[RedHat] is severely lacking in the media creation and editing department.
Apart from the fact that that is irrelevant for a $100 laptop, it's also not true. You get not one, but multiple, photo, imaging, video editing, and vector graphics packages for RedHat, and they are free to boot.
Can you provide some examples, please?
A full, native office suite, for example. OS X only has MS Office as a fully functional native office suite. This is the most serious limitation of OS X for this kind of usage. Apple should either fix X11 integration or sponsor a port of OpenOffice. Until that issue gets resolved, OS X isn't even a contender for a project like that.
OS X is also missing free native image and video editing solutions. You either have to make do with non-native ports running under Apple's so-so X11 server, or you have to shell out serious $$$.
And most red Hat applications can be ported to MacOS.
Anything can be ported with enough effort. However, given that the effort hasn't even happened for something as basic as OpenOffice (where you can only get a non-native X11 port), it just doesn't seem to be happening.
MacOS comes with many app[lications that it is impossible to get equivalents for Red Hat.
I can't think of any. Can you give examples?
No, it's not. You still need more knowledge and patience to run a Linux system.
My experience suggests otherwise. So, until you have some actual data, claims about better OS X usability remain marketing speak.
I'm sure you're aware it wasn't Apples' access I was referring to.
I have no idea whose access you are referring to, since both Apple and users have full access. It's an open platform. Apple can port to it. Apple can ship whatever software they like for it for whatever price they want. Users have full access to whatever Apple produces.
[A lot of stuff in Fink and DarwinPorts is broken and doesn't even install.] Speaking as someone who uses darwin-ports stuff daily, and who has 30 or so X apps open at the moment, I have to disagree with that.
Maybe the X apps you use work, but the fact remains that large and important parts of Fink and DarwinPorts are broken and don't even install. Both also require lots of compilation, something that is a ridiculous proposition on a $100 laptop (it's a ridiculous proposition even on a Powerbook). The immaturity and incompleteness of Fink and DarwinPorts alone would be more than reason enough not to pick OS X.
Why does it matter if all X apps are treated as a single app by Aqua ?
Because people like you tout OS X as the more usable solution, but OS X with X11 apps running on top of it is a bloody mess. It's a mess that UNIX users like me are willing to put up with for some of our machines, but it's not something you can let loose on the world at large.
So, if you want a consisten, fairly easy to use GUI on top of OS X, you are limited to Cocoa applications. But if you are limited to Cocoa applications, then the range of applications you can choose for OS X is small, and it gets even smaller if you limit yourself to free Cocoa applications (which you would have to for a $100 laptop).
Since [usability] is a subjective matter, I doubt you'll ever see any facts.
No, usability is not a subjective matter; there are established, accepted, and widely used procedures for measuring usability. It's pretty telling that Apple has never (to my knowledge) supported their claims of superior usability with actual data. It wouldn't be hard for them to do.
I think it's a shame that they won't get access to it...
Nobody is restricting Apple's access. Since the OS is going to be free and open source, Apple has all the information they need for a port of OS X if they choose to do it.
The point is that OS X is a unix-based system, shipped with an X implementation AND a load of (closed source) other stuff. All you're doing by not using OS X is removing the 'other stuff'. Look at darwin-ports for the equivalent to apt-get...
I wish it were true, but the "OS X is UNIX plus more" argument just doesn't work out in practice. A lot of stuff in Fink and DarwinPorts is broken and doesn't even install. X11-based GUI apps have an interface that is inconsistent with the rest of OS X. Apple's X11 implementation is slow and poorly integrated with the rest of Aqua (e.g. all X11 apps are treated as a single app by Aqua).
The Mac UI is streets ahead of linux and windows in terms of useability (IMHO, but hell, I'm writing this!), it's been designed with thought for how to make things simple, rather than just available.
Lots of Mac users have that opinion, but I have yet to see any facts to support such statements.
My personal opinion is that RH put $2M into the project, and don't want someone else's OS running the show, put real or implied pressure on the project heads, and OS X is turned down... The losers are the end-users, in this case...
You can bet that from a financial point of view, a relationship between Apple and the Media Lab would have been far more profitable and better PR than a relationship between RedHat and the Media Lab. Apple would invest more than $2m in advertising alone. From every point other than technical and usability, it would have made sense for the project to pick OS X.
The videocard and the chipset are going to be open, they are just not going to be open source. The OS is going to be free and open source.
That is entirely consistent with both free software principles (the name of the principles might give you a clue; for the reasons, see the FSF web site).
In any case, this project isn't about free software principles, it's about delivering a piece of hardware, and the people who run the project have decided that RedHat fits the bill better than OS X from a technical point of view.
So, why does this argument not apply to software? Surely it is easier to stand on Apple's shoulders than to turn Red Hat into a workable general-purpose desktop OS?
RedHat is a workable general-purpose desktop OS, and it contains a lot of desktop software packages that are expensive add-ons for OS X.
After all, Apple has a much more evolved OS with more features that help users.
If you have actually data to support that, please share it. Until then, that's just marketing speak and zealotry.
If you have any objective, published evidence to support your assertions that "OS X is easy to use" whereas "RedHat is a struggle to learn", please share it.
So far, it seems to me that the zealots are people like you, who want to commit "under-privileged people" to using a proprietary OS for no reason other than that they think it looks nice.
With OSX a knowledgeable person CAN tinker with it, but 99% of those computers will NOT be tinkered with by their users
In my experience, most OS X users tinker with their computers, but usually by installing shareware.
In any case, the question is not whether the students can tinker with it, the question is whether the community of developers can tinker with it and share the results freely. They can do that with Linux (or BSD) and Gnome, they can't do it with OS X.
Think of OS X as Linux (well, FOSS Darwin) plus bonuses like Quartz that may be closed source but do nothing but ADD value while leaving the doors open for other, more free alternatives if the user wishes.
Except that that's not true. Quartz isn't just extra functionality, it also requires extra resources. Aqua isn't just a GUI, it is also inconsistent with FOSS desktop software and therefore requires extra training, documentation, and support. When added to a Linux system, Netinfo isn't just more administrative functionalitiy, it is also more administrative hassle.
Running a pure Gnome or a pure KDE desktop system is a far more consistent and less bloated choice compared to running some mix of FOSS and OS X.
And don't you think it might be essential to, first, examine past trends in carbon dioxide changes driving the environment
No, I don't think it's "essential", at least when it comes to the question of whether to reduce carbon emissions: we must reduce carbon emissions.
The historical record is the best laboratory evidence existing for global warming, and it saddens me greatly when it is discarded in favor of simulations. Simulations of complex systems have pitiful accuracy in comparison to measurement.
You still seem to operate under the assumption that whether climate change is a consequence of carbon emissions is a subtle question that we don't know the answer to. That is wrong. Climate change is inevitable at the current levels of carbon emissions, and there is pretty much universal agreement on that.
The only question is how quickly and how much the climate will change, and how different regions will be affected. We are talking the difference between limiting ourselves to moderate changes if we drastically reduce emissions now, to inevitable global catastrophe no matter what we do. I suppose if climate models and data show an inevitable global catastrophe, we might as well keep burning fossil fuels (there is no clear evidence for such a doomsday scenario yet), but otherwise, reducing emissions aggresively is the best course of action (in addition to all the economic benefits it has).
Several of these players are quite innovative, and in a useful way. But it won't matter in the grand scheme of things: the iPod is succeeding because of brand recognition and its tie-in with the Apple music store. Whatever the iPod lacks in built-in functionality, companies like Belkin provide as an add-on.
These assertions are also wrong because agile methods are not new; they've been around for half a century. The fact that people only now have found a name for them doesn't change that.
Do they work? For the right team and project. But those teams and projects tend to discover agile methods for themselves anyway. If you organize your team around textbook methods, agile is probably not for you anyway.
The historical record is imporant since it has the potential to establish whether it is necessary.
No, that's where you are mistaken. The historical record is irrelevant to determining whether action is necessary. CO2 emissions must inevitably lead to a change in the absorption and emission of radiation from earth. Furthermore, CO2 that we emit today will be around for centuries, so whatever we do today, we are going to be stuck with for a long time.
The only uncertainty is whether the consequences of those changes will be serious or not. That depends on complex feedback mechanisms (water vapor, oceans, plants, ice cover, etc.) that nobody understands yet. Those can kick in at any time, and very quickly. If we wait until we understand them, it can be too late.
People with vested interests have been trying to reframe the debate as if we needed empirical data demonstrating anthropogenic warming in order to justify action. That approach is potentially suicidal. Whether we can demonstrate anthroprogenic warming is largely an academic question.
Say someone claims an asteroid is about to hit the earth, and we should all get together and establish world government to deal with it. Well, you might feel that world government and getting together would be fine, but still look askance at the trajectory calculations. That's where I am coming from.
That's a bad analogy. Whether an asteroid is going to hit earth is an all-or-nothing proposition, our options are limited, and mentioning "world government" is a scare tactic,
For global climate change, it's a question of degree (barely detectable to devastating) that we can expect in the future. And the options for preventing it are simple: increase energy efficiency, something that is technologically trivial and economically beneficial to everybody except current energy producers. Dealing with global warming does not require "world government". Quite to the contrary, fighting global warming effectively amounts to ridding ourselves of "world government" and dominance of the political process by fossil fuel producers, and instead focuses on efficiency, technology, self-sufficiency, and local generation. True Conservatives should be all for it.
Their reasons look perfectly reasonable to me. Note that they aren't saying that VoIP or IM should all be banned, they are specifically referring to systems like Skype.
What are the properties that make Skype dangerous? It's not standards-compliant, doesn't permit application-level proxies, its encryption is closed source, and it can't be audited in the way that many corporations are required to audit communications.
If you want to make personal calls from work, use your cell phone. And if you are looking for a VoIP solution for your business, go with something standards-compliant and (preferably) open source instead of Skype.
It is completely obvious that there have been warming and cooling periods in the past and that we may be in a warming period unrelated to CO2 emissions. People who demand action on climate change aren't disputing that. But we also know for certain that CO2 in the atmosphere has increased, and we also know for certain that increased CO2 causes a greenhouse effect--the only question is about the magnitude of the effect. The magnitude can be between mild and severe. Either way, sooner or later, we are going to run into trouble. If the effect is overlayed on top of a non-anthropogenic warming trend, it's even more cause for concern.
What I can't figure out is what people like you are trying to argue. Even if all your objections to the interpretation of historical data were valid, what would it matter? At what point are you willing to act to reduce CO2 emissions?
There is NO consensus on whether or not man-made global warming is happening- anyone who claims to have "climatologist" friends who say it most definitely is or isn't real
Of course, there is a consensus on whether man-made global warming is happening; it is basic physics that if CO2 concentrations go up, the temperature goes up, and CO2 concentrations have gone up. The debate is about what fraction of global temperature increases are caused by man-made CO2 emissions and how severe it's going to get in the future.
No offense, but small developers like you just don't write the big apps that sell. If you made money from your apps, a Qt license would be no big deal.
Ah, I see, we are back to the good ol' days where only the big, money-making developers matter. According to you, shareware developers can go to hell. People creating technology demos can go to hell. Software developers that are trying to get started on the side can go to hell. Community projects like Eclipse can go to hell. BSD-licensed software can go to hell. Thanks for being so clear about why Qt is simply not acceptable.
Yes, I'm a C++ developer of many years, and I've worked for big companies and small - right now, I'm in a 16 person startup. I know the value of time to market and working with the best tools.
And Qt may well be the best tool for a startup whose primary concern is time-to-market and that has millions of dollars to burn in a few months. But just because Qt is the best tool for you doesn't make it the right foundation for the Linux desktop.
It doesn't matter how good KDE is; the issue is the license on the underlying toolkit. It just doesn't make sense for a company like Novell to build their entire GUI strategy on top of a dual-licensed toolkit.
You're making the implicit argument that KDE should be chosen because it is technically better. But that's not the issue. KDE has always been technically better than Gnome (although the gap is small these days). The choice is really determined by legal and licensing issues, and Novell doesn't have much of a choice other than to go with Gnome as their main desktop.
As for the US-vs-European angle, the KDE developers already screwed up big time once before on licensing issues. Perhaps the problem is that those European companies and projects that get taken over by US companies are good on technology but lousy on business and licensing questions.
However, Cuthbert didn't just commit the core act, acknowledge what he'd done and then say sorry. Instead, when the police investigated, he concocted a lie about what he'd been doing, causing them to spend a lot more time and money investigating, and only told the truth when caught.
That "explanation" is a confabulation. Judges aren't supposed to decide based on whether they are "pissed off", and it shouldn't take any longer to determine whether the defendant typed "../.." whether or not he admits it.
The real reason Cuthbert's lie was relevant is because it's an indication that he knew what he was doing was wrong, and intent and knowledge of wrongdoing do enter into this kind of case in the UK.
This is a nice publicity stunt, but lots of people are working on this and face recognition doesn't work very well yet. So, don't worry about your privacy just yet.
The physicists that get all worked up about patents on devices that are physically impossible are really out of touch; if it can't be built, it doesn't matter whether someone spent the money to patent it or whether some investor gets duped out of money in an attempt to build it. People with too much money on their hands don't need physicists to protect them.
The patents we should worry about are patents on devices that are obvious or already published. It is those patents that increasingly hinder research and innovation.
Slashdot Mirror
Talk about the uninformed Linutix.
You aren't seriously suggesting that iPhoto and iMovie are "editing solutions", are you?
[RedHat] is severely lacking in the media creation and editing department.
Apart from the fact that that is irrelevant for a $100 laptop, it's also not true. You get not one, but multiple, photo, imaging, video editing, and vector graphics packages for RedHat, and they are free to boot.
Can you provide some examples, please?
A full, native office suite, for example. OS X only has MS Office as a fully functional native office suite. This is the most serious limitation of OS X for this kind of usage. Apple should either fix X11 integration or sponsor a port of OpenOffice. Until that issue gets resolved, OS X isn't even a contender for a project like that.
OS X is also missing free native image and video editing solutions. You either have to make do with non-native ports running under Apple's so-so X11 server, or you have to shell out serious $$$.
And most red Hat applications can be ported to MacOS.
Anything can be ported with enough effort. However, given that the effort hasn't even happened for something as basic as OpenOffice (where you can only get a non-native X11 port), it just doesn't seem to be happening.
MacOS comes with many app[lications that it is impossible to get equivalents for Red Hat.
I can't think of any. Can you give examples?
No, it's not. You still need more knowledge and patience to run a Linux system.
My experience suggests otherwise. So, until you have some actual data, claims about better OS X usability remain marketing speak.
I'm sure you're aware it wasn't Apples' access I was referring to.
I have no idea whose access you are referring to, since both Apple and users have full access. It's an open platform. Apple can port to it. Apple can ship whatever software they like for it for whatever price they want. Users have full access to whatever Apple produces.
[A lot of stuff in Fink and DarwinPorts is broken and doesn't even install.] Speaking as someone who uses darwin-ports stuff daily, and who has 30 or so X apps open at the moment, I have to disagree with that.
Maybe the X apps you use work, but the fact remains that large and important parts of Fink and DarwinPorts are broken and don't even install. Both also require lots of compilation, something that is a ridiculous proposition on a $100 laptop (it's a ridiculous proposition even on a Powerbook). The immaturity and incompleteness of Fink and DarwinPorts alone would be more than reason enough not to pick OS X.
Why does it matter if all X apps are treated as a single app by Aqua ?
Because people like you tout OS X as the more usable solution, but OS X with X11 apps running on top of it is a bloody mess. It's a mess that UNIX users like me are willing to put up with for some of our machines, but it's not something you can let loose on the world at large.
So, if you want a consisten, fairly easy to use GUI on top of OS X, you are limited to Cocoa applications. But if you are limited to Cocoa applications, then the range of applications you can choose for OS X is small, and it gets even smaller if you limit yourself to free Cocoa applications (which you would have to for a $100 laptop).
Since [usability] is a subjective matter, I doubt you'll ever see any facts.
No, usability is not a subjective matter; there are established, accepted, and widely used procedures for measuring usability. It's pretty telling that Apple has never (to my knowledge) supported their claims of superior usability with actual data. It wouldn't be hard for them to do.
I think it's a shame that they won't get access to it...
Nobody is restricting Apple's access. Since the OS is going to be free and open source, Apple has all the information they need for a port of OS X if they choose to do it.
The point is that OS X is a unix-based system, shipped with an X implementation AND a load of (closed source) other stuff. All you're doing by not using OS X is removing the 'other stuff'. Look at darwin-ports for the equivalent to apt-get...
I wish it were true, but the "OS X is UNIX plus more" argument just doesn't work out in practice. A lot of stuff in Fink and DarwinPorts is broken and doesn't even install. X11-based GUI apps have an interface that is inconsistent with the rest of OS X. Apple's X11 implementation is slow and poorly integrated with the rest of Aqua (e.g. all X11 apps are treated as a single app by Aqua).
The Mac UI is streets ahead of linux and windows in terms of useability (IMHO, but hell, I'm writing this!), it's been designed with thought for how to make things simple, rather than just available.
Lots of Mac users have that opinion, but I have yet to see any facts to support such statements.
My personal opinion is that RH put $2M into the project, and don't want someone else's OS running the show, put real or implied pressure on the project heads, and OS X is turned down... The losers are the end-users, in this case...
You can bet that from a financial point of view, a relationship between Apple and the Media Lab would have been far more profitable and better PR than a relationship between RedHat and the Media Lab. Apple would invest more than $2m in advertising alone. From every point other than technical and usability, it would have made sense for the project to pick OS X.
The videocard and the chipset are going to be open, they are just not going to be open source. The OS is going to be free and open source.
That is entirely consistent with both free software principles (the name of the principles might give you a clue; for the reasons, see the FSF web site).
In any case, this project isn't about free software principles, it's about delivering a piece of hardware, and the people who run the project have decided that RedHat fits the bill better than OS X from a technical point of view.
So, why does this argument not apply to software? Surely it is easier to stand on Apple's shoulders than to turn Red Hat into a workable general-purpose desktop OS?
RedHat is a workable general-purpose desktop OS, and it contains a lot of desktop software packages that are expensive add-ons for OS X.
After all, Apple has a much more evolved OS with more features that help users.
If you have actually data to support that, please share it. Until then, that's just marketing speak and zealotry.
If you have any objective, published evidence to support your assertions that "OS X is easy to use" whereas "RedHat is a struggle to learn", please share it.
So far, it seems to me that the zealots are people like you, who want to commit "under-privileged people" to using a proprietary OS for no reason other than that they think it looks nice.
With OSX a knowledgeable person CAN tinker with it, but 99% of those computers will NOT be tinkered with by their users
In my experience, most OS X users tinker with their computers, but usually by installing shareware.
In any case, the question is not whether the students can tinker with it, the question is whether the community of developers can tinker with it and share the results freely. They can do that with Linux (or BSD) and Gnome, they can't do it with OS X.
Think of OS X as Linux (well, FOSS Darwin) plus bonuses like Quartz that may be closed source but do nothing but ADD value while leaving the doors open for other, more free alternatives if the user wishes.
Except that that's not true. Quartz isn't just extra functionality, it also requires extra resources. Aqua isn't just a GUI, it is also inconsistent with FOSS desktop software and therefore requires extra training, documentation, and support. When added to a Linux system, Netinfo isn't just more administrative functionalitiy, it is also more administrative hassle.
Running a pure Gnome or a pure KDE desktop system is a far more consistent and less bloated choice compared to running some mix of FOSS and OS X.
So, how do you tinker with those applications on Linux?
The have open source equivalents on Linux, and you can tinker with those.
And don't you think it might be essential to, first, examine past trends in carbon dioxide changes driving the environment
No, I don't think it's "essential", at least when it comes to the question of whether to reduce carbon emissions: we must reduce carbon emissions.
The historical record is the best laboratory evidence existing for global warming, and it saddens me greatly when it is discarded in favor of simulations. Simulations of complex systems have pitiful accuracy in comparison to measurement.
You still seem to operate under the assumption that whether climate change is a consequence of carbon emissions is a subtle question that we don't know the answer to. That is wrong. Climate change is inevitable at the current levels of carbon emissions, and there is pretty much universal agreement on that.
The only question is how quickly and how much the climate will change, and how different regions will be affected. We are talking the difference between limiting ourselves to moderate changes if we drastically reduce emissions now, to inevitable global catastrophe no matter what we do. I suppose if climate models and data show an inevitable global catastrophe, we might as well keep burning fossil fuels (there is no clear evidence for such a doomsday scenario yet), but otherwise, reducing emissions aggresively is the best course of action (in addition to all the economic benefits it has).
Several of these players are quite innovative, and in a useful way. But it won't matter in the grand scheme of things: the iPod is succeeding because of brand recognition and its tie-in with the Apple music store. Whatever the iPod lacks in built-in functionality, companies like Belkin provide as an add-on.
These assertions are also wrong because agile methods are not new; they've been around for half a century. The fact that people only now have found a name for them doesn't change that.
Do they work? For the right team and project. But those teams and projects tend to discover agile methods for themselves anyway. If you organize your team around textbook methods, agile is probably not for you anyway.
The historical record is imporant since it has the potential to establish whether it is necessary.
No, that's where you are mistaken. The historical record is irrelevant to determining whether action is necessary. CO2 emissions must inevitably lead to a change in the absorption and emission of radiation from earth. Furthermore, CO2 that we emit today will be around for centuries, so whatever we do today, we are going to be stuck with for a long time.
The only uncertainty is whether the consequences of those changes will be serious or not. That depends on complex feedback mechanisms (water vapor, oceans, plants, ice cover, etc.) that nobody understands yet. Those can kick in at any time, and very quickly. If we wait until we understand them, it can be too late.
People with vested interests have been trying to reframe the debate as if we needed empirical data demonstrating anthropogenic warming in order to justify action. That approach is potentially suicidal. Whether we can demonstrate anthroprogenic warming is largely an academic question.
Say someone claims an asteroid is about to hit the earth, and we should all get together and establish world government to deal with it. Well, you might feel that world government and getting together would be fine, but still look askance at the trajectory calculations. That's where I am coming from.
That's a bad analogy. Whether an asteroid is going to hit earth is an all-or-nothing proposition, our options are limited, and mentioning "world government" is a scare tactic,
For global climate change, it's a question of degree (barely detectable to devastating) that we can expect in the future. And the options for preventing it are simple: increase energy efficiency, something that is technologically trivial and economically beneficial to everybody except current energy producers. Dealing with global warming does not require "world government". Quite to the contrary, fighting global warming effectively amounts to ridding ourselves of "world government" and dominance of the political process by fossil fuel producers, and instead focuses on efficiency, technology, self-sufficiency, and local generation. True Conservatives should be all for it.
Their reasons look perfectly reasonable to me. Note that they aren't saying that VoIP or IM should all be banned, they are specifically referring to systems like Skype.
What are the properties that make Skype dangerous? It's not standards-compliant, doesn't permit application-level proxies, its encryption is closed source, and it can't be audited in the way that many corporations are required to audit communications.
If you want to make personal calls from work, use your cell phone. And if you are looking for a VoIP solution for your business, go with something standards-compliant and (preferably) open source instead of Skype.
It is completely obvious that there have been warming and cooling periods in the past and that we may be in a warming period unrelated to CO2 emissions. People who demand action on climate change aren't disputing that. But we also know for certain that CO2 in the atmosphere has increased, and we also know for certain that increased CO2 causes a greenhouse effect--the only question is about the magnitude of the effect. The magnitude can be between mild and severe. Either way, sooner or later, we are going to run into trouble. If the effect is overlayed on top of a non-anthropogenic warming trend, it's even more cause for concern.
What I can't figure out is what people like you are trying to argue. Even if all your objections to the interpretation of historical data were valid, what would it matter? At what point are you willing to act to reduce CO2 emissions?
There is NO consensus on whether or not man-made global warming is happening- anyone who claims to have "climatologist" friends who say it most definitely is or isn't real
Of course, there is a consensus on whether man-made global warming is happening; it is basic physics that if CO2 concentrations go up, the temperature goes up, and CO2 concentrations have gone up. The debate is about what fraction of global temperature increases are caused by man-made CO2 emissions and how severe it's going to get in the future.
reduce CO2 emissions. It's the CO2 emissions that start the process; water vapor serves as an amplifier and positive feedback.
No offense, but small developers like you just don't write the big apps that sell. If you made money from your apps, a Qt license would be no big deal.
Ah, I see, we are back to the good ol' days where only the big, money-making developers matter. According to you, shareware developers can go to hell. People creating technology demos can go to hell. Software developers that are trying to get started on the side can go to hell. Community projects like Eclipse can go to hell. BSD-licensed software can go to hell. Thanks for being so clear about why Qt is simply not acceptable.
Yes, I'm a C++ developer of many years, and I've worked for big companies and small - right now, I'm in a 16 person startup. I know the value of time to market and working with the best tools.
And Qt may well be the best tool for a startup whose primary concern is time-to-market and that has millions of dollars to burn in a few months. But just because Qt is the best tool for you doesn't make it the right foundation for the Linux desktop.
What a spectacular flip-flop!
No, it's not a "flip flop". Because of user demand, they'll continue to support KDE, but Gnome is going to be their focus.
It doesn't matter how good KDE is; the issue is the license on the underlying toolkit. It just doesn't make sense for a company like Novell to build their entire GUI strategy on top of a dual-licensed toolkit.
You're making the implicit argument that KDE should be chosen because it is technically better. But that's not the issue. KDE has always been technically better than Gnome (although the gap is small these days). The choice is really determined by legal and licensing issues, and Novell doesn't have much of a choice other than to go with Gnome as their main desktop.
As for the US-vs-European angle, the KDE developers already screwed up big time once before on licensing issues. Perhaps the problem is that those European companies and projects that get taken over by US companies are good on technology but lousy on business and licensing questions.
However, Cuthbert didn't just commit the core act, acknowledge what he'd done and then say sorry. Instead, when the police investigated, he concocted a lie about what he'd been doing, causing them to spend a lot more time and money investigating, and only told the truth when caught.
That "explanation" is a confabulation. Judges aren't supposed to decide based on whether they are "pissed off", and it shouldn't take any longer to determine whether the defendant typed "../.." whether or not he admits it.
The real reason Cuthbert's lie was relevant is because it's an indication that he knew what he was doing was wrong, and intent and knowledge of wrongdoing do enter into this kind of case in the UK.
This is a nice publicity stunt, but lots of people are working on this and face recognition doesn't work very well yet. So, don't worry about your privacy just yet.
The physicists that get all worked up about patents on devices that are physically impossible are really out of touch; if it can't be built, it doesn't matter whether someone spent the money to patent it or whether some investor gets duped out of money in an attempt to build it. People with too much money on their hands don't need physicists to protect them.
The patents we should worry about are patents on devices that are obvious or already published. It is those patents that increasingly hinder research and innovation.