and Server 51 (or is that officially dead now?) are great places to host the project.
Yes, you would have to put some effort into maintaining at least that infrastructure, but you could build a simple page where you ask for someone else to really take over the project.
Just because you would be hosting it, doesn't mean you are leading the project. As soon as a real, qualified leader stands up, you can simply turn over your small FTP/WWW site maintainance and everyone's happy.
You'll have to be honest. If you promise them rainbows and Linux doesn't live up to the expectations, it will be ages before they'll touch it again.
Focus on the positive side of OSS development and the freedom associated with it. And concentrate on the tasks they will be using the system for. No use to praise Apache under Linux when they will be using it for word processing.
Shame on you if this post isn't already redundant.
Tetris kicks ass! Just happened to play it again with a roommate.. until 7am. We concluded that a computer platform is not worthy unless it has a Tetris clone. (high-load servers are excused, although tetris for terminals won't bring your system down)
My contract is in dutch, but the two relevant items are: (not in the _exact_ wording of course, I don't carry my contract with me)
Company and Employer share the intellectual copyright the Employer possesed over work/code that was taken from an external knowledge base and was included into a project for the Company.
That is probably along the lines of what you are looking for. I also have the clause that any work I do for myself or even a third party is non of the company's business when it's not competitive (that's the normal clause), but it's also okay (this is what I added) when there is no damage to the Company or reasonable damage to be expected.
This basically means I can do work in the same sector. Our company doesn't take small clients anymore, so I am free to do such projects, as well as commercial items and technological development on my own website.
Try and go for a "fair use" policy and when possible get that fair use on paper as well, like I did. The best thing about my situation is that when I there is an improvement on (for example) the generic PHP database class I've written and imported, I can take that improvement home.:-)
Work on something personal. I know many bosses and companies won't let you, not even on your own time, but if you are allowed to code on your own time, do this:
Write a module you'll be using in a home project as well. You'll be very motivated and will make it perfect.
Write it in a generic way, with plenty of configurability. Basically generic enough so that you can implement it at work.
Implement it at work.
This is not exactly how I do things at my work, but there have been ocassion where I have introduced code of my own into the knowledge base of work. (don't worry, I have a clause in my contract which states the company and I will share intellectual property so I won't lose a damn thing)
Windows is the dominant user interface. There are only very few users that do not have experience with it and the majority of the users knows nothing else than Windows.
Because everyone has gotten so used to its interface, developers of other systems mimick lots of Windows tricks and features - some extend it, some strip it down, others improve it, but they all base their system on that well-known system, causing everything to look alike.
Why do they do that?
Because it's easier (not necessarily better) for the users! Learning can be fun and easy, but old habits are hard to break. Most users have grown so familiar with a Windows-like interface that operating such an interface is almost intuitive. The interface itself isn't, but the habit of having used it before is.
This also applies for ATM machine interfaces, mobile phone displays and buttons, etc etc.
Mozilla (or someday to be NS5) and MSIE both have a passport implemention at the client side, making the passport service useless.
Yes, those password managers are not the most secure feature out there. But think about it. Do the users that currently use a server side passport implementation care? Of course not.
So, no problem here. At least not until your client side MSIE wallet is actually a server side.net wallet.:-)
Netscape Communicator _is_ dead as it is. It might suffice for now, but it doesn't make my point any less valid that the real question is whether Mozilla can compete with the other browsers in the arena.
And yes, I know Konqueror is there for me right now. It's one of the reasons why I don't think Mozilla will have a large impact anymore.
I have been talking to one of the developers lately and I can assure you it's quite alive. Just because they take their time for a release doesn't mean it's dead. Just like I said for Mozilla, it's not dead. It won't be a killer, but it's alive, in it's own niche.
By the way, you obviously haven't tried Konqueror recently. The KDE team fixed a few memory leaks in the libraries a couple of weeks ago. Konqueror is stable and viable. It does Java, Javascript, Netscape's plugins, CSS.. I'm posting from it as we speak.
It has been making a lot more progress than Mozilla lately and I am willing to bet good money that on the *NIX platforms it will be this years big surprise, and not Mozilla.
RMS already said the license stuff was a non-issue.. so what is holding back the debian packagers??
The fact that the Debian developers are not RMS.
On short, they believe that the QPL and GPL conflict in such a way that there _is_ no valid license for KDE and that they therefore cannot include it. They would include it the linking of KDE to Qt was more explicitely allowed in the license and they would put in right in the main distribution, not even non-free.
But let's not debate on the license issue, please. It is not going to be solved here on Slashdot, it is not going to contribute to KDE _or_ Debian. All it will do is generate a lot of flamebait.
Let's concentrate on the fact that KDE2 is one of the crown jewels of OSS at the moment and that there _will_ be Debian.debs, even though Debian won't be the team distributing them.
As usual I can't get the damned thing to run under Solaris.
Please send your experiences to the KDE team. They are very committed to have KDE running under a multitude of *NIX flavours, not just Linux. There has been tremendous progress in the Solaris and *BSD support lately and with some constructive feedback things will even look better.
The priority _is_ bugfixing at the moment. If you don't feel like subscribing to one of the KDE mailinglists, drop me a note at my listed e-mail address and I'll contact the developers and get your comments to them.
It already exists and it's included. It's a nice screensaver with screens of death from various OS'es including Linux, Windows NT, Windows 9x, Amiga OS...
Or you could try and build a new KDE from cvs while still running it. Wait until the new kdelibs have been installed while the old kdebase binaries are still there and you can expect a lot of crashing.;-)
Of course Mozilla beats the shit out of Netscape. It would be hard not to.
What is more interesting is to see how well it will do against MSIE and Opera under Windows and Konqueror and Opera under Linux.
I predict it won't die since it does have "cool shit" others don't have and it is very very *very* multi-platform. But I also predict that their progress has been too slow to have a major impact. Perhaps a stripped-down Gecko based browser, but not the Mozilla beast.
Of course I usually use alt-f2 to launch programs and open up file windows by typing their location...
You have just mentioned one of the best features KDE has ever had and still has. It is totally convenient and a lot faster than browsing through menus.
I never used keyboard shortcuts a lot, but I can really advice everyone to check out the key bindings configuration just to _learn_ about the existing ones.
Alt-F1 opens the K menu. From there, use the arrow keys to go to Control Center, hit Enter to load it. Hit Alt-Tab to switch windows until you're at it. Use arrow keys and Enter again to navigate through the modules. Use tab to switch between the widgets and use space/enter/etc to change the settings.
There can be several beta releases. A product doesn't have to go "gold" (or indeed, "gamma") immediately after the first beta, see it as a phase, not a release - after all "alpha" is die-hard developer stuff only and never really gets released (KDE2 has been that way for a long while as well).
There are also several golden releases for a product, mostly small improvements and bugfixes (often the x.01 and further releases).
Interesting that you bring up "delta". I've always seen that as indeed another phase after "gamma" or "gold", where a product is mostly unmaintained and ready to die. Netscape Communicator would currently fall in that category.
I agree that calling GTK themes "legacy" causes some confusion and is probably not the best wording, but at least they are consistent. The best way to add a non-KDE application to the panel is to choose "Add -> Legacy application".
I'll post it to kde-devel and see if anyone cares to correct this.
Don't be silly...everyone whos seen the film U-571 knows that it was the Americans who captured the Enigma machine, cracked the code single handedly, and won the whole war without any help from the rest of the world! <p> Are you saying there is actually an American movie which acknowledges the existence of the rest of the world? Wow.
Dude, that's three YRO posts today. I've had enough of YRO.
So ignore them. Even better, go to your user page and disable them alltogether.
IMHO I think YRO has been a great addition to Slashdot. Maybe it is a little bit grim, dark, paranoid and soapy, but that makes it interesting all the more. Makes me wonder if there are many DS9 fans here hehe.
While not everything has the same importance and redundancy is unavoidable, YRO does touch some very important issues. They might not matter a lot to you, but the deCSS,MP3,hyperlink,privacy,etc events could have a wide impact on the way we know the Internet - and the marvel of information and communication in general.
I will only miss YRO when there is no longer a need for it. I hope to see that day - naive eh?
MP3 is just a file format.
Napster is just a protocol. deCSS is just a program. A chainsaw is just a tool. Our brains simply can comprehend matters a lot better when the issue is focussed on something we can relate to. And most people can relate to MP3. That's why were stuck on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you would have to put some effort into maintaining at least that infrastructure, but you could build a simple page where you ask for someone else to really take over the project.
Just because you would be hosting it, doesn't mean you are leading the project. As soon as a real, qualified leader stands up, you can simply turn over your small FTP/WWW site maintainance and everyone's happy.
Focus on the positive side of OSS development and the freedom associated with it. And concentrate on the tasks they will be using the system for. No use to praise Apache under Linux when they will be using it for word processing.
"Hey, Linux hardly has any new, cool games!"
"I know, what can we do?"
"Let's advocate classic games!"
Tetris kicks ass! Just happened to play it again with a roommate.. until 7am. We concluded that a computer platform is not worthy unless it has a Tetris clone. (high-load servers are excused, although tetris for terminals won't bring your system down)
That is probably along the lines of what you are looking for. I also have the clause that any work I do for myself or even a third party is non of the company's business when it's not competitive (that's the normal clause), but it's also okay (this is what I added) when there is no damage to the Company or reasonable damage to be expected.
This basically means I can do work in the same sector. Our company doesn't take small clients anymore, so I am free to do such projects, as well as commercial items and technological development on my own website.
Try and go for a "fair use" policy and when possible get that fair use on paper as well, like I did. The best thing about my situation is that when I there is an improvement on (for example) the generic PHP database class I've written and imported, I can take that improvement home. :-)
This is not exactly how I do things at my work, but there have been ocassion where I have introduced code of my own into the knowledge base of work. (don't worry, I have a clause in my contract which states the company and I will share intellectual property so I won't lose a damn thing)
The first thing you'll have to do to increase your daily productivity, is to stop reading Slashdot! ;-)
Because everyone has gotten so used to its interface, developers of other systems mimick lots of Windows tricks and features - some extend it, some strip it down, others improve it, but they all base their system on that well-known system, causing everything to look alike.
Why do they do that?
Because it's easier (not necessarily better) for the users! Learning can be fun and easy, but old habits are hard to break. Most users have grown so familiar with a Windows-like interface that operating such an interface is almost intuitive. The interface itself isn't, but the habit of having used it before is.
This also applies for ATM machine interfaces, mobile phone displays and buttons, etc etc.
These are five minutes old... ;-)
Showing Konqueror, KMail, the Alt-F2 minicli, Konsole and KControl.
Yes, those password managers are not the most secure feature out there. But think about it. Do the users that currently use a server side passport implementation care? Of course not.
So, no problem here. At least not until your client side MSIE wallet is actually a server side .net wallet. :-)
Netscape Communicator _is_ dead as it is. It might suffice for now, but it doesn't make my point any less valid that the real question is whether Mozilla can compete with the other browsers in the arena.
And yes, I know Konqueror is there for me right now. It's one of the reasons why I don't think Mozilla will have a large impact anymore.
I have been talking to one of the developers lately and I can assure you it's quite alive. Just because they take their time for a release doesn't mean it's dead. Just like I said for Mozilla, it's not dead. It won't be a killer, but it's alive, in it's own niche.
By the way, you obviously haven't tried Konqueror recently. The KDE team fixed a few memory leaks in the libraries a couple of weeks ago. Konqueror is stable and viable. It does Java, Javascript, Netscape's plugins, CSS.. I'm posting from it as we speak.
It has been making a lot more progress than Mozilla lately and I am willing to bet good money that on the *NIX platforms it will be this years big surprise, and not Mozilla.
The site and mirrors will catch up. I wouldn't have made the announcement until then, but don't worry, it's for real.
The fact that the Debian developers are not RMS.
On short, they believe that the QPL and GPL conflict in such a way that there _is_ no valid license for KDE and that they therefore cannot include it. They would include it the linking of KDE to Qt was more explicitely allowed in the license and they would put in right in the main distribution, not even non-free.
But let's not debate on the license issue, please. It is not going to be solved here on Slashdot, it is not going to contribute to KDE _or_ Debian. All it will do is generate a lot of flamebait.
Let's concentrate on the fact that KDE2 is one of the crown jewels of OSS at the moment and that there _will_ be Debian .debs, even though Debian won't be the team distributing them.
Please send your experiences to the KDE team. They are very committed to have KDE running under a multitude of *NIX flavours, not just Linux. There has been tremendous progress in the Solaris and *BSD support lately and with some constructive feedback things will even look better.
The priority _is_ bugfixing at the moment. If you don't feel like subscribing to one of the KDE mailinglists, drop me a note at my listed e-mail address and I'll contact the developers and get your comments to them.
It already exists and it's included. It's a nice screensaver with screens of death from various OS'es including Linux, Windows NT, Windows 9x, Amiga OS ...
Or you could try and build a new KDE from cvs while still running it. Wait until the new kdelibs have been installed while the old kdebase binaries are still there and you can expect a lot of crashing. ;-)
What is more interesting is to see how well it will do against MSIE and Opera under Windows and Konqueror and Opera under Linux.
I predict it won't die since it does have "cool shit" others don't have and it is very very *very* multi-platform. But I also predict that their progress has been too slow to have a major impact. Perhaps a stripped-down Gecko based browser, but not the Mozilla beast.
Yes, they are. The Mozilla team is considering to drop Gecko and include Konqueror's great KHTML engine for their next milestone. ;-)
(stop bitching already, just a little piece of funny flamebait)
You have just mentioned one of the best features KDE has ever had and still has. It is totally convenient and a lot faster than browsing through menus.
I never used keyboard shortcuts a lot, but I can really advice everyone to check out the key bindings configuration just to _learn_ about the existing ones.
Since you asked..
Alt-F1 opens the K menu. From there, use the arrow keys to go to Control Center, hit Enter to load it. Hit Alt-Tab to switch windows until you're at it. Use arrow keys and Enter again to navigate through the modules. Use tab to switch between the widgets and use space/enter/etc to change the settings.
There! :-)
K -> Control Center -> Look & Feel -> Key Bindings
Not everything can be bound, but play around with KDE2 for a while and you'll notice that _a_lot_ is configurable.
There are also several golden releases for a product, mostly small improvements and bugfixes (often the x.01 and further releases).
Interesting that you bring up "delta". I've always seen that as indeed another phase after "gamma" or "gold", where a product is mostly unmaintained and ready to die. Netscape Communicator would currently fall in that category.
I'll post it to kde-devel and see if anyone cares to correct this.
Don't be silly...everyone whos seen the film U-571 knows that it was the Americans who captured the Enigma machine, cracked the code single handedly, and won the whole war without any help from the rest of the world!
<p>
Are you saying there is actually an American movie which acknowledges the existence of the rest of the world? Wow.
So ignore them. Even better, go to your user page and disable them alltogether.
IMHO I think YRO has been a great addition to Slashdot. Maybe it is a little bit grim, dark, paranoid and soapy, but that makes it interesting all the more. Makes me wonder if there are many DS9 fans here hehe.
While not everything has the same importance and redundancy is unavoidable, YRO does touch some very important issues. They might not matter a lot to you, but the deCSS,MP3,hyperlink,privacy,etc events could have a wide impact on the way we know the Internet - and the marvel of information and communication in general.
I will only miss YRO when there is no longer a need for it. I hope to see that day - naive eh?
MP3 is just a file format.
Napster is just a protocol. deCSS is just a program. A chainsaw is just a tool. Our brains simply can comprehend matters a lot better when the issue is focussed on something we can relate to. And most people can relate to MP3. That's why were stuck on it.