Yeah, except more and more you expect software to work with each other. Suddenly you find there's lots of maintenance shops and accessory shops and fleet management shops and driver training shops and whatnot that don't deal with motorcycles. Of course we know that vendors only play nice with themselves, but even when you put all open source software in one bin you will find there's specialized software you miss. And that software is likely to be made to work with the most common solution.
Just recently I've heard on the news OpenOffice lost 4000 (norwegian) and 20000 (norwegian) users in the public sector here, moving to MS Office. That's 3-4% of all public employees and a huge win for Microsoft which is creeping back up towards 100%. One seems to focus on Thunderbird as a poor alternative to Outlook/Exchange mostly - they probably got a better deal on MS Office than just Outlook, which is like waving a huge red flag to MS that they're going with another office suite. The other mostly focused on integration to pedagogical and administrative tools, citing a lot of custom work needed.
It's not cheap to be the one paving the road, paying for additional features or custom development. If open source already did everything you want it to do and integrates with everything you need it to integrate with then sure, but that's a dream world. Open source lives off the idea that software is almost good enough and that a bunch of continuous improvements will move it forward. But quite often you come to a gap, there is no open source solution to do X and writing a solution from scratch is just too much to bear. Very often someone has really cornered the marked on some niche and they only wotk with MS, you can't just pretend that doesn't happen and is a real problem that costs money.
And you need an American credit card. And they may at any time shut off any known proxy service or something. And you need a lot more tech-fu than to torrent anything, though I admit that shouldn't be a problem to a slashdotter. And after that, you're probably still violating the ToS so you are breaking contract law which is civil law, which is exactly the same as the copyright violations are prosecuted under. So you can jump through all those hoops and you're still breaking the law, the only thing you'll end up with is a lower chance of getting sued which really is extremely low and extremely much cheaper on this side of the pond anyway.
And slightly cheaper I guess, but I tend to buy the BluRay releases to support the shows I like. I figure AACS/BD+ is practically broken since they haven't been able to stop the decrypters for quite some time now and I'm all for promoting broken DRM. It still sucks for Linux but I'd rather market forces keep them from moving to another new DRM system rather than having to deal with yet another round of forced obsolescence. And as a biological limitation rather than a technical one, 1080p is enough for everyone. Anything more will be like SACD and DVD Audio (Consumers: huh? and huh?/me want mp3/aac)
I guess you missed the point by miles. This isn't the Cataclysm release where people go batshit crazy to get online within ten minutes of release. I'm not talking about it being aired a few hours or even days earlier or later. I'm talking about it taking months and years and sometimes not at all.
Typically the first season is aired only in the US. If it's a success then that season is typically sold to EU networks next year so we're a full season behind. Since for the most part they can't catch up - with some exceptions during the author's strike - they stay a year behind. Even if they stretched the seasons they'll be completely out of touch with season endings and such and they can't send two full seasons in the time the US sends one.
I think open source needs to start pushing a pledges model of funding, the totally-free or ad-sponsored models don't fit for all cases.
Of all the open source projects that can claim lack of money is the source of their woes, Firefox must be one of the least worthy after perhaps the kernel and a few dual licensed projects. Through the Google deal they have been in a far better position than almost every other open source project that has had minimal impact on Google development, if they trip this up they have no one else to blame.
My then-wife and I went to a bar in Wood River that always had great bands, cheap drinks, and no cover charge. The band took a break and we went to the car to smoke a joint (again, this was back in the stoned age).
American Dad? Sign me up. Californication? Sign me up. Dexter? Sign me up. Doctor Who? Sign me up. Family Guy? Sign me up. The Simpsons? Sign me up.
Just let me here in Norway get it same time as US air date. Just today I discussed the latest simspon episode with a colleague - and I mean the one that aired this weekend in the US. Fuck the european TV networks and do direct delivery and see what they're still willing to pay.
When 90% of the people are part of the problem is when I absolutely do care.
While 90% may be religious, 90% aren't part of the problem. Many, many people manage to reasonably combine spiritual beliefs with science and a secular state. Some 90% are religious in my country as well (85% christian, 5% other). Yet there's no problem teaching science in science class, in fact I think this problem is largely limited to the US. Committing adultery is a pretty clear violation of the ten commandments, but it's not a crime. Religious matters are a matter between you and God, not you and the state. And in this case, your spouse.
There was a discussion up this christmas regarding christmas dinners and muslims, as a traditional christmas feast has both alcohol and pork. I think the general sentiment was clear, we will provide alternative food and non-alcoholic beverages as we generally do for allergics and pregnants and drivers and people who simply don't like it but trying to impose on everyone else that they won't eat or drink it either is out of the question. We would not be excluding them, they would be excluding themselves. I'm not afraid of others living their lives differently, I'm only afraid of them imposing on my life.
You say it like it's a good thing. Fair enough that all text doesn't need to render pixel perfect equal but making things that would be basic columns, headers and footers in a document editor has been pure hell to implement in HTML, even worse in the early days wtih table abuse. What people want has been a square peg, HTML has been the round hole and web developers were handed the hammer and told to get to work.
Hehe, I'm not going to answer that directly but what your salary is worth depends on where you live. I live in Norway which is a far more expensive place to live than the US, though rent in some places in the US like New York are much higher. I looked at a cost of living index and it's roughly the equivalent of ~$80k in Dallas, Texas. It depends what I spend it for, on things that have a "global" price like computers and electronics my money lasts longer but on local services like going to a restaurant the prices are just as high as my salary.
Merit raises at most places (If they're even doing them, my company has frozen them this year) are 2% for reasonable performance and top out at 4% for exceptional performance.
No wonder US companies have crazy turnover rates, at my last employer the first year after I was hired I got a 14% raise and the year after that a 12% raise. Of course they could hardly keep that up every year, but 4% would be an insult. I hope that's at least 4% over inflation or it's a complete joke-
That generally depends on what end of stick you're on. Trust me, there's many people that are incredibly petty when it comes to anybody being paid more than them. Particularly if you're being paid for your skills and there's not much formal reasons you can point to. When I was relatively fresh I'd have no problem telling what I got paid to fish out how much they got paid, but the higher my pay got the less willing I am to talk about it. I still discuss it with a few close friends to know where the market is, but far from everyone.
I don't have a problem with younger people earning more than older people in general, I know I've passed quite a few people on a fairly steady rapid climb and is making a pay that would be respectable for a guy 10 years my senior. However, I would be very surprised if a guy straight out of college - no matter how hot the technology he knows is - could command a higher pay than a senior developer. There are after all fairly many college graduates and they've yet to show much real world coding skill. Starting salaries are typically low all around - for relative values of low - that reflect that. If the wage structure is so flat that giving new hires a bump puts them 30% above the team lead, there's something very wrong with what he was paid in the first place. Sounds to me he's the kind of guy who'll work for peanuts and should have asked for more or left for a better position somewhere else long ago.
People that get addicted to a fantasy world typically have traits that make them want to escape the real world. Actually escaping into a fantasy world only burns more bridges between you and everyone else, leading to an even worse condition. Some of the worst gaming addicts remind me of drug addicts in that they say they got nothing else, the only people they know is their clan and everyone else has backed off just like with a drug addict. In the choice between bad influences and no social network at all, most people pick the bad influences.
It's a very clever idea, and companies are all falling over themselves to give away their best technologies to China, since they're so eager for short-term profits, they don't realize they're shooting themselves in the foot, long term.
Oh, they probably do. But the other possibility is that some major competitor takes the deal, cashes the short term profit and you're just as screwed long term. In any market with strong competition it is unlikely that all will refuse. Like with high speed rail they didn't sign one deal, they signed deals with French, German and Japanese companies. The Chinese aren't stupid, they present it like "The pie is now being cut. Do you want a piece of it or don't you?" and if they experienced a real lockout they could just throw enough rumors out there until someone panics and signs a deal "before anyone else does". There's not really all that many good options here.
Maybe you could shave 10% off the final price of an aircraft but when you pay £18,000,000 for an average jet do you really want to take a chance on a new company that doesn't yet have the global network and long standing expertise like Airbus or Boeing does?
No, but the Chinese will. With the entire domestic market as well as international lines to and from China any planes they build are likely to see considerable flight time whether they get any initial foreign buyers or not.
Ah yes, the thing that goes from where you don't live to place you don't need to go when you don't need to travel. The beauty of the car is that it goes all the way to your driveway, on every reasonably flat asphalt/gravel/dirt road and it's always ready to go and will take the most direct route to your destination. If you're going to replace cars you should understand why people use cars in the first place.
Like just take my parents for example, they live around 600 meters from the closest grocery store and 150 meters from the nearest bus stop. Not great distances, but when they're both retirees with not the best of legs they're not going to walk + bus + walk again carrying the bags. With a car they're independent, without a car they're not. If you can't solve that, you can pry their car from their cold dead hands or the doctor says they can't drive no more.
I've worked quite a bit with teleconferences, phone conferences, remote sharing etc. and while it sort of works I'd never choose that over having people traveling half an hour to get to work.
1) The communication is poorer. No camera solution I've seen manages to shift focus between the different people as easily as around a meeting table. Even with a lot of training, users aren't able to sketch something as easily on the computer as they do on a whiteboard. And the general chatter of a group of people working on the same thing in the same room works far better than constant phone calls.
2) While some people have very high discipline, it's no doubt that at home you have far more temptations than at work. Of course you could say that only performance matters but really you know people will adjust to doing "good enough", while if you have them trapped at work they'd keep working some more. And you can be sure they will take greater liberties in doing other things when it suits them making them harder to reach which goes back to 1).
3) Working from home doesn't build nearly the same kind of team spirit and attachment to the company as being at work does. While some find it nice to spend more time with family, many feel it's lonely and isolated. I've seen some of it as a consultant, while you're part of a company you're really on your own a lot of the time. Just the watercooler talk and that some of us go out for beers after work from time to time is social glue that makes you less likely to leave.
Obviously if you're working with remote teams this just isn't possible, but it might still be better to have each of them in local offices for the reasons above even if they are going to work remotely anyway. I mean what you're talking about would be quite feasible today, and many companies have tried it. They've mostly realized it has quite a few drawbacks too that aren't easy to get rid of.
The stock market is like a store that switches between having a free giveaway and being on fire with only one narrow door. Everybody wants to be first in and first out respectively and any news starts a stampede that is far greater than the actual change. During the financial crisis our stock index fell 65%, does it mean that 65% of the economy disappeared in a matter of months? Of course not, but everybody wanted out, out, out. Now it's up almost 250% since the bottom because everybody wants in, in, in. That is wany traders who actually analyze stocks go long-short, the overall market may go crazy but you're just exposed to their relative performance. The rest are mostly trying to second-guess the other investors.
Probably, but the tech press doesn't love Jobs for his day-to-day operations. I don't think anyone expects Jobs to be really 100% gone unless he's deadly ill. Unless he's really so out of it that Apple must make major strategic choices without him, people will think he's still running the show.
I can agree to that, except if Palin is off her feet a couple weeks during primary campaigns and then recovers fully. Just to be on the safe side. If the economy takes another big dive, anyone on the other side could win.
Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 1
I think more that GPL code can use BSD code, but BSD code can't use GPL code. So in practice the GPL tools tend to do everything the BSD tools do, plus whatever was made by people that only want to release code under the GPL. Same goes for projects, if there's a BSD project someone probably started a similar GPL project that could stand on the shoulders of the BSD one. Then the GPL version gets some unique features the BSD variety doesn't have and the momentum shifts.
It's well and good to believe in the BSD philosophy but it's got to be boring and annoying to reimplement something someone else already wrote under a different open source license, namely the GPL. The easy way to scratch your itch is to just use the GPL tool rather than patch the BSD tool. But if enough people think like that, well naturally the BSD tool will simply stagnate. If "universal adoption by inclusion in proprietary products" isn't a goal then really I don't see the big value of insisting it be BSD, not GPL.
Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 2
I agree that there is an ideological split between the BSD and GPL camp. But apart from that you're throwing up a million kinds of problems that equally well apply to the Linux kernel but that is running on everything from desktops to servers, with or without binary modules on lots of distros that want different things.
KDE and Gnome may have their holy flamewars over UI design, but if that was the only thing splitting them apart we'd long since see a unification and the different UIs as different skins/settings. All the major subsystems would be shared and how the start bar/menu/file dialog and so on should look would be trivial. And probably configurable for all applications.
Actually the language barrier of C vs C++ is a much bigger problem. Lots and lots of functionality is duplicated between Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt simply because there's no way to write a common module that would fit both projects. You can write a spec and have two implementations, or you can have a separate process like D-Bus but you can't really make GObjects and QObjects talk.
Ok, so maybe not absolutely everyone would use it. But if you managed to get one toolkit become a de facto standard for the average Linux desktop, you'd be a lot further along. It'd be a helluva job though, I'd suggest an asbestos suit as work attire...
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 1
Oh, come on. It has worked reasonably well since 4.1, and just fine since 4.2. I guess you haven't used it (certainly not since after 4.1).
The plural of anecdote is not data but KDE 4.1 crashed for me and so did 4.2, even with the 4.2.x updates. Whatever my issue was, it was fixed in 4.3 and since then I've not had any stability problems. In any case, 4.6 is about to be released so we're talking about what it was like two years ago, not how it is today.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, except more and more you expect software to work with each other. Suddenly you find there's lots of maintenance shops and accessory shops and fleet management shops and driver training shops and whatnot that don't deal with motorcycles. Of course we know that vendors only play nice with themselves, but even when you put all open source software in one bin you will find there's specialized software you miss. And that software is likely to be made to work with the most common solution.
Just recently I've heard on the news OpenOffice lost 4000 (norwegian) and 20000 (norwegian) users in the public sector here, moving to MS Office. That's 3-4% of all public employees and a huge win for Microsoft which is creeping back up towards 100%. One seems to focus on Thunderbird as a poor alternative to Outlook/Exchange mostly - they probably got a better deal on MS Office than just Outlook, which is like waving a huge red flag to MS that they're going with another office suite. The other mostly focused on integration to pedagogical and administrative tools, citing a lot of custom work needed.
It's not cheap to be the one paving the road, paying for additional features or custom development. If open source already did everything you want it to do and integrates with everything you need it to integrate with then sure, but that's a dream world. Open source lives off the idea that software is almost good enough and that a bunch of continuous improvements will move it forward. But quite often you come to a gap, there is no open source solution to do X and writing a solution from scratch is just too much to bear. Very often someone has really cornered the marked on some niche and they only wotk with MS, you can't just pretend that doesn't happen and is a real problem that costs money.
You've heard of proxies, right?
And you need an American credit card. And they may at any time shut off any known proxy service or something. And you need a lot more tech-fu than to torrent anything, though I admit that shouldn't be a problem to a slashdotter. And after that, you're probably still violating the ToS so you are breaking contract law which is civil law, which is exactly the same as the copyright violations are prosecuted under. So you can jump through all those hoops and you're still breaking the law, the only thing you'll end up with is a lower chance of getting sued which really is extremely low and extremely much cheaper on this side of the pond anyway.
And slightly cheaper I guess, but I tend to buy the BluRay releases to support the shows I like. I figure AACS/BD+ is practically broken since they haven't been able to stop the decrypters for quite some time now and I'm all for promoting broken DRM. It still sucks for Linux but I'd rather market forces keep them from moving to another new DRM system rather than having to deal with yet another round of forced obsolescence. And as a biological limitation rather than a technical one, 1080p is enough for everyone. Anything more will be like SACD and DVD Audio (Consumers: huh? and huh? /me want mp3/aac)
They might subtitle it but they don't dub it. In any case, it's mostly because things are aired in the US first and sold to everyone else later.
That would be 2 am Monday morning for you guys.
I guess you missed the point by miles. This isn't the Cataclysm release where people go batshit crazy to get online within ten minutes of release. I'm not talking about it being aired a few hours or even days earlier or later. I'm talking about it taking months and years and sometimes not at all.
Typically the first season is aired only in the US. If it's a success then that season is typically sold to EU networks next year so we're a full season behind. Since for the most part they can't catch up - with some exceptions during the author's strike - they stay a year behind. Even if they stretched the seasons they'll be completely out of touch with season endings and such and they can't send two full seasons in the time the US sends one.
I think open source needs to start pushing a pledges model of funding, the totally-free or ad-sponsored models don't fit for all cases.
Of all the open source projects that can claim lack of money is the source of their woes, Firefox must be one of the least worthy after perhaps the kernel and a few dual licensed projects. Through the Google deal they have been in a far better position than almost every other open source project that has had minimal impact on Google development, if they trip this up they have no one else to blame.
My then-wife and I went to a bar in Wood River that always had great bands, cheap drinks, and no cover charge. The band took a break and we went to the car to smoke a joint (again, this was back in the stoned age).
FTFY.
I wish they'd do this for TV series.
American Dad? Sign me up.
Californication? Sign me up.
Dexter? Sign me up.
Doctor Who? Sign me up.
Family Guy? Sign me up.
The Simpsons? Sign me up.
Just let me here in Norway get it same time as US air date. Just today I discussed the latest simspon episode with a colleague - and I mean the one that aired this weekend in the US. Fuck the european TV networks and do direct delivery and see what they're still willing to pay.
When 90% of the people are part of the problem is when I absolutely do care.
While 90% may be religious, 90% aren't part of the problem. Many, many people manage to reasonably combine spiritual beliefs with science and a secular state. Some 90% are religious in my country as well (85% christian, 5% other). Yet there's no problem teaching science in science class, in fact I think this problem is largely limited to the US. Committing adultery is a pretty clear violation of the ten commandments, but it's not a crime. Religious matters are a matter between you and God, not you and the state. And in this case, your spouse.
There was a discussion up this christmas regarding christmas dinners and muslims, as a traditional christmas feast has both alcohol and pork. I think the general sentiment was clear, we will provide alternative food and non-alcoholic beverages as we generally do for allergics and pregnants and drivers and people who simply don't like it but trying to impose on everyone else that they won't eat or drink it either is out of the question. We would not be excluding them, they would be excluding themselves. I'm not afraid of others living their lives differently, I'm only afraid of them imposing on my life.
You say it like it's a good thing. Fair enough that all text doesn't need to render pixel perfect equal but making things that would be basic columns, headers and footers in a document editor has been pure hell to implement in HTML, even worse in the early days wtih table abuse. What people want has been a square peg, HTML has been the round hole and web developers were handed the hammer and told to get to work.
Hehe, I'm not going to answer that directly but what your salary is worth depends on where you live. I live in Norway which is a far more expensive place to live than the US, though rent in some places in the US like New York are much higher. I looked at a cost of living index and it's roughly the equivalent of ~$80k in Dallas, Texas. It depends what I spend it for, on things that have a "global" price like computers and electronics my money lasts longer but on local services like going to a restaurant the prices are just as high as my salary.
Merit raises at most places (If they're even doing them, my company has frozen them this year) are 2% for reasonable performance and top out at 4% for exceptional performance.
No wonder US companies have crazy turnover rates, at my last employer the first year after I was hired I got a 14% raise and the year after that a 12% raise. Of course they could hardly keep that up every year, but 4% would be an insult. I hope that's at least 4% over inflation or it's a complete joke-
That generally depends on what end of stick you're on. Trust me, there's many people that are incredibly petty when it comes to anybody being paid more than them. Particularly if you're being paid for your skills and there's not much formal reasons you can point to. When I was relatively fresh I'd have no problem telling what I got paid to fish out how much they got paid, but the higher my pay got the less willing I am to talk about it. I still discuss it with a few close friends to know where the market is, but far from everyone.
You know, while reading TFA is strongly discouraged it's not actually forbidden.
I don't have a problem with younger people earning more than older people in general, I know I've passed quite a few people on a fairly steady rapid climb and is making a pay that would be respectable for a guy 10 years my senior. However, I would be very surprised if a guy straight out of college - no matter how hot the technology he knows is - could command a higher pay than a senior developer. There are after all fairly many college graduates and they've yet to show much real world coding skill. Starting salaries are typically low all around - for relative values of low - that reflect that. If the wage structure is so flat that giving new hires a bump puts them 30% above the team lead, there's something very wrong with what he was paid in the first place. Sounds to me he's the kind of guy who'll work for peanuts and should have asked for more or left for a better position somewhere else long ago.
People that get addicted to a fantasy world typically have traits that make them want to escape the real world. Actually escaping into a fantasy world only burns more bridges between you and everyone else, leading to an even worse condition. Some of the worst gaming addicts remind me of drug addicts in that they say they got nothing else, the only people they know is their clan and everyone else has backed off just like with a drug addict. In the choice between bad influences and no social network at all, most people pick the bad influences.
It's a very clever idea, and companies are all falling over themselves to give away their best technologies to China, since they're so eager for short-term profits, they don't realize they're shooting themselves in the foot, long term.
Oh, they probably do. But the other possibility is that some major competitor takes the deal, cashes the short term profit and you're just as screwed long term. In any market with strong competition it is unlikely that all will refuse. Like with high speed rail they didn't sign one deal, they signed deals with French, German and Japanese companies. The Chinese aren't stupid, they present it like "The pie is now being cut. Do you want a piece of it or don't you?" and if they experienced a real lockout they could just throw enough rumors out there until someone panics and signs a deal "before anyone else does". There's not really all that many good options here.
Maybe you could shave 10% off the final price of an aircraft but when you pay £18,000,000 for an average jet do you really want to take a chance on a new company that doesn't yet have the global network and long standing expertise like Airbus or Boeing does?
No, but the Chinese will. With the entire domestic market as well as international lines to and from China any planes they build are likely to see considerable flight time whether they get any initial foreign buyers or not.
Ah yes, the thing that goes from where you don't live to place you don't need to go when you don't need to travel. The beauty of the car is that it goes all the way to your driveway, on every reasonably flat asphalt/gravel/dirt road and it's always ready to go and will take the most direct route to your destination. If you're going to replace cars you should understand why people use cars in the first place.
Like just take my parents for example, they live around 600 meters from the closest grocery store and 150 meters from the nearest bus stop. Not great distances, but when they're both retirees with not the best of legs they're not going to walk + bus + walk again carrying the bags. With a car they're independent, without a car they're not. If you can't solve that, you can pry their car from their cold dead hands or the doctor says they can't drive no more.
I've worked quite a bit with teleconferences, phone conferences, remote sharing etc. and while it sort of works I'd never choose that over having people traveling half an hour to get to work.
1) The communication is poorer. No camera solution I've seen manages to shift focus between the different people as easily as around a meeting table. Even with a lot of training, users aren't able to sketch something as easily on the computer as they do on a whiteboard. And the general chatter of a group of people working on the same thing in the same room works far better than constant phone calls.
2) While some people have very high discipline, it's no doubt that at home you have far more temptations than at work. Of course you could say that only performance matters but really you know people will adjust to doing "good enough", while if you have them trapped at work they'd keep working some more. And you can be sure they will take greater liberties in doing other things when it suits them making them harder to reach which goes back to 1).
3) Working from home doesn't build nearly the same kind of team spirit and attachment to the company as being at work does. While some find it nice to spend more time with family, many feel it's lonely and isolated. I've seen some of it as a consultant, while you're part of a company you're really on your own a lot of the time. Just the watercooler talk and that some of us go out for beers after work from time to time is social glue that makes you less likely to leave.
Obviously if you're working with remote teams this just isn't possible, but it might still be better to have each of them in local offices for the reasons above even if they are going to work remotely anyway. I mean what you're talking about would be quite feasible today, and many companies have tried it. They've mostly realized it has quite a few drawbacks too that aren't easy to get rid of.
The stock market is like a store that switches between having a free giveaway and being on fire with only one narrow door. Everybody wants to be first in and first out respectively and any news starts a stampede that is far greater than the actual change. During the financial crisis our stock index fell 65%, does it mean that 65% of the economy disappeared in a matter of months? Of course not, but everybody wanted out, out, out. Now it's up almost 250% since the bottom because everybody wants in, in, in. That is wany traders who actually analyze stocks go long-short, the overall market may go crazy but you're just exposed to their relative performance. The rest are mostly trying to second-guess the other investors.
Probably, but the tech press doesn't love Jobs for his day-to-day operations. I don't think anyone expects Jobs to be really 100% gone unless he's deadly ill. Unless he's really so out of it that Apple must make major strategic choices without him, people will think he's still running the show.
I can agree to that, except if Palin is off her feet a couple weeks during primary campaigns and then recovers fully. Just to be on the safe side. If the economy takes another big dive, anyone on the other side could win.
I think more that GPL code can use BSD code, but BSD code can't use GPL code. So in practice the GPL tools tend to do everything the BSD tools do, plus whatever was made by people that only want to release code under the GPL. Same goes for projects, if there's a BSD project someone probably started a similar GPL project that could stand on the shoulders of the BSD one. Then the GPL version gets some unique features the BSD variety doesn't have and the momentum shifts.
It's well and good to believe in the BSD philosophy but it's got to be boring and annoying to reimplement something someone else already wrote under a different open source license, namely the GPL. The easy way to scratch your itch is to just use the GPL tool rather than patch the BSD tool. But if enough people think like that, well naturally the BSD tool will simply stagnate. If "universal adoption by inclusion in proprietary products" isn't a goal then really I don't see the big value of insisting it be BSD, not GPL.
I agree that there is an ideological split between the BSD and GPL camp. But apart from that you're throwing up a million kinds of problems that equally well apply to the Linux kernel but that is running on everything from desktops to servers, with or without binary modules on lots of distros that want different things.
KDE and Gnome may have their holy flamewars over UI design, but if that was the only thing splitting them apart we'd long since see a unification and the different UIs as different skins/settings. All the major subsystems would be shared and how the start bar/menu/file dialog and so on should look would be trivial. And probably configurable for all applications.
Actually the language barrier of C vs C++ is a much bigger problem. Lots and lots of functionality is duplicated between Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt simply because there's no way to write a common module that would fit both projects. You can write a spec and have two implementations, or you can have a separate process like D-Bus but you can't really make GObjects and QObjects talk.
Ok, so maybe not absolutely everyone would use it. But if you managed to get one toolkit become a de facto standard for the average Linux desktop, you'd be a lot further along. It'd be a helluva job though, I'd suggest an asbestos suit as work attire...
Oh, come on. It has worked reasonably well since 4.1, and just fine since 4.2. I guess you haven't used it (certainly not since after 4.1).
The plural of anecdote is not data but KDE 4.1 crashed for me and so did 4.2, even with the 4.2.x updates. Whatever my issue was, it was fixed in 4.3 and since then I've not had any stability problems. In any case, 4.6 is about to be released so we're talking about what it was like two years ago, not how it is today.