Sorry, missed that. What other people's source though? I never noticed any authors of said copyrighted projects complain. So, unless you wrote ghostview or other projects, it's none of your buisness.
> Fuckwit.
Wow, an anon coward called me a fuckwit. That made my day a lot happier:-)
> A Celeron 500 with 64 meg of ram is more than enough to run an OS, X server, desktop and browser+office suite.
Sure, Windows98 runs on this hardware very well. You can also run KDE 1.2/Gnome 1.2 on it very well. WindowsXP and KDE 3.x and Gnome 2.x would not run with this little RAM or a Celeron 500. Perhaps a p3 or athlon 550, but not a Celeron 500.
> This is off-topic, but lately I'm finding that more and more people have absolutely no idea what usenet is. I mentioned this to one of our new IT guys here -- a so-called "hot-shot" just out of college -- and wondered if usenet "sells DSL because he can't get it through AT&T
Because increasingly, Usenet servers are not being provided by ISP's. My last two ISP's didn't provide Usenet servers, and I was unwilling to buy access to one. My ISP right now (my college), has a usenet server, but they don't provide much of the good parts of the alt. tree.
And for regular discussion, first mailing lists, and now web boards/forums have replaced parts of USENET (not established ones). I like web forums because you can access them from anywhere with a web browser, and they usually have much more adminning capabilities and posting capabilities than USENET can.
And finally, p2p networks have replaced USENET/ftp for non-hardcore (and some hardcore) leechers.
> Neither the Sudanese or the Algerian conflicts have stopped.
Yeah, I shouldn't have said that there is no fighting, but
> They are as bloody as ever.
Not true. Compare Algeria today with Algeria in 1994. Compare Sudan today with a year ago.
> Now tell me why you care so little about Sudan? Because they are black or because they don't have oil-rich sponsors? (BTW there IS oil in South Sudan but is being stolen by the northerners)
1. Not everybody in Sudan is black. 2. I don't care because my money isn't going to the government to kill of the southern rebels, and my money isn't going to the rebels to kill off pro-governemnt supporters in the south. I don't like the U.S. governemtn medelling in other countries's affairs, unless it is through U.N. peace efforts. Basically, I want to fund peace, not war.
Ok, I still disagree with the underpinings of the article, but I think dep has a few good points:
> When it was announced, there was a little gratuitous nastiness and hypocrisy thrown in: "Wednesday morning, before or during Mr. [GNOME founder Miguel] de Icaza's presentation, we will issue the press release announcing the formation of the League,"
I agree. I think the League was founded as somewhat of a "me-too" sorta thing. KDE would have continued to thrive even if the League was not announced.
> Confidentiality is a little awkward in dealing with free software projects, because it's not something to which the community is accustomed. To which the KDE League responds that it isn't a free software project. Well, then, what is it?
Well, dep is associating the League with the KDE project, and he himself knows the difference between the two. But, nonetheless, it is a valid point. In dre's response, he said that the league was "not-for-profit", and not "non-profit".
Can someone with experience in US law explain the difference, if any between the two? I'm still confused about this fact.
> Though it was announced with high ideals, there's little evidence of its ever having done anything much except collect money,
Yeah, I thought about the League a few times before this series of articles, and I never knew if they had done anything or not.
> to it somehow benefits KDE -- though again, if you ask how, exactly, it is doing this, you will not get a response.... What they give back, though, disappears into the great, gaping, one-way maw of the KDE League, never to be heard from again.
Yeah, again, I'm not sure how the League benefits KDE, or where the money goes.
> We would love to be proved wrong about this. That would require a degree of disclosure that the KDE League has thusfar refused to provide.
Yeah, if the League is legally entitled to disclose it's dealings, it would solve the whole issue.
Even if the league is "not-for-profit", and this means they have more confidentality protections, what's the use of them? This is a corporation founded to advance a free software project. This isn't Microsoft or Enron (heh).
> Why is that you care so little about Algerians or Black Sudanese?
These are parts of civil wars. Both have stopped. There is no more fighting.
The Israeli-Palistinian conflict, however, has been going on for more than fifty years. I care personally because my country, the US, is responsible for much of it. I care because my governement apparently does. My taxes are going to fund the continuing conflict.
> It's been said for years, and now it is finally coming out: The KDE project has always been associated with sleazy underhanded dealings - from the original GPL violations
They were not violating the GPL, it was their *own* source that was being violated, if anything.
> when stealing other people's code
???
> through to this... financial skullduggery.
Uh, the KDE league has nothing to do with the KDE project. Anyways, financial skullduggery has not been proved yet. I want to see an article from a third party. I once thought Dep was somewhat balanced as a journalist, but now I can clearly see that he wants to get back at people for being "anti-Israel", to the point where he calls them Nazis. Heh, go figure.
> Am I alone in thinking that there have been an excessive number of racist and stereotypical views posted on this story?
Yeah, that happens with any India-related things on slashdot.
> but this doesn't make it right, does it?
Well, I'm of Indian decent, and I live in the United States. In daily life, I've hardly ever gotten any of these kinds of "racist and stereotypical views". This being slashdot, which is pretty much anonymous, I don't really care.
I think it happens especially in slashdot because people are angry that IT jobs are being shipped to India. As an American developer, I could be angry too, but I'm not. This is how capitalism works. The cycle repeats itself over and over again.
> it does not include hindi as a native language(it must be developed).
Who cares about Hindi. I'm of Indian origin, and most of my family back home (especially older folks) can't speak Hindi well (only understand it), but can speak English and Bengali (their native language) proficiantly. In cities like Calcutta (where they're from), English is used in buisnesses as much, if not more than Hindi is.
> considering last time I was there, most of my familys electricity was turned off at 9pm
Heh, it's better in some places than others. At least all villages are close to being electrified (plan is to by 2007).
> The kde-cafe list was created to relieve the devel lists of off-topic discussions.
Yup, that it was.
> and the name kde-cafe by itself seems clear enough to me...
But not perhaps to someone who is not familiar to KDE at all.
> Everything that is discussed there has nothing to do with KDE development, or KDE at all, except for the fact that a lot of KDE people read it.
The fact that it has "kde" in it's name, and shows up in lists.kde.org almost automatically attaches itself with the KDE project as a whole for most people. Apart from the occasional redhat bashing fests, it's often the kde-politics-list. Which makes me wonder, wtf does politics have to do with KDE?
Look, I care about free speech and all that, and even as an American myself (not born here, but am an American citizen) I dislike much of America's foreign relations. But seriously, why the need to tie this into KDE? Wasn't KDE's goal to created a nice, portable, easy to use, powerful desktop that runs on X11? This leads me to bewilderment to why political discussions and debates have anything to do with the above goal.
> and a european purusing the gnome -list might think it is domianted by a bunch of Amurikans. Is that any better?
I'm not aware of a GNOME equivalent of kde-cafe. There is no gnome-politics-list or whatnot.
Anyways, I'm not talking about GNOME in any respects. I was talking about KDE. Nothing in my posts has anything to do with GNOME. Why even bring it up?
It also has nothing to do with Americans vs. Europeans. Why bring this up? As far as I know, Dre is an American, heh.
> dumb observation unless your discussion is pertaining to the NIH syndrome negatively impacting software development.
Uh, that made no sense.
> of course, a closer look will reveal that both outifits have participants from all over the globe.
Of course. But then again, what does GNOME have anything to do with it?
He himself didn't call the whole KDE project a bunch of nazi's. He just said that an outsider perusing the kde-cafe mailing list might just view it that way.
I happen to agree with him, especially from the fact that some people who posted used kde.org emails. Anyways, why does the kde-cafe exist anyways? It seems that most of it is just political jabbering that can go on in many other places. Why does it have to be affiliated with the KDE project? I think that any non-KDE related posts should be banned from any KDE-sponsored lists, but that's just my opinion.
As for the website in question itself (linuxandmain), I don't think the website is trying to put down KDE itself. The main guy behind it, dep (Dennis E. Powell), is a KDE user, and has been a participant in the KDE community for a while. So, as for Andreas saying that the comments come from a website prone to attacking KDE, this is not true.
Linuxandmain is a great website for getting linux related news. Usually, the articles are well written, even if some guest essays are full of FUD, but then again, anyone can reply to the guest essays with essays of their own.
Posted on the kde-core-devel list: I think it clears everything up. The kde-league is *not* dead. The website, linuxandmain, just seemed to have jumped the gun a bit before getting a serious comment from Andreas Pour.
And life and KDE goes on..
List: kde-core-devel Subject: Re: What has happened to the KDE League? From: Andreas Pour Date: 2002-10-05 7:34:38 [Download message RAW]
Shawn Gordon wrote: > > http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News& file=article&sid=247 > > Is this true?
Parts of it. As to the dissolution issue, that is something that needs to be straightened out with the League's lawyers, who are supposed to be handling this, undoubtedly some clerical mix-up. However, as dep wrote to me in a private e-mail (so he knows this), and as is the case, this is easily remedied and virtually inconsequential.
As to the supposed IRS from, since theKompany.com was briefly a member, you should know that the League is not a non-profit but rather a not-for-profit and hence need not file the forms.
As to the website, it's hosted on a server that experienced hardware failure and should be back up early next week.
As to the finances, that is not something for me to disclose. The League as a corporation cannot release its financial statements without approval of the members, and that approval has not occurred. That came out in the threads which were selectively quoted, IIRC, but the piece seems to be just another malicious KDE attack by a website well versed in those matters.
> If it is true then the League is beyond a colossal failure,
It certainly is not.
> it is also engaging in illegal activity.
Sorry?
> KDE really needs to get some > spokes people together and have something in place to handle this kind of > fall out. I wonder if this post will even make it through Dre's filters on me.
No, VB isn't used in many real industrial-strength programming situations, but I suspect C#/VB.NET definatly will be. C# in many ways is just VB.NET with a more C-like syntax and Java-ish and Delphi-ish language constructs. Microsoft is making a huge push to C#, and whatever Microsoft makes a big push in usually succeeds, especially when they want to kill of competition. Their primary goal is to kill off java, but with the gradual depreciation of MFC, many C++ programmers will switch to C# with the next refresh of VS. Conversely, many VB programmers will also switch to C#, by first learning VB.NET.
> And also, VS.NET is a great IDE to work with. Vim works fine,
Very few professional programmers use vim or emacs anymore on non-UNIX platforms like Windows.
Anyways, the KDE league is and was never tied to KDE itself. KDE does not tie itself to any particular commercial groups (except KDE e.V.).
So, if the KDE league is really down, it doesn't hurt KDE either way. In the end, open source software goes on. I'd like a comment from Dre (Andreas Pour), before I jump to any conclusions.
I reserve this trust in him because he's always done a phenominal job as one of the KDE project's PR guys.
> For example, on Windows, don't bother with Visual C++. Even if you choose to work with a broken compiler, the STLPort [stlport.com] library provides a compliant standard library that will work almost anywhere.
What version of Visual C++ are you talking about? While vc++ 6 was horrible broken in standards and the STL, VC++7 (VC++.NET) is quite good in both. My advice is to only use STLPort if you are targetting Visual C++ 6.0 for any windows development.
> One of the best methods I know to write code incrementally is to rapidly model it in a Rapid Development language such as Python. Since I get excited by seeing results quickly, I'd probably start by deciding on a GUI toolkit, and find some Python bindings for it.
Or you could just do the whole thing in a RAD environment (Delphi, kylix, VB.NET, C#.NET). The last one is particularily good for new development in Windows.
> Heh heh. Newbs are so funny. First its VB. Then its Java. Now its C#. Meanwhile, everyone is STILL USING C.
Uh, in what world is everyone using _C_? C is probably less popular than VB, Java, or perhaps even C#.
Anyways, most people who bash C# are people who haven't used it. I know because I did until a week ago when I got a copy of VS.NET. I was thinking of checking out managed C++, but I gave C# a try. I'll have to say that's a very pleasant language to work with. Anyone whose done any coding in C++, java, delphi, or even VB should pick it up quite fast.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, based on that information, it seems that the KDE league must reveal it's financial statements to the public.
BUT, I wonder what the laws in Deleware (or wherever the league is based) says.
Sorry, missed that. What other people's source though? I never noticed any authors of said copyrighted projects complain. So, unless you wrote ghostview or other projects, it's none of your buisness.
:-)
> Fuckwit.
Wow, an anon coward called me a fuckwit. That made my day a lot happier
> A Celeron 500 with 64 meg of ram is more than enough to run an OS, X server, desktop and browser+office suite.
Sure, Windows98 runs on this hardware very well. You can also run KDE 1.2/Gnome 1.2 on it very well. WindowsXP and KDE 3.x and Gnome 2.x would not run with this little RAM or a Celeron 500. Perhaps a p3 or athlon 550, but not a Celeron 500.
> This is off-topic, but lately I'm finding that more and more people have absolutely no idea what usenet is. I mentioned this to one of our new IT guys here -- a so-called "hot-shot" just out of college -- and wondered if usenet "sells DSL because he can't get it through AT&T
Because increasingly, Usenet servers are not being provided by ISP's. My last two ISP's didn't provide Usenet servers, and I was unwilling to buy access to one. My ISP right now (my college), has a usenet server, but they don't provide much of the good parts of the alt. tree.
And for regular discussion, first mailing lists, and now web boards/forums have replaced parts of USENET (not established ones). I like web forums because you can access them from anywhere with a web browser, and they usually have much more adminning capabilities and posting capabilities than USENET can.
And finally, p2p networks have replaced USENET/ftp for non-hardcore (and some hardcore) leechers.
> Neither the Sudanese or the Algerian conflicts have stopped.
Yeah, I shouldn't have said that there is no fighting, but
> They are as bloody as ever.
Not true. Compare Algeria today with Algeria in 1994. Compare Sudan today with a year ago.
> Now tell me why you care so little about Sudan? Because they are black or because they don't have oil-rich sponsors? (BTW there IS oil in South Sudan but is being stolen by the northerners)
1. Not everybody in Sudan is black.
2. I don't care because my money isn't going to the government to kill of the southern rebels, and my money isn't going to the rebels to kill off pro-governemnt supporters in the south. I don't like the U.S. governemtn medelling in other countries's affairs, unless it is through U.N. peace efforts. Basically, I want to fund peace, not war.
Under that definition, they were effectivly stealing their own code.
Ok, I still disagree with the underpinings of the article, but I think dep has a few good points:
> When it was announced, there was a little gratuitous nastiness and hypocrisy thrown in: "Wednesday morning, before or during Mr. [GNOME founder Miguel] de Icaza's presentation, we will issue the press release announcing the formation of the League,"
I agree. I think the League was founded as somewhat of a "me-too" sorta thing. KDE would have continued to thrive even if the League was not announced.
> Confidentiality is a little awkward in dealing with free software projects, because it's not something to which the community is accustomed. To which the KDE League responds that it isn't a free software project. Well, then, what is it?
Well, dep is associating the League with the KDE project, and he himself knows the difference between the two. But, nonetheless, it is a valid point. In dre's response, he said that the league was "not-for-profit", and not "non-profit".
Can someone with experience in US law explain the difference, if any between the two? I'm still confused about this fact.
> Though it was announced with high ideals, there's little evidence of its ever having done anything much except collect money,
Yeah, I thought about the League a few times before this series of articles, and I never knew if they had done anything or not.
> to it somehow benefits KDE -- though again, if you ask how, exactly, it is doing this, you will not get a response.... What they give back, though, disappears into the great, gaping, one-way maw of the KDE League, never to be heard from again.
Yeah, again, I'm not sure how the League benefits KDE, or where the money goes.
> We would love to be proved wrong about this. That would require a degree of disclosure that the KDE League has thusfar refused to provide.
Yeah, if the League is legally entitled to disclose it's dealings, it would solve the whole issue.
Even if the league is "not-for-profit", and this means they have more confidentality protections, what's the use of them? This is a corporation founded to advance a free software project. This isn't Microsoft or Enron (heh).
> Why is that you care so little about Algerians or Black Sudanese?
These are parts of civil wars. Both have stopped. There is no more fighting.
The Israeli-Palistinian conflict, however, has been going on for more than fifty years. I care personally because my country, the US, is responsible for much of it. I care because my governement apparently does. My taxes are going to fund the continuing conflict.
> It's been said for years, and now it is finally coming out: The KDE project has always been associated with sleazy underhanded dealings - from the original GPL violations
They were not violating the GPL, it was their *own* source that was being violated, if anything.
> when stealing other people's code
???
> through to this... financial skullduggery.
Uh, the KDE league has nothing to do with the KDE project. Anyways, financial skullduggery has not been proved yet. I want to see an article from a third party. I once thought Dep was somewhat balanced as a journalist, but now I can clearly see that he wants to get back at people for being "anti-Israel", to the point where he calls them Nazis. Heh, go figure.
> Am I alone in thinking that there have been an excessive number of racist and stereotypical views posted on this story?
Yeah, that happens with any India-related things on slashdot.
> but this doesn't make it right, does it?
Well, I'm of Indian decent, and I live in the United States. In daily life, I've hardly ever gotten any of these kinds of "racist and stereotypical views". This being slashdot, which is pretty much anonymous, I don't really care.
I think it happens especially in slashdot because people are angry that IT jobs are being shipped to India. As an American developer, I could be angry too, but I'm not. This is how capitalism works. The cycle repeats itself over and over again.
Read the article. It says "Operating System Lineo Embedix Plus Linux kernel v 2.4.2"
> it does not include hindi as a native language(it must be developed).
Who cares about Hindi. I'm of Indian origin, and most of my family back home (especially older folks) can't speak Hindi well (only understand it), but can speak English and Bengali (their native language) proficiantly. In cities like Calcutta (where they're from), English is used in buisnesses as much, if not more than Hindi is.
> considering last time I was there, most of my familys electricity was turned off at 9pm
Heh, it's better in some places than others. At least all villages are close to being electrified (plan is to by 2007).
> with such cheap labor and parts, them can certainly make a cheap product
Except that most PDA's are made in developing countries, heh. My ipaq was made in Malaysia (which is only semi-developing granted).
> Now ask, what $300 means for the Indian market and most will say "way too expensive".
What market are they selling these in? If it's available in the US, I might be interested.
> The kde-cafe list was created to relieve the devel lists of off-topic discussions.
Yup, that it was.
> and the name kde-cafe by itself seems clear enough to me...
But not perhaps to someone who is not familiar to KDE at all.
> Everything that is discussed there has nothing to do with KDE development, or KDE at all, except for the fact that a lot of KDE people read it.
The fact that it has "kde" in it's name, and shows up in lists.kde.org almost automatically attaches itself with the KDE project as a whole for most people. Apart from the occasional redhat bashing fests, it's often the kde-politics-list. Which makes me wonder, wtf does politics have to do with KDE?
Look, I care about free speech and all that, and even as an American myself (not born here, but am an American citizen) I dislike much of America's foreign relations. But seriously, why the need to tie this into KDE? Wasn't KDE's goal to created a nice, portable, easy to use, powerful desktop that runs on X11? This leads me to bewilderment to why political discussions and debates have anything to do with the above goal.
> and a european purusing the gnome -list might think it is domianted by a bunch of Amurikans.
Is that any better?
I'm not aware of a GNOME equivalent of kde-cafe. There is no gnome-politics-list or whatnot.
Anyways, I'm not talking about GNOME in any respects. I was talking about KDE. Nothing in my posts has anything to do with GNOME. Why even bring it up?
It also has nothing to do with Americans vs. Europeans. Why bring this up? As far as I know, Dre is an American, heh.
> dumb observation unless your discussion is pertaining to the NIH syndrome negatively impacting software development.
Uh, that made no sense.
> of course, a closer look will reveal that both
outifits have participants from all over the globe.
Of course. But then again, what does GNOME have anything to do with it?
He himself didn't call the whole KDE project a bunch of nazi's. He just said that an outsider perusing the kde-cafe mailing list might just view it that way.
I happen to agree with him, especially from the fact that some people who posted used kde.org emails. Anyways, why does the kde-cafe exist anyways? It seems that most of it is just political jabbering that can go on in many other places. Why does it have to be affiliated with the KDE project? I think that any non-KDE related posts should be banned from any KDE-sponsored lists, but that's just my opinion.
As for the website in question itself (linuxandmain), I don't think the website is trying to put down KDE itself. The main guy behind it, dep (Dennis E. Powell), is a KDE user, and has been a participant in the KDE community for a while. So, as for Andreas saying that the comments come from a website prone to attacking KDE, this is not true.
Linuxandmain is a great website for getting linux related news. Usually, the articles are well written, even if some guest essays are full of FUD, but then again, anyone can reply to the guest essays with essays of their own.
</rant>
Posted on the kde-core-devel list:
& file=article&sid=247
I think it clears everything up. The kde-league is *not* dead. The website, linuxandmain, just seemed to have jumped the gun a bit before getting a serious comment from Andreas Pour.
And life and KDE goes on..
List: kde-core-devel
Subject: Re: What has happened to the KDE League?
From: Andreas Pour
Date: 2002-10-05 7:34:38
[Download message RAW]
Shawn Gordon wrote:
>
> http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News
>
> Is this true?
Parts of it. As to the dissolution issue, that is something that needs to be
straightened out with the League's lawyers, who are supposed to be handling
this, undoubtedly some clerical mix-up. However, as dep wrote to me in a
private e-mail (so he knows this), and as is the case, this is easily remedied
and virtually inconsequential.
As to the supposed IRS from, since theKompany.com was briefly a member, you
should know that the League is not a non-profit but rather a not-for-profit and
hence need not file the forms.
As to the website, it's hosted on a server that experienced hardware failure and
should be back up early next week.
As to the finances, that is not something for me to disclose. The League as a
corporation cannot release its financial statements without approval of the
members, and that approval has not occurred. That came out in the threads which
were selectively quoted, IIRC, but the piece seems to be just another malicious
KDE attack by a website well versed in those matters.
> If it is true then the League is beyond a colossal failure,
It certainly is not.
> it is also engaging in illegal activity.
Sorry?
> KDE really needs to get some
> spokes people together and have something in place to handle this kind of
> fall out. I wonder if this post will even make it through Dre's filters on me.
What filter?
Ciao,
Dre
No, KDE e.V. owns the KDE trademark.
See http://www.kde.org/kde-ev/
> Uh, in what world is everyone using _C_?
I was taking about C, not C++.
No, VB isn't used in many real industrial-strength programming situations, but I suspect C#/VB.NET definatly will be. C# in many ways is just VB.NET with a more C-like syntax and Java-ish and Delphi-ish language constructs. Microsoft is making a huge push to C#, and whatever Microsoft makes a big push in usually succeeds, especially when they want to kill of competition. Their primary goal is to kill off java, but with the gradual depreciation of MFC, many C++ programmers will switch to C# with the next refresh of VS. Conversely, many VB programmers will also switch to C#, by first learning VB.NET.
> And also, VS.NET is a great IDE to work with.
Vim works fine,
Very few professional programmers use vim or emacs anymore on non-UNIX platforms like Windows.
No, the KDE league has nothing to do with KDE itself. Quite frankly, I don't think the KDE league actually did a whole lot, but that doesn't matter.
In better news, KDE 3.1 beta2 is out!
Anyways, the KDE league is and was never tied to KDE itself. KDE does not tie itself to any particular commercial groups (except KDE e.V.).
So, if the KDE league is really down, it doesn't hurt KDE either way. In the end, open source software goes on. I'd like a comment from Dre (Andreas Pour), before I jump to any conclusions.
I reserve this trust in him because he's always done a phenominal job as one of the KDE project's PR guys.
> For example, on Windows, don't bother with Visual C++. Even if you choose to work with a broken compiler, the STLPort [stlport.com] library provides a compliant standard library that will work almost anywhere.
What version of Visual C++ are you talking about? While vc++ 6 was horrible broken in standards and the STL, VC++7 (VC++.NET) is quite good in both. My advice is to only use STLPort if you are targetting Visual C++ 6.0 for any windows development.
> One of the best methods I know to write code incrementally is to rapidly model it in a Rapid Development language such as Python.
Since I get excited by seeing results quickly, I'd probably start by deciding on a GUI toolkit, and find some Python bindings for it.
Or you could just do the whole thing in a RAD environment (Delphi, kylix, VB.NET, C#.NET). The last one is particularily good for new development in Windows.
> Heh heh. Newbs are so funny. First its VB. Then its Java. Now its C#. Meanwhile, everyone is STILL USING C.
Uh, in what world is everyone using _C_?
C is probably less popular than VB, Java, or perhaps even C#.
Anyways, most people who bash C# are people who haven't used it. I know because I did until a week ago when I got a copy of VS.NET. I was thinking of checking out managed C++, but I gave C# a try. I'll have to say that's a very pleasant language to work with. Anyone whose done any coding in C++, java, delphi, or even VB should pick it up quite fast.
And also, VS.NET is a great IDE to work with.