The 'desktop war' won't be won by the best desktop, it will be won by the one with the best applications. The gnome foundation announcement will be a big help to gnome on this.
Gnome is free for commercial developers, Qt isn't. Conversly, if gnome start releasing libraries under the GPL rather than the LGPL they will kill gnome dead. (I'm assuming that all gnome libraries are LGPL.)
By far the most important thing Sun can contribute is a good office suite. If Star Office makes the grade Gnome will start to look like a good desktop.
But this hyperbole about commercial control on gnome from somebody whose project is based on Qt. Well, it just goes to show that if you don't expect people to be smart and intellectually honest you won't be disappointed.
First, as someone who manages a large SP system and has run IBM workstations ever since the 320s came out, yes JFS is the business and yes, it would be really nice if IBM released the Logical Volume Manager too.
I think this is a smart and encouraging long-term move by IBM. The real money gets spent not on hardware or software but on support. IBM (and SGI) must reckon that Free Software is here to stay and if they are to make money they must be leaders in it.
Individuals and Universities are likely to use Free Software without commercial support. Companies will it some of the time but not for critical systems. By being leaders in Linux IBM will do little to harm their core sales to people who wouldn't use it anyway but will make their products the logical progression for people moving away from Linux. And maybe open up a profitable Linux support division too.
In this area GPL scores over BSD licensing because companies can release their source code without the fear that a competitor will use it in their propriety closed OS.
The good news is that all this appeals to one of the most powerful force on earth, that dubious thing called enlightened self-interest. Whilst pure altruism, from Stallman and Torvalds all the way down to any of us who have ever submitted a bug-fix to Free Software, is essential it will not change the world on its own. The combination of the two just might.
I dare say you have been told many other things that were wrong. Have you ever thought what the words 'even' and 'odd' actually mean? John
An impressive decision - if they can pull it off.
on
Harmony Rides Again
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· Score: 1
Contrary to the prevailing opinion (Microsoft are big, Red Hat are big in Linux, therefore Red Hat are trying to become the Microsoft of Linux), Red Hat were not on course to be the Microsoft of Linux. Troll Tech were.
Microsoft got where they are by making sure that it was very difficult not to be Microsoft compatible and once you start defining things in terms of Microsoft compatibility you might as well just go Microsoft. It started with the OS (your program had to run under MS-DOS/Windows) and then rapidly moved up to the application level once casual electronic document exchange got going. E-mail sealed it.
Linux will not succeed as a mass OS without a single GUI, or at the very least a single API to the GUI. Whilst the short sighted talk "tools not rules", people who *use* computers just want something that works, that runs all of their programs and is easy to use.
Assuming that KDE takes off, Troll Tech were looking to be in the very nice position where anybody wanting to produce commercial software for Unix/Linux were going to have to buy Qt. The Microsoft of Linux but at the developer end of the business. And they had every hope that the free software people wouldn't bother to develop free s/w whose primary purpose was to let other people make money out of it. Qt would then have been the only part of the Linux distribution that wasn't free. I hope that Harmony can prove them wrong.
It will be interesting to see if Troll Tech try to bleed away support for Harmony by relaxing every restriction on Qt *except* the right to sell commercial products without paying for it.
Of course, it is perfectly possible that Troll Tech were genuinely just trying to let people develop free s/w and the commercial advantages were just a by product. That would be a fortunate coincidence.
Slashdot Mirror
The 'desktop war' won't be won by the best desktop, it will be won by the one with the best applications. The gnome foundation announcement will be a big help to gnome on this. Gnome is free for commercial developers, Qt isn't. Conversly, if gnome start releasing libraries under the GPL rather than the LGPL they will kill gnome dead. (I'm assuming that all gnome libraries are LGPL.) By far the most important thing Sun can contribute is a good office suite. If Star Office makes the grade Gnome will start to look like a good desktop. But this hyperbole about commercial control on gnome from somebody whose project is based on Qt. Well, it just goes to show that if you don't expect people to be smart and intellectually honest you won't be disappointed.
First, as someone who manages a large SP system and has run IBM workstations ever since the 320s came out, yes JFS is the business and yes, it would be really nice if IBM released the Logical Volume Manager too.
I think this is a smart and encouraging long-term move by IBM. The real money gets spent not on hardware or software but on support. IBM (and SGI) must reckon that Free Software is here to stay and if they are to make money they must be leaders in it.
Individuals and Universities are likely to use Free Software without commercial support. Companies will it some of the time but not for critical systems. By being leaders in Linux IBM will do little to harm their core sales to people who wouldn't use it anyway but will make their products the logical progression for people moving away from Linux. And maybe open up a profitable Linux support division too.
In this area GPL scores over BSD licensing because companies can release their source code without the fear that a competitor will use it in their propriety closed OS.
The good news is that all this appeals to one of the most powerful force on earth, that dubious thing called enlightened self-interest. Whilst pure altruism, from Stallman and Torvalds all the way down to any of us who have ever submitted a bug-fix to Free Software, is essential it will not change the world on its own. The combination of the two just might.
John
I dare say you have been told many other things that were wrong. Have you ever thought what the words 'even' and 'odd' actually mean? John
Contrary to the prevailing opinion (Microsoft are big, Red Hat are big
in Linux, therefore Red Hat are trying to become the Microsoft of
Linux), Red Hat were not on course to be the Microsoft of Linux.
Troll Tech were.
Microsoft got where they are by making sure that it was very difficult
not to be Microsoft compatible and once you start defining things in
terms of Microsoft compatibility you might as well just go
Microsoft. It started with the OS (your program had to run under
MS-DOS/Windows) and then rapidly moved up to the application level
once casual electronic document exchange got going. E-mail sealed it.
Linux will not succeed as a mass OS without a single GUI, or at the
very least a single API to the GUI. Whilst the short sighted talk
"tools not rules", people who *use* computers just want something that
works, that runs all of their programs and is easy to use.
Assuming that KDE takes off, Troll Tech were looking to be in the very
nice position where anybody wanting to produce commercial software for
Unix/Linux were going to have to buy Qt. The Microsoft of Linux but at
the developer end of the business. And they had every hope that the
free software people wouldn't bother to develop free s/w whose primary
purpose was to let other people make money out of it. Qt would then
have been the only part of the Linux distribution that wasn't free. I
hope that Harmony can prove them wrong.
It will be interesting to see if Troll Tech try to bleed away support
for Harmony by relaxing every restriction on Qt *except* the right to
sell commercial products without paying for it.
Of course, it is perfectly possible that Troll Tech were genuinely
just trying to let people develop free s/w and the commercial
advantages were just a by product. That would be a fortunate
coincidence.
John