuase every app except Mirc and Pirch supports copy/paste in a logical manner)

Here on the mac if someone mentions a URL on IRC, i can just select the url, grab it, drag it to the little MSIE or NS icon in the app switcher and have it open. or drag it to the desktop and have it wait there until i need it. It makes my desktop hideously cluttered, but it's worth it.

Meanwhile if i am running ircii in rxvt or whatever that GNOME terminal program is, and i have netscape open behind it, i can rarely even get copy/paste to work between the two.

This is not something that needs a lot of attention, obviously, but i think it's something that maybe they should look into as the next step in teh evoloution of their GUI.

Either way, between KDE and GNOME (although personally i find KDE so nasty and cumbersome that i feel much more comfortable using Bash to deal with files.. which coming from a native mac user is saying a LOT) look carefully at the linux GUI choices available and ask yourselves if this is something people at large will want to use. It's all very well and good to _say_ linux can conquer "the desktop", but if you really look you'll see that there are so many incredibly _basic_ things in the available GUIs (which is the one part you know most people are going to want to use if they'll have to do it a lot..) which just don't work as well as they do in practically any other available GUI. Things like universal copy/paste, or drag&drop, or preferences dialogs that write the config files for you, or remotely consistant scrollbars, or menus that launch programs (the ones every Window Manager has, similar to the start button or apple menu) which can be changed without restarting the window manager, or in general "intuitive" programs (programs which you can use _without_ reading the documentation). Yes these are minor things, but the minor things are REALLY IMPORTANT. The linux community as a while needs to either put some serious work into fixing problems like these for usability by people who aren't willing to forgive the binary simply because of the liscense of the code, or else just accept that linux and X are things which will be resigned to the role of servers, specific tasks, and use by people who don't mind a CLI and are willing to read the documentation _before_ they do anything.
Note i'm not saying this second option is a bad thing, or that the linux community has a real need to go with the first option. I'm just saying until you seriously do something toward the first option, don't claim linux is going to replace windows on a massive scale anytime soon.

Re:clipboard, drag&drop and basic GUI

[costas]

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments: I'd just like to point out to windows users out there a really nice feature on CRT, my favorite terminal program: highlite something, right click and then select "Open URL" ;-)...


engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

Miguel is a moron.

[AntiBasic]

http://www.sigmasoft.com/~openbsd/archive/openbsd- advocacy/199907/msg00009.html He's almost as stupid as JP and CPM but he actually is lionized!

Non-commercial radio ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Contributions to non-commericial radio stations during pledge drives may be a good model here -- a percentage of consumers will pay for something they can get free, because they realize that if they don't pay, it may go away. Our local station KALX just had a successful fundraiser, and their audience is tough with a dollar -- college kids at a state school!

Re:Non-commercial radio ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please...Slashdotters are the cheapest most phony people around. $300 for a graphics card is ok, $29.95 for Word Perfect is a slap in the face of all the punks who want to see the source code, but can't understand the #ifdef at the top.

These people won't part with a dime. Freeloader mentality.

A question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any company with this revenue model making money, and I mean money from sales, not from IPOs or secondary sources.

Re:A Question

[Peter Teichman]

The GPL does not keep you from doing this. You can charge as much as you want for software that you make available under the GPL.
It doesn't require any extra clause.

Re:A question

[Anonymous Coward]

ActiveState makes the majority of its cash from support contracts. See http://www.ActiveState.com/PerlDirect

Re:A Question

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty much what L. Peter Deutsch does with ghostscript.

Possibilities with this business model

[extrasolar]

I have the feeling that most of you are thinking relative to the existing business model. But if you put services first, there are some real possibilities.

Imagine you are Joe Newbie. You install GNOME and suscribe to the Support service by miguel's company. You pay a nominal fee each month. Then every other week you get a CD in the mail with various updates and bug fixes. Also you get a newsletter with various happenings in GNOME world.

Lets say that Joe newbie is having problems with Gnumeric crashing. He emails support with his problem and gets a reply that they have fixed the problem. The fix will be installed on the next CD or can be downloaded. Not only that but the fix will be distributed to all the subscribers.

Now lets say Joe Newbie wants a certain feature. Like perhaps animated icons. He emails support and they say that they will charge a fee but the fee is less for subscribers. The feature will be developed in six weeks and will come on that CD. If the feature is benificial for GNOME as a whole it will be on everyone's CD and included in the next GNOME distribution.

Gnome support could develop themes, desktop wallpaper, alternate icons, etc. They could propietize these which I don't think is against the principles of free software: they are creative works.

Many users will like this service. They always have the latest stable software.

***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!

Re:Possibilities with this business model

[gargle]

barf...

Imagine you are Joe Newbie. You install Windows and suscribe to the Support service by Bill's company. You pay a nominal fee each month. Then every other week you get a CD in the mail with various updates and bug fixes. Also you get a newsletter with various happenings in Windows world.

Lets say that Joe newbie is having problems with Excel crashing. He emails support with his problem and gets a reply that they have fixed the problem. The fix will be installed on the next CD or can be downloaded. Not only that but the fix will be distributed to all the subscribers.

Now lets say Joe Newbie wants a certain feature. Like perhaps animated icons. He emails support and they say that they will charge a fee but the fee is less for subscribers. The feature will be developed in six weeks and will come on that CD. If the feature is benificial for Windows as a whole it will be on everyone's CD and included in the next Windows distribution.

Windows support could develop themes, desktop wallpaper, alternate icons, etc. They could propietize these which I don't think is against the principles of free software: they are creative works.

Many users will like this service. They always have the latest stable software.

Re:Possibilities with this business model

[Cyberfox]

Greetings,

If I could get updates on a bi-weekly basis to Windows, I would do it in a f'ing heartbeat. I'd PAY for THAT service. As it is, the company I work for has forked out tens of thousands of dollars in OS licenses and crap for Microsoft Windows NT, and we STILL have to wait a bloody year between service packs, and get only the tiniest fixes in the mean time!

DAMN straight I'd PERSONALLY pay a nominal maintenance contract fee for honest-to-god bugfixes that came out that often from Microsoft! But THEY'll never do that.

Cyberfox!

Using Linux for ASP

[Anonymous Coward]

This brings up an question I had in the back of my mind. Are thing any companies out there right now that are developing an ASP suite on Linux? Linux has proven to be a stable server platform and companies are seriously looking to use ASP for they trival computing needs. So is anyone developing a suite of software for it?

Re:Using Linux for ASP

[TurkishGeek]

I'm sure lots of companies are considering using Linux for ASP now, I wonder if Marc Andreessen's new company, Loudcloud, will be using it. Other than those efforts that we don't know about yet, there are already a couple of companies that offer Linux desktops that you can use on the Web-a "personal ASP" a la Desktop.com. You might want to check out WorkSpot, which allows you to have your own Linux desktop via VNC-they will offer various productivity sofware, so I guess that makes it an example of ASP with Linux.

thanks miguel

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to thank Miguel for mentioning KDE at the end of his interview. Boy have things changed!

No Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since the GNOME crew made phun of the Enlightenment userbase I have refused to use GNOME. (Besides the fact the it's like swiss cheese). No thanks M., I don't need your kinda support.

Re:No Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Mommy, the bad man made phun of me. Make the bad man go away please. I wanna look l33t like the rest of the kids in the neighborhood, please don't make phun of me. You're no phun!

Much ado over themes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Gnome may look better than Windows. But isn't that it though? Everyone talks about the theme-of-the-week as though this is somehow adding functionality.

If Gnome had NO widget theming at all, would people be as excited about it?

It's interesting that Miguel's crew thinks the microsoft design is so 'evil'...Miguel has gone on record saying he loved the interface for Outlook and was going to steal it for whatever email program he's working on.

One thing though: Don't confuse the arrogance of one person for the linux community in general. Contrary to what Miguel thinks, he doesn't represent the Linux community.

maybe not a 'moron' per se...

[Anonymous Coward]

..but Miguel consistantly lacks TACT of any kind. He opens his mouth, insults other projects, and then inserts his foot. Everyone else on his team then has to scramble to 'interpret' what he 'really' meant. It has happened so many times now I don't understand why they haven't booted him in favour of a more talented spokesperson.

Theo is conspiring with Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Theo is not a saint either. His latest political move is a concoction with Debian to rename OpenSSH to ssh and quietly overwrite the real SSH whenever you upgrade Debian. Don't believe me? Read http://lists.debian.org

Havoc is that person.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. Red Hat is positioning Havoc to replace Miguel as soon as the time is right!

Re:Havoc is that person.

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be a good thing. Havoc is one helluva nice guy, and a good statesman to boot. And unlike Miguel, he WANTS to work with the KDE folks.

Considering GNOME/KDE to be Holy War is Harmful

[Christopher B. Brown]

Your implications seem themselves intended to spread the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt that you seem to be accusing others of.

1. GNOME and KDE can both run on top of X simultaneously, as well as Motif, FVWM, Tk, and others. They can coexist.
2. Are you trying to imply that there should be no attempt to build higher level infrastructures than Xlib?

   If you have no such infrastructure, then everybody is left reinventing the same wheels, over and over again, in much the way that there is a host of graphics libraries for X.

   And if you do have some such infrastructure, then you'll have to choose between "library sets.

3. If you're concerned about interoperability, then work on interoperable protocols.

   Set up common document formats; note that both are using XML and SGML, and notably are using DocBook for managing the documentation. Improve the Docbook tools, and you help both.

   Set up services that can be usable for BOTH. Both GNOME and KDE, for instance, have calendar programs that use common data storage formats; a "killer app" would be to create a calendar server that could allow multi-user access to schedules, and allow management of common resources.

   But instead, you have to take a focus that assumes that they are mutually exclusive, when reality is that They are not exclusive.

4. No, StarOffice is not free. It belongs to Sun Microsystems, and some license fees are waived at their suffrance.

   And, in any case, how does Star Office resolve the "window manager and GUI classes" issue taht you seem focused on? It doesn't; it merely places control over the selection of such into Sun's hands.

Moderate this up!

[~k.lee]

It's too bad this guy's an AC-- this comment actually brings up a novel revenue model for OSS that I've never heard before. Moderators, wield your points.

~k.lee

that's a already (and succesfull) working idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I read many comments of people who thinks that a company that gives software for free is not a good bussiness. I think that there's a good chance that this is a great idea, a "retouch" of a present working model.
I've seen many very succesfull (small to mid) software companies that have developed software solutions for some type of business.
I actually have a friend who works in a company where all 3 funding members get 40K per month.
What they do?
Well, they developed a software (it's way more complicated, but...let's call it software).
Well, every client they get is charged around 5K for design, 10K for implementation and a lot more (it depends of the customer, never below 30-40K) for maintenance.
The big deal is that the design is a "cut & paste" duty of let's say...a week, and the implementation is a short task, changing product names, making new tables, changing titles in the windows...a piece of cake...
Maybe you think they are cheating their customers...you are right, but they are succesfull because they keep midsize to bigsize companies happy, and they keep getting jobs.
In a more competitive market (4 years from now) this will be harder, but if they give the software for free (licensing it but not charging for it...anyway is already done) and charge for the customization of this software for the client needs (the main task), they would be able to make lower their prices, focus on getting more clients...and grow.
The problem is that a custom solution can't be GPL...why? because many big companies would fell as a competitive problem to give their information systems to the competence, but the core code, could be opensourced (GPL is a problem from this point of view).
I don't know, I just feel that you can get this commercial model to work and be lucrative and more clean that the ussual swindle that's done today by many sw companies.
Licensing would be a problem, not by the developer, but the license should keep the client happy, and every "suit" of every company learns that it's IT is a competitive adventage...and giving it for free to the enemy is like suicide...
Woops! I started a licenses war!?
No, not now, let people choose it's license...

Re:that's a already (and succesfull) working idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that a custom solution can't be GPL...why? because many big companies would fell as a competitive problem to give their information systems to the competence, but the core code, could be opensourced (GPL is a problem from this point of view).

Hmm, that's interesting. Is it in fact against the licensing of the GPL for a contractor (or small group of them) to write modifications to software that are used internally by another company and the source is never released. This would be fine if they were directly working for the company, but what about a company like Helix Code? I guess it boils down to does contracting count as distribution. Hmmmmmm...

I'd imagine even RMS would see certain usefulness in this (otherwise he wouldn't have put the proprietary-internal is ok). You might not want everyone seeing how your company works from the inside, so you don't want all that software to go public. Hmmmm.... Good point.... I don't know.

I'm not so sure

[EvlG]

While it is always good to see a flurry of activity spring up around free software, I can't help but wonder if this is going to do anything useful.

Support isn't the end all be all of free software justification. Someone else hit the nail on the head when they noted that the OS is the most complicated part of a system, and thus support there is justified...but support for an app (or set of apps even) just isn't. Things are easy to use, relatively abstracted from the hardware (which causes most support issues anyway when you don't have to worry about software components conflicitng with each other, as on an MS platform.)

So what role does support have? Developer support? MS and Sun have laid groundwork there with MSDN and Sun Developer Essentials...but there's already plenty of web pages, FAQs, HOW-TOs, and free (as in beer) components out there to help the budding Linux App Designer.

What about large-scale IT support? There is at least something here. Having to piece together a set of apps to form your company's entire working platform is formidable, and having an organization like Helix Code to hold your hand and help you make changes, etc would be useful. But this market isn't that big.

Small-scale groups (like individual departments and SOHO users) won't want to pay for this. They'll just hire a one-time contractor to do this sort of work, or educate one person enough so that they can do it in house.

Individual users, of course, will pay no attention to this. They will continue to leech off the work of others as they have always done. To them "free" means as in beer, and ONLY that. The average user is mostly concerned with the fact they got it for nothing; especially since they have to work just as hard to get it to work as they do a commercial package.

So what does this mean? It's a questionable venture. It will likely accelerate the development and acceptance of GNOME, which is wonderful. But I don't see it as being lasting (especially since we still haven't seen a proven example of the Open Source Enhancements and Support business model yet.)

Re:I'm not so sure

[alessio]

What about large-scale IT support? There is at least something here. Having to piece together a set of apps to
form your company's entire working platform is formidable, and having an organization like Helix Code to hold
your hand and help you make changes, etc would be useful. But this market isn't that big.

I don't think so. It is big. It's the market of big consulting companies (AC to name one) and they get big paychecks from bigger companies. Or look at what happens with courses, formation and the like: you pay twice the price you paid for your software to learn to use the software, and if you have a "damn big problem" you call the big consultant.

If people pay to get courses of M$ Excel (not to mention Oracle), they can surely pay for courses for GNUmeric or other tools.

paying for support

[arielb]

if it means you have to pay just to get the program to $@%&!! work then that's the wrong way to go. But if support means "ok we'll work on this feature just for you" then that's a revolutionary idea.

colour-configurators for GNOME

[Rozzin]

"I wonder how difficult it would be for their to be a way to change the colors of the default."

It'd be easy. It's on my project-list. I'll start work on an app. (maybe a capplet for GNOME) to GUIfy GTK+ colour-theme-writing (new theme-files should automagically show up in the theme-selector), soon, and put a post to freshmeat when I've got some working code, OK?

Full of assumptions

[Brian Knotts]

You're still viewing the whole software industry through industrial-age goggles.

Software distribution is not like typewriter manufacturing, particularly when it is done via ftp.

Yes, there are up-front costs, but the "manufacturing" costs and distribution costs are trivial when an Internet-based distribution method is used.

Even in the more traditional software industry, you don't seem to understand something: support *is* what you're really paying for. Yes, people operate under the fallacy that they're purchasing software, but they're wrong; hasn't anyone read their EULAs?

So, what are they buying, really? A license? How expensive is that to "manufacture?" No, what they're really paying for is support, just like they do in the Free Software model. The big difference? The Free Software vendors are honest about what they're selling.

--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page

Re:Full of assumptions

[Trepidity]

Well, with proprietary software, they're not just buying support. They're also buying the right to use a copy of the software legally. With Free Software, that right is already given, so all you have left to sell is the support.

Re:Full of assumptions

[Brian Knotts]

What I'm trying to say is that the only *tangible* thing you're buying, really, from the proprietary vendors is support.

I say that because the original poster was talking about ratios of customer profits as if the more copies out there, the more costs were being incurred by the vendor. That's clearly not the case; the only costs they really incur are from support. Thus, I claim, that what you are *really* buying from the proprietary vendors is, in fact, support.

--
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Re:Full of assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're viewing software distribution through your ass. You still haven't answered the question. How does someone make money off a quality easy to use bug free product which does not need support? Being a linux user you might not be familiar with ease of use, but there are many commercial application which have it. How the hell do they make money? I'd love to see the first straight up gnu answer posted in response to this.

Re:Full of assumptions

[Nodatadj]

Someone, somewhere, will always need support.
Witness the number of "really easy things like turning on your computer for dummies..." books.

Re:Full of assumptions

[Trepidity]

That may be the only thing that has a cost to the vendor you're buying, but I still disagree that it's the only thing you're buying. There are commercial software vendors who sell software without support, and they still charge money for it. The only thing they're charging for is the right to use a copy of the software legally. Sure, nothing tangible is being sold, but the software is being licensed, and money is still changing hands. I'd wager than a large portion of home users who purchase software purchase it for this license, not for the support. I know I personally rarely use the support, but I still purchase the stuff, mainly because it's illegal to obtain otherwise.

Jamie Zawinski (JWZ) is responsible for much grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost all programs that JWZ has had a hand in work differently from other X programs. Most importantly: Netscape and XEmacs.

JWZ programs do not remember the selection if they happen to be deselected before the pasting. This goes AGAINST what every other application does. What a turd.

Hey, ease up on jwz

[Brian Knotts]

What you say about XEmacs is demonstrably false.

Try it. Go ahead, select some text in XEmacs, click outside the selected region to deselect, then middle-click to paste. Wa la.

--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page

Re:Hey, ease up on jwz

[Anonymous Coward]

be sure to deselect the text first. Also try this: select with the mouse and try to paste with C-y.

Re:Graphics dont convey informantion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its good to know that engineers, architects, (many non computer)scientists, and others, whoose work is based on graphicaly conveyed information are not doing or conveying anthing usefull.

Business model..

[TurkishGeek]

With all due respect for his programming skills, personality and contributions to Open Source movement, I must say I'm surprised to see that none of the posts discussing the business model mention one possible motive behind Icaza's new company: Making a bundle of money by jumping on the Linux IPO bandwagon.

I agree the company can be very useful for GNOME and acceptance of Linux on the desktop. I fail to understand if the business model of selling support contracts for GNOME or GNOME apps is completely sound, though. Can anyone working in Fortune 1000 companies tell me if they are paying Microsoft for Windows or MS Office support contracts?

I believe the company is largely motivated by the opportunity of going to a quick IPO by riding on the Linux IPO wave. Yes, the company is founded by smart, savvy people who contributed a lot to Open Source. Yes, this is no LinuxOne-like scam. Yes, prospects for the company can be great if GNOME is widely accepted in especially the corporate world. But I don't think the business model makes sense until GNOME really takes off and corporate clients start buying support contracts. IMHO, that will not happen anytime soon, at least not before the first couple of rounds of financing for Helix Code. I believe they have positioned themselves either for being acquired by a bigger company, or a quick IPO after showing a token amount of revenues over the next couple of years.

Re:Business model..

[ghazban]

Ok, here goes. This is what I think of the situation: A company needs a reliable application for linux, suited for their business needs, so they pay the gnome support people to write the application for them, and supply support for them, and release it under the GPL.

Re:Business model..

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone working in Fortune 1000 companies tell me if they are paying Microsoft for Windows or MS Office support contracts?

I worked at GE, definitely a Fortune 1000 company, and I assure you that they sent all sorts of money for support and subscription services. Companies need training and integration support, if not day-to-day user interface help. And companies like the convenience of a subscription service.

I don't think the business model makes sense until GNOME really takes off

It's all about being there first and building a brand. As long as the first round of capital can keep the employees fed for a few years until GNOME really takes off, it will pay off bigtime to have been there first. And Miguel is in the perfect position to establish himself as the GNOME brand.

after showing a token amount of revenues over the next couple of years.

Revenues be damned. Money comes from VCs. If Helix is just looking for a buyout or IPO payout, they should focus on building a brand and demonstrating rapid growth. Revenue can be untold years in the future as long as they are _the_ GNOME company.

Re:Business model..

[Slimbob]

My company is an MS whore. I believe we pay 50k / year for MS premier support. I don't think any of the other programmers use it, but the techs do when the Exchange or SQL Server crashes. From what I hear, it's usually SMS intruding, and calling support is the only way to uncover it.

A Question

[Microlith]

I had this idea for a license clause in my head, all worked out, and I lost it.

No wait, here it is. Buried under the Cow and Chicken quotes...

Wouldn't it be possible to have it so software isn't GPL until AFTER the first sale/licensing/whatever?

Sorta like, I create version 1.0 of my software. I sell it to people under a "creator" clause, which lets me sell it at a profit (more than at just the creation of the media), but as soon as they get it, it's GPL software. Additionally, they get , while if they decide to redistribute it/incorporate it into their own projects, they are restricted to the GPL's terms.

Is this possible? Would it seem so far fetched to actually be able to profit from the software you write, yet make sure it's still opensource?

You've got "Joe" entirely wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine you are Joe Newbie. You install GNOME and suscribe to the Support service by miguel's company. You pay a nominal fee each month. Then every other week you get a CD in the mail with various updates and bug fixes. Also you get a newsletter with various happenings in GNOME world.

Installing patches and bugfixes every two weeks isn't what I would call "easy to use".

The average doesn't want to "maintain" their apps - they want ot download them and use them.

Added to which, most average users would see no value in getting a newsletter about "the GNOME world".

Theo lost my respect...

[Russ Nelson]

... when he threatened to mailbomb me.
-russ

Miguel The Mouth lost my respect.

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as he opened his mouth.

Just a second.. (further offtopic)

[prodeje]

And while its not yet the optimal solution yet, Sun is developing (and is in beta testing of) StarOffice for Java. And the Linux JDK/JRE is available for -

x86
PPC
Sparc
Alpha
ARM
and mkLinux

I'm still hoping that Corel LGPL/OpenSource WP 2000, although I don't exactly see it happening.

*sigh*
...

both personal opinions

[MikeBabcock]

I consider both statements to be personal opinions and devoid of universal truth.

I consider the Gnome system to be wonderful, UI wise, compared to Windows. I would attribute 80% of that to the included Enlightenment Window Manager, not to Gnome in general. I consider GTK+ to be eons ahead of MFC for making quick and dirty programs with that actually look good.

As a beginner, which would I prefer? Windows maybe ... for now. Which do I like for what I use my computer for? Gnome of course (I'm using it right now ...).

I don't think this poster has the right to claim that the other person was arrogant any more than the latter had the right to say that Gnome all-in-all makes Windows look crude. Windows has some points that shine in comparison to Gnome (the Gnome configuration panel sucks ... bad!, but Windows' themeability sucks worse ;-) ).

The fact that Miguel is doing something new is interesting ... and through the few E-mail contacts I've had with him as a programmer, I'm impressed with his abilities, so I'll be watching closely.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

How strange

[Zagato-sama]

Why in the world is 95 even mentioned in this article? Dear god ;) I think if you're going to compare Gnome to a Windows GUI then do it to the Win 98 or 2000. Claiming that a group of programmers made a gui that supposedly looks better then something microsoft came up with 4-5 years ago isn't that great a PR statement ;)

Re:How strange

[Mr. Piccolo]

OK, so exactly how much difference _is_ there between the 95 and 98 GUIs besides using IE as the file manager? Oh, and I guess being able to put a URL barin the taskbar.

Other than that, it looks just about the same, correct?

Re:How strange

[jregel]

I think the differences are more technical (speaking from an architectural pov). The component model means that the web browser is essentially a an applet which explorer integrates into it's interface. I think that's fairly smart, although the MS implementation is as ever spoilt by a lack of security and reliability.

When KDE 2.0 implements this functionality (which I believe it will), I'm sure it will be universally applauded. When GNOME does something similar (which I don't know if they intend to do), then that will be universally applauded. Let's hope that both KDE and GNOME implement it in a better way...

Re:How strange

[Zagato-sama]

It's exactly that, IE as the file manager merges web/ftp site and file browsing together seamlessly. It is _completely_ diffrent from the old explorer.

Re:How strange

[Anonymous Coward]

.. Bolts two different tasks together semi-seamlessly, rather. Actually, it wasn't until IE 5.0 that you could browse ftp sites using explorer or something explorer-ish without using non-MS software like CuteFTP. The Windows 98 UI (or 2000, or Win 95/NT 4 with IE 4's Windows Desktop Update) is almost exactly the same as the Win 95 / NT 4 explorer. Besides the stupid crap (View as Web Page or the Active Desktop) there are some nice incremental changes, like being able to right-click on items in the Start Menu or being able to drag Start Menu items into a different order. Also, if you have IE 5 installed, by adding a new toolbar for My Computer or the Desktop to your taskbar and making it as small as possible, you can get a cascading menu of the contents of your drives and folders, much like adding an alias of your hard drive or a folder to your Apple Menu or like KDE's Disk Navigator. Oh, and (IMHO) as long as you turn off that stupid View as Web Page crap, the Explorer interface does get a wee bit more esthetically pleasing. But it's almost exactly the same as the Win 95 interface. Anyone who's used Windows 98 is able to use Windows 95 and vice versa.

Fascist (or just stupid) US migration service

[gwolf]

They keep saying that the US is the land of the free - An I understand from that that they want everybody to be as free as they are. Also, they keep saying they are commited to having the best IT people working with them.

And then, I see this. Miguel, a brilliant and very recognized and skilled programmer, has been trying to move to the US for several years already. I would never dream of doing so, but anyway - It's not me. I'd prefer having him stay in Mexico (in UNAM, in fact)... He wants to leave, so be it...

The US government is, I think, among the blindest entities ever to exist. What more accreditation do you need than to see this guy's work? Unbelievable...

I've got an idea for a business model...

[SurfsUp]

1) Become popular and famous by leading a gui-building project
2) Announce you're going into business and describe any kind of business plan, however incomplete or impractical
3) Sit back and wait for slashdot readers to improve your business plan for you

Yes, well sorry, that was kind of facetious - but I'll throw my $.02 in by saying that, with gnome developing rapidly (it had better, it's got a long way to go) I for one would be interested in subscribing to some kind of automatic update feed where I always had the latest of everything. Would that be worth $20/year? Darn right it would.

Now that I've got your attention (stop reading now if you're not in the mood for a rant) I have to mention a few things that just have to be fixed in Gnome:

Keyboard focus handling is abysmal - almost entirely missing. For example, when you put away the panel focus should automatically go back to where it was before you clicked on the panel. Another example: when you click on an app in the pager, it should get keyboard focus (duh). Whenever you minimize an app, the next app on the stack should get focus.

There has to be a delay between the time the mouse moves off a main menu and the time the submenu disappears.

When you click a widget and some other widget is supposed to disappear, your click *must still get through* to the widget you clicked on.

Why is the pager applet tied to the panel task list? That's just wrong.

Task cycling via alt-tab isn't well thought through, i.e., it's very hard to get to the task you want. There is no excuse for cycling through only the list of raised tasks - you need to be able to cycle through all tasks, including minimized.

Far too many applications in the suite are unuseable without the mouse. *Everything* with a scroll bar should respond to the arrow keys.

Good things about Gnome are too many to mention. Especially, it's good that Gnome is now stable and doesn't mess up its configuration like it used to. Nonetheless, I'm running KDE right now, mainly because of the above-mentioned irritations. I recognize that working on the internals first and getting everything stable has been the highest priority till now, but I sure hope that more attention starts getting paid to those little details that really matter to the user.

Re:I've got an idea for a business model...

[gabrielm]

most of your complaints have to do with the window manager you're using., especially with the focus issues, like tabbing between apps.

>>Why is the pager applet tied to the panel task list? That's just wrong.
it isn't anymore, theres now the deskview and tasklist applets.

what is a pain, and you're right is that on some gtk apps im so used to using alt+f,e,etc to get to the File, Help menu and sometimes it doesn't work! so i have to almost memorize each apps keyboard accelerators to open, close, etc.

Ooooh, I'm gonna lose karma for this...

[miscellaneous]

I know this is off-topic, but I just saw an add banner at the top of the page that "click here" over a picture of a woman's face. to the left of that was a banner that said "X10 and Slashdot" [invite you to visit the wired home of tomorrow , or something like that]. Yep, slashdot. Trade mark logo and all.

That isn't the only one I've seen, either. I saw one at zdnet or something that showed an alternating picture of the midriff of a woman in a bathing suit and "Click Here" in big letters. They should probably be tied up and made to watch three years of Brady Bunch reruns just for using an annoying animated gif (much like the VA Linux one at the top of the screen now) which was so gaudy that I had to wear sunglasses just to look directly at it, but I'm concerned about something deeper.

Ya know, d00d, if I wuz a chick, those ad's'd kinda piss me off (TIC). Seriously, These ads seem rather denigrating to women. Not only do they implicitly exclude women from the target market, but they use women's bodies to sell friggin' home control electronics. That's just offensive.

I'm not saying /. shouldn't run ads from X10, but does it really want to associate itself with that kind of ad by having it's name on there. I think a bit less of 'em for it, and I doubt I'm the only one.

I remember visiting the home control home page before it was revamped, and it was kind of sexist and control-freaky. So, maybe I'm biased on this, but I don't think so.

Re:Ooooh, I'm gonna lose karma for this...

[Midnight Coder]

You are not alone. I also dislike the X10 adverts.

I personally dislike them because I'm trying to use the web for learning about technical/political issues. Seeing pornographic pictures masquerading as advertisements is very distracting, it breaks my concentration. Moreover it makes me feel uncomfortable when I'm reading an article in the office. (I not against porn but it isn't appropriate in my workplace)

I know this is the whole point of the advert, however it so effective that I now automatically move the leftmost hundred pixels of browser windows showing zdnet articles off the left of the screen, or more often do not read zdnet stuff at all.

[OT] Moderation Madness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go figure... I was a moderator for 5 straight months, but I only have a karma of 10.
*shrug*

THE POINT...

[lostpasswd]

is that as Gnome is adopted by companies, who do you think they will turn to for support? Hmmm?

Tread carefully Miguel

[Steve_OC]

There are only 2 ways of making money in OpenSource, and horizontal software is not one of them.

Gnome, Gnumeric, Office, etc are all well and good, but they are way too horizontal.

In the future, nobody will pay for horizontal software.

The 3 main ways of making money in the future (in this software industry) are :

1. Traditional flogging of vertical market packages. Make something really neat, like a turn-key system to run a medical front office, or a complete hardware+software solution to control a cruise missile. You need a team of people available to take phone calls 24x7, onsite training, flash office, glossy brochures, regular advertising, etc. All very traditional business sense here, nothing new except that your product uses Linux/Gnome. You need a good management team and plenty of cash to roll this idea off. The idea and the technology itself become almost irrelevant to the success of the venture - it needs to be good, sure, but that is not even half the story.
2. Consulting. Hang out your sign, sign on with a few headhunters, and sell your time. You still work for the man, so to speak, but the money is better, and the risks are zero. Needs no money to startup.
3. Online service. Buy a bomb-proof bunker, build a beowulf box, connect in a clump of T1's and provide some essential service on the net. Hire some 24x7 nightowls and a security guard. Build your business model on something simple but essential, pump up the volumes, and skim off a toekn management fee on each transaction.

These are the principle means of making a living in the industry. In fact, these basic tennants apply to any industry, in any age since the dawn of civilisation.

Just tread carefully, get out of bed early and do the ugly hard stuff, and make sure that each day you make more than you spend, and you should be fine.

Re:Tread carefully Miguel

[brokeninside]

There are only 2 ways of making money in OpenSource, and horizontal software is not one of them.

I beg to differ. The 30,000+ person organization I word for is plumping down hundreds of dollars for each PC it installs for licensing for MS Office. If employee churn is something like 10% (which is low for an IT company) and the company is growing by 5% a year (again a low estimate), your looking at a yearly bill of 4,500 time the cost of the license.

It seems to me that the yearly bill alone for licensing MS software could foot the consultation bill for rollout and conversion to a new office suite.

And then there is always the Microsoft mandated forced upgrade. The only the company I work at upgraded to Office 97 from Office 95 were the incompatible file formats. The bulk of our clients were emailing us documents in Word and Excel 97 formats that couldn't be read. 30,000 times the upgrade fee is a pretty penny.

Which brings up another very good point. The only way that a gnome based office suite will be succesful is if it has complete compatability with Word and Excel. 99% compatability won't be good enough. Re-formatting the thousands of design documents in our cvs tree alone would be a nightmare, let alone all our day to day business docs or the docs people email to us on a daily basis.

I wish Helix good fortune and hope they can pull it off, because if they can, it will be quite lucrative and at the same time beneficial to everyone. Free (as in freedom) software is a very good thing.

Perfectly Put

[Luke B. Bishop]

Hey, how come the comment above was rated "2 (Insightful)" and this guy is still at 0. Must be because he's an AC and nobody listens to AC's. Seriously, could we maybe get a moderator over here?

comments, get yer comments...

[Anonymous Coward]

Miguel is GREAT in his interviews. If there's one thing the Linux community needs, it's more people who know how to have fun when they are discussing something.

I'm not so hot on the massive "Gnome Everywhere" thing, and I don't really like the Qt licensing, so for myself, I just use:

XFCE WM

...then set up the menus with my favorite gnome apps.

Miguel has been a driving force in the desktop and GUI areas. He has a lot of name recognition, skill, personality and drive. I look forward to trying/using his office suite. I hope we see more interviews with him; they are always refreshing.

There is a 4th biz model that I forgot about

[Steve_OC]

The Church / Charity biz model.

You connvince a large number of people that you are doing a great deal of good for the community as a whole, and that any donations from people will be put to good use.

As long as people maintain a level of faith where they believe that a dollar in the church's pocket will have a more far-reaching impact than anything that they personally can acheive, then the money will keep flowing.

This model suits Open Source pure R&D very well.

The challenge is to keep up the faith of the donators, and to maintain a 'value proposition' just like anyone else has to, whilst avoiding the excesses of sloth, greed, lust and idleness in yourself.

In fact, probably the best business book you can read is the Old Testament - its full of a lot of business related parables, and raw common sense, amongst other stuff designed to frighten young children and inspire ufo-ologists.

There is a 4th biz model that I forgot about

[Steve_OC]

The Church / Charity biz model.

You connvince a large number of people that you are doing a great deal of good for the community as a whole, and that any donations from people will be put to good use.

As long as people maintain a level of faith where they believe that a dollar in the church's pocket will have a more far-reaching impact than anything that they personally can acheive, then the money will keep flowing.

This model suits Open Source pure R&D very well.

The challenge is to keep up the faith of the donators, and to maintain a 'value proposition' just like anyone else has to, whilst avoiding the excesses of sloth, greed, lust and idleness in yourself.

In fact, probably the best business book you can read is the Old Testament - its full of a lot of business related parables, and raw common sense, amongst other stuff designed to frighten young children and inspire ufo-ologists.

i think...

[Anonymous Coward]

...women have the right to make money off their bodies, if they choose to do that.

if a woman wants to model, i see no compelling reason to restrict them.

if a woman wants to program, i see no compelling reason to restrict them.

i seem to recall from a psych class that both women and men tend to purchase product that has a woman's image on it.

also, most modeling agencies, women's magazines and cosmetics/beauty companies are owned/managed/operated by women. the magazines/ads often show nipples through sheer material, very short skirts, midriff, belly button, etc. Usually, there are pictures of (tasteful) nudity inside the magazine. these mags are bought nearly universally by women, not men.

outlawing or restricting the use of women's images in sales/marketing would put a lot of women out of work.

Re: i think...

[miscellaneous]

...yeah, but X10 isn't owned by women.

And I'm not opposed to women using their bodies to make money. Hell, if ya wanna get real radical, I think that prostitution laws are a symptom of baptist sensibilities that would keep women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, and to punish those who dare to do the "unspeakable". To make sure, if you will, that women have sex only in the context of marriage, where she can service her man whenever he snaps his fingers.

I wasn't arguing that these sorts of things should be outlawed; far from it. I am opposed to censorship in almost any form. I'm just wondering whether slashdot wants to actively support it, to put their name on it.

For one thing, these ads are just tasteless, and they assume that I, spikey little horny toad that I am, am stupid enough to click on a picture of a woman no matter what's behind it, which pisses me off.

Gnome ?

[warmi]

``In 14 months, he led 300 programmers all over the world to create a product that makes Windows 95 looks crude; it's restful, it's aesthetic,''

That's just pure bullshit.It might look good on screenshots but as soon as you touch it screams "amateur work."

If after statements like this some Windows users go out and try this thing they will he and his company will completely loose credibility.

BTW. 300 programmers ?? Shit, in commercial setting one could create much ,much more over this period of time.

Re:Gnome ?

[gabrielm]

>BTW. 300 programmers ?? Shit, in commercial >setting one could create much ,much more over >this period of time.

i think most of them are volunteers, not getting paid, doing programs because it's fun. rather than complaining about programs that don't work, try sending in a bug report or don't use it.

GNOME stands for...

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU Shared Library Desktop. No objects or components in sight...

-T

Re: I don't get it ...

[Kwil]

The normal rules of economics don't apply to free software.

I'm not sure I buy this one. I admit, I haven't been following things too closely, but aside from Red Hat, I don't know of one free software firm/person that's making enough to support themselves.

And Red Hat (and its clones) is a significantly special case - they already had the code developed for them, for free. Add development time and what the wages would have been for programming and I don't think they'd have made it this far.

Kwil

Re:US migration service

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comments are pathetic. The US immigration already allows millions of unskilled and skilled mexicans into our country. Do you know that there are only 31 million people in california, yet an unbelievable 4 million of them are illegal aliens, mostly from mexico. That is a fact. And furthermore out of all of california, 1 out of 5 people were born outside the united states! The last thing this world needs is for this country to assume that Linux programmers are so talented and special that they can all bring in boatloads of their families to this country to live here and breed. (yes breed, ask San Diego county what MAJORITY of births is from citizens versus non-citizens). Or ask Los Angeles county where 66% of their total General Fund is spent on... pure direct welfare handouts. 66%! Or that in california, the state where an incredible 18% to 19% of people are permanently out of work on welfare... what percentage of mexicans are amoung that group. I say let Miguel stay in mexico and keep his relatives there... if he takes an IQ test and scores well over 124 (the AVERAGE) of skilled white males, and can document having 75,000 dollars in liquid assets (what some POOR countries like Belize request from Mexicans immigrating) then I will feel comfortaable in letting Migeul and his family pour into Los Estado Unidos where he can peck away at his freeware projects. I am sick of paying up to 11% of income to california (the rate two years ago), 3% for OSHA/CASDI, 15% for US FICA, 28% to federal IRS and after spending sales tax of CA 8.5% on the NET (after state and federal) This is 57% tax BEFORE the sales tax making the sales tax equivalent in power to over double (17%)... This brings me to 74% effective anual tax. 74%!!!! i only keep one out of 4 dollars and this (gwolf at chmd.edu.mx) calls me a racist for not wanting to have more taxes taken! News flash for gwolf: Mexico is not a race it is a country. The largest leading indicator that a person from another country will apply for welfare in this country is their country of origin, and mexico is in the lead. He can program GNOME from mexico and keep his grandparents and siblings and parents there. I can't afford any more wards of the state.

Boston, Toilet of the NorthEast?

[imcoyote]

Of all the miserably supressive, over taxed, over regulated, and poorly in need of technical expertise places to start a Linux business! If he's capable of getting past the state and city restrictions, and if he's capable of finding any competent technical folks, at least someone who could spell "vi"...then best of luck...he'll need it!

Re:free product, charge for tech support reminds m

[Helge Hafting]

of microsoft if ms would give it out for free... you all know what i mean, make a shoddy product that wont work, then charge $30.00 a minute for support. now i'm not saying it'l be like that, thats just what pops into my head

Yes! Please do that! Today the PHB's don't understand about "free" linux. If MS did this then the linux/windows comparison would reduce to this:

Who cost most in support? I.e. (support price)x(amount of support necessary during normal use)

It couldn't possibly hurt.

Slackware 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that Slackware ties the two you mention, E and gnome together -- I had to switch to KDE though because when you hit the exit/logout button, it only kills E but not gnome - I have to kill gnome by (alt-ctrl-backaspace) -- just a distribution issue I guess -- at any rate KDE looks and works good enough for now

Re:Its *NOT* a good business model

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that originally how Netscape planned to make its money? By providing support for their product?.. My *grandmother* never had to call them, she was smart enough to have a "Netscape for Dummies" type of book by her side whenever there was something she didn't understand, so essentially I wholeheartedly agree. How *ARE* they supposed to make money from it?

Perhaps "support" should be redefined.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not gone through all the posts on this article; however, the responses I did read did not mention this angle of support. I think the support model can make money. The more open source applications that are in the marketplace, the more companies will wish to customize their entire "office suite." Instead of "per incident" support specific business will want a custom office suite developed and integrated into their business environment. For example k-6 educators will want a specific theme and environment for their school. They will want a custom word processing applications that might remove complicated unnecessary features. I believe their is a wonderful opportunity for people to make money from consulting/support. But, I think the support will be "last mile" development, with support for those customizations.

Re:Graphics dont convey informantion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those drawings are near worthless without some written tolerances to accompany them. This was one of the first things that was drilled into me in Engineering Graphics at University.

jedi@geek-compound

Re:US migration service

[gwolf]

There's a big difference between well-skilled IT professionals, like Miguel, and the average illegal immigrant. I am not supporting the drain of Mexicans into the US, that's harmful for both countries and - specially - for the people that actually cross the border. But Miguel, I think, has a very different case. Denying a visa to someone like him seems plainly stupid - without taking into account what you or I think about it. You prefer having him in Mexico, I also do... But he does not. And he is perfectly qualified to take the decision.

And for the record, his family lives in the USA. The only thing preventing him from living there was the lack of a visa, because he doesn't have a degree... Who needs a degree when having the knowledge?

Anyway...