You miss the point. The danger is that Microsoft controls the patents which control the software technology upon which Gnome depends. Only Suse has a license for these patents. If you mean.NET patents or OOXML patents, then yeah, Microsoft has them. But.NET and OOXML aren't in GNOME and certainly not in GTK (might be OOXML in Gnumeric, though?). So if this is your concern, you can use GNOME/GTK, just don't install Mono or Gnumeric (I don't, but not for these reasons). GNOME does not depend upon.NET or OOXML in any way; if you have been told otherwise, you have been misled. I am using GNOME right now without either of those technologies.
If you mean Microsoft patents in general, then this is a problem, yes. For all Linux desktops.
Distributing a compiled QT app is dead simple, you include three or four libraries and you're off to the races. GTK apps are a nightmare of libraries and config files that have to be structured just so. GTK is a pain in the ass in this regard, especially PyGTK.
Do you mean on Windows or OS X? On Linux, distributing a GTK app requires nothing at all, for all major distros. Pygtk as well; 'import gtk' works out of the box on all major distros AFAIK, which is nice because one of my projects is in pygtk.
If you meant Windows or OS X, then yeah, much trickier there. GNOME is great on Linux, less so as a cross-platform tool. However it is improving in that respect.
Yes, today Microsoft sells its dev tools fairly cheaply. But the danger is that this might change; it is a risk when committing yourself to using their platform (accept it, if you want, but just be aware of it - that is my point).
GTK is improving on Windows and Mac (Mac in particular recently), but yes, it is inferior in its cross-platform capabilities in comparison to Qt. It's great for GNOME, though, and the original question was about a single desktop, not cross-platform development.
I'm glad to hear that your intention was honest and not just trying to start a flame-war.
The concern with patents is a valid one, because of the sad situation with the (US) patent system. This is an issue with all desktops, and we all need to be aware of it. I do agree with you that Mono is more vulnerable to this issue than other random technologies, simply because we know of Microsoft patents relevant to it. So I can understand if someone is wary of Mono (but I, myself, am not too concerned about this). Yet, as you say, GNOME isn't Mono and certainly does not depend on it, so this is a non-issue. Especially if all you use is GTK - that certainly has no connection whatsoever to Mono. Hence, given that GTK is LGPL, which is a big benefit if your app is proprietary - it doesn't cost money - this seems the best idea for you.
(Btw, not sure what you mean by 'other problematic technologies' aside from Mono. Like what? OOXML? That is also not related to GTK in any way... it might appear in Gnumeric and OpenOffice, neither of which is directly GTK-related.)
I wouldn't be enthusiastic about wxWidgets - it's a nice concept, but doesn't seem to have enough momentum behind it. In particular there are few applications using it compared to the other platforms, GTK and Qt, and for good reason.
Vala is modeled after C# and compiles directly to plain-ol' generic GObject C. On top of that, the most new code going into GNOME is Python, by a rather wide margin. +1 for pointing out this neat stuff. Vala is a pretty brilliant tool, really I have to give the developers a lot of credit. I expect to see more and more GNOME development being done in Vala. Likewise, Python / pygtk is a great setting and a lot of fun, and well worth developing in.
I am pleasantly surprised that most new code is in Python, interesting, how was this measured?
I didn't ask anyone to do my research, perhaps I wasn't clear, so I will explain myself. The parent said,
While GTK has become visually polished and really pretty to look at, it still is poorly designed from a developer point of view and suffers from horrible implementation mistakes that probably would require a complete rethink/rewrite to correct. Having used GTK to develop apps, I do not think this is true at all. In fact I found GTK to be a lot of fun to develop for (the only inconvenience, for me at least, being that the 'native' GObject on C is a little verbose, but thankfully we can now code apps in PyGtk and Vala, just to name two possibilites). So, when the parent made such a claim, I was hoping to see him base it on some concrete arguments. That is what I was asking for.
Regarding
As to what the poster was talking about, one of my guesses as to mistakes would be how GTK is entangled with Glib. It's been a while since I've done anything with GTK and Glib, but it seems to me the majority of problems intended to be solved by Glib have been solved by POSIX. I realize GTK predated POSIX, but shouldn't they have written it for POSIX compatiblilty instead of Glib in version 2.0? It just shows to me that GNU has the same "not invented here" mentality as Microsoft... Some points:
GLib is meant to be cross-platform - it works on Windows, for example. So yes, this is a wrapper around stuff that has in part been done in POSIX. But it has to be.
You are incorrect about GTK predating POSIX, unless I have gone senile.
There is something to the GLib/GTK entanglement. GNOME has been untangling this for some time, and I'd said it is fairly reasonable at this point, but not perfect. A matter of opinion, of course.
But if you want to run proprietary applications on a desktop, Qt is a poor choice. For starters it costs money. Furthermore, Nokia can charge whatever they want for proprietary licenses, and this might change at any point; there are no guarantees.
This is quite trollish. Qt is no different in those respects from the other innumerable commercial libraries that are routinely used in proprietary software development. Singling out Qt as a "risk" suggests an axe to grind, and recommending GNOME for proprietary applications confirms it.
Yes, you are right, Qt is no different from other toolkits that cost money for proprietary apps: I would make the same argument against Microsoft tools. If you get hooked on Visual Studio/.Net/etc., then you run the risk of Microsoft raising prices in the future. Exactly the same as proprietary apps on Qt, that is the risk of developing for a platform owned by a corporation.
This risk does not exist if you develop for a platform that is LGPL, you can write apps for it (FOSS or proprietary) without such concerns.
While GTK has become visually polished and really pretty to look at, it still is poorly designed from a developer point of view and suffers from horrible implementation mistakes that probably would require a complete rethink/rewrite to correct. Can you give some examples to support that claim?
Yes, Novell is working on Mono and partnering with Microsoft, while at the same time investing in GNOME. But that doesn't 'taint' GNOME in any way. The core GNOME technologies - GLib, GTK, and so forth - are not written in C# and have nothing to do with Mono. The licensing of those core GNOME technologies is the LGPL, in fact, precisely to ensure that there is no risk in developing for that platform. No one 'owns' it, and no one can 'taint' it. You will be able to run GTK and GNOME anywhere you compile it to run, be it SUSE, other Linux distros, Solaris, or whatever; again, as LGPL, you can do whatever you want with it, if you abide by that license. In particular, you can run any app you want on such a platform, which is the question here. The claim that "Targeting the Gnome desktop environment could prove dangerous in the long run" simply shows a lack of understanding of what GNOME is and how FOSS licensing works.
Regarding Qt, Qt is dual licensed as GPL and proprietary. If you want to run FOSS apps on KDE, you have no problem (at least if your FOSS license agrees with what Nokia will accept, and that includes most of those existing today). But if you want to run proprietary applications on a desktop, Qt is a poor choice. For starters it costs money. Furthermore, Nokia can charge whatever they want for proprietary licenses, and this might change at any point; there are no guarantees. However, if you are willing to take that risk, then Qt/KDE is a nice platform (although the portability, one of its main advantages, seems lost in this particular context, since it appears a single desktop is going to be chosen).
So, if you want to develop a FOSS application, both GNOME and KDE are fine (just make sure with KDE that you agree to the licensing). If, on the other hand, you want to develop a proprietary application for a particular desktop, I would say GNOME is the way to go.
Launchpad. Show me the source! It would be nice to have the source to Launchpad. However,
Lauchpad is not part of Ubuntu. So this does not make Ubuntu non-free in any way
Does Red Hat release the source code to RHN and everything else they run on their servers? Does Novell? I don't think so. I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, just that Canonical aren't special. The issue is that server code isn't in the same category as code that runs on your PC. That code should be FOSS, most of us here will agree. Code that I merely access from a server, that's another issue altogether, and worthy of discussion, which the FOSS community is just now starting to get around to (see the Affero GPL).
This is precisely why I almost threw up a little. The greatest and in many ways, superior alternative to exchange [- Zimbra], possibly handed over to the one who would love nothing more than to kill or pervert it into oblivion. Me as well. We need to act on this, and fast - grab a copy of the latest source code, since it might not be available for long.
There is a hitch here, though: since September, Yahoo! appears to have switched Zimbra from Mozilla Public License / Zimbra Public License to something called Yahoo Public License... which is not very good. It says, in fact, that essentially if Yahoo decides someone is not fulfilling the license, they can revoke it. That means that Microsoft will have a kill switch on all Zimbra installations, if I understand it correctly.
Does anyone have a copy of the last version of Zimbra which was MPL/ZPL, before the move to YPL?
Yahoo News itself is reporting this as a hostile takeover It is very close to being a hostile takeover at this point. In Microsoft's letter to Yahoo!, Ballmer says
In light of the significance of this proposal to your shareholders and ours, as well as the potential for selective disclosures, our intention is to publicly release the text of this letter tomorrow morning.
[...]
Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal. In other words, Microsoft is offering the Yahoo! board a deal, while saying, "if you don't like it, we'll go straight to the shareholders, we don't need your approval." That's a pretty plain threat of a hostile takeover. Very classy. Well, respect and manners were never Microsoft's strong suit, not as a company and certainly not of Ballmer either.
Your argument assumes Moonlight competes with Silverlight, but is appears false.: Microsoft engineers have collaborated with those from Novell to improve Moonlight, and Microsoft has officially recognized Moonlight. Such a thing would of course never happen with Wine or Google Docs, because those in fact are competition.
Did you try it on the comics? Did it work? Why doesn't Microsoft offer it for installation when you click the "Get Microsoft Silverlight" link on their web page, when using a unix-like env? Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. The true test of being 'cross-platform' would be for Microsoft to - at the minimum - inform you about the existence of Moonlight for Linux. But it doesn't do even that, let alone call it an official Silverlight implementation.
This just proves what was obvious for quite some time now. Microsoft doesn't, and has never seen Apple as a competitor; in fact, Apple is just a 'beard' to prove that Microsoft supposedly isn't anti-competitive. What does scare Microsoft is Linux.
Ah, Microsoft isn't even speaking with one voice here:
"Let's be very clear," Paoli [Microsoft senior director of XML technology] said. "It has been fostered by a single company -- IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."
[...]
Nicos Tsilas, senior director of interoperability and IP policy at Microsoft, said that IBM and the likes of the Free Software Foundation have been lobbying governments to mandate the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard to the exclusion of any other format. So which is it, 'IBM, and IBM alone', or 'IBM, the FSF, and a few others'? These two opinions just end up sounding like rants; this is what happens when everything isn't run through the company PR office (a surprising oversight here, actually - very unprofessional).
Anyhow, not that it matters, but the truth seems to be the latter. Several groups and entities were opposed to OOXML, including many FOSS organizations like the FSF. And also IBM. Given IBM's money, perhaps it acted more than the others, I have no idea. If IBM did anything underhanded or unethical, then that would be very wrong, regardless of the worthiness of the goal. But, as it happens, Microsoft was caught buying votes, not IBM, so these accusations of Microsoft's are just ridiculous.
It's very easy to demonstrate.
Ever "been in the zone" while playing Guitar Hero. I don't even know how I'm pressing the buttons in the right order, i just see the notes on the screen and think of clicking them, as soon as i think to hard about my fingers i mess up. I think that's a very good example. The same thing as when playing a shoot-em-up scroller, when you're really into it you feel as if you are moving the ship itself, and not the joystick.
What is telling is what happens if the game 'freezes'. The sudden lack of coordination between your intentions and the movement of the ship makes you focus on the joystick very suddenly.
It shouldn't depend much on how you hold the pencil, regardless of that you should feel resistance from the table at the point the pencil touches it, and not in your fingers. (But, like optical illusions, this doesn't work on everyone all the time...)
Yep. In fact, all sensory experiences are 'phantom', in that the experiences are all in our head, and do not depend on our bodies. Most of them, happily, correspond to our actual bodies, but for phantom limb pain victims and other various conditions, this breaks down.
Well, there is variation in human experience, so I wouldn't suspect anything is 'wrong' with you. You might just experience sensation or talk about it differently.
However, this experiment is not about suggestion. Done right, the lecturer doesn't tell the students what to expect before they try it for themselves.
Anyhow, try this: hold a pencil, and close your eyes. Have a friend hold a book in front of you, and tell him/her to move it around for a while so you don't know where it is. Then try to find the book with the tip of the pencil, with your eyes closed, moving the pencil gently. What sensory experience do you have at the instant when you find the book?
Actually, this sort of thing is pretty easy to demonstrate.
This is the example I was taught in psych class. Use your finger to apply pressure to your table. You feel pressure in the tip of your finger. Now use a pencil to apply pressure to your table. You then feel pressure at the tip of the pencil, and not in your fingers where you hold the pen.
Note that, if you make an effort, you can feel the pressure on your fingers from the pencil. But the natural experience is to feel pressure in the pencil, as if it were part of your body. What this in fact proves is that the brain can make you 'feel' sensations anywhere, and not just in your body.
Talk about profitting off the backs of other's work- he's using U2's name (and website) to push his agenda! Yes, and this coming from a manager and not an artist is hilarious. Labels and managers exist to make money off of other people's creations. But it's even more shameful: not only is he pushing his agenda here, he is also trying to make a buck:
There is technology now, that the worldwide industry could adopt, which enables content owners to track every legitimate digital download transaction, wholesale and retail.
This system is already in use here in Cannes by the MIDEM organisation and is called SIMRAN. Throughout this conference you will see contact details and information. I recommend you look at it. I should disclose that I'm one of their investors.
I would be really surprised if Nokia did no buy Opera next.
As Nokia owns their development platform, they do have a huge bargaining power.
Qt in itself is hardly any use for Nokia (unless they are really disappointed with Maemo/GTK), but Opera is important. They probably saved money by buying Trolltech first.
Of course, I could be wrong.. I think that's a very interesting theory. If Nokia is looking to own a complete platform, then buying Qt and Opera makes a lot of sense. While Qt integrates well with WebKit, Nokia can't own it, so Opera might be the way to go.
Look at Novell's current focus on Mono, and how Mono is focused on GTK#. Also, that SLED defaults to GNOME. I think these show very clearly that Novell prefers GNOME.
Slashdot Mirror
If you mean
If you mean Microsoft patents in general, then this is a problem, yes. For all Linux desktops.
If you meant Windows or OS X, then yeah, much trickier there. GNOME is great on Linux, less so as a cross-platform tool. However it is improving in that respect.
Yes, today Microsoft sells its dev tools fairly cheaply. But the danger is that this might change; it is a risk when committing yourself to using their platform (accept it, if you want, but just be aware of it - that is my point).
GTK is improving on Windows and Mac (Mac in particular recently), but yes, it is inferior in its cross-platform capabilities in comparison to Qt. It's great for GNOME, though, and the original question was about a single desktop, not cross-platform development.
I'm glad to hear that your intention was honest and not just trying to start a flame-war.
The concern with patents is a valid one, because of the sad situation with the (US) patent system. This is an issue with all desktops, and we all need to be aware of it. I do agree with you that Mono is more vulnerable to this issue than other random technologies, simply because we know of Microsoft patents relevant to it. So I can understand if someone is wary of Mono (but I, myself, am not too concerned about this). Yet, as you say, GNOME isn't Mono and certainly does not depend on it, so this is a non-issue. Especially if all you use is GTK - that certainly has no connection whatsoever to Mono. Hence, given that GTK is LGPL, which is a big benefit if your app is proprietary - it doesn't cost money - this seems the best idea for you.
(Btw, not sure what you mean by 'other problematic technologies' aside from Mono. Like what? OOXML? That is also not related to GTK in any way... it might appear in Gnumeric and OpenOffice, neither of which is directly GTK-related.)
I wouldn't be enthusiastic about wxWidgets - it's a nice concept, but doesn't seem to have enough momentum behind it. In particular there are few applications using it compared to the other platforms, GTK and Qt, and for good reason.
I am pleasantly surprised that most new code is in Python, interesting, how was this measured?
Regarding As to what the poster was talking about, one of my guesses as to mistakes would be how GTK is entangled with Glib. It's been a while since I've done anything with GTK and Glib, but it seems to me the majority of problems intended to be solved by Glib have been solved by POSIX. I realize GTK predated POSIX, but shouldn't they have written it for POSIX compatiblilty instead of Glib in version 2.0? It just shows to me that GNU has the same "not invented here" mentality as Microsoft... Some points:
But if you want to run proprietary applications on a desktop, Qt is a poor choice. For starters it costs money. Furthermore, Nokia can charge whatever they want for proprietary licenses, and this might change at any point; there are no guarantees.
This is quite trollish. Qt is no different in those respects from the other innumerable commercial libraries that are routinely used in proprietary software development. Singling out Qt as a "risk" suggests an axe to grind, and recommending GNOME for proprietary applications confirms it.
Yes, you are right, Qt is no different from other toolkits that cost money for proprietary apps: I would make the same argument against Microsoft tools. If you get hooked on Visual Studio/.Net/etc., then you run the risk of Microsoft raising prices in the future. Exactly the same as proprietary apps on Qt, that is the risk of developing for a platform owned by a corporation.This risk does not exist if you develop for a platform that is LGPL, you can write apps for it (FOSS or proprietary) without such concerns.
Can you give some examples to support that claim?
Agreed, this is a ridiculous claim.
Yes, Novell is working on Mono and partnering with Microsoft, while at the same time investing in GNOME. But that doesn't 'taint' GNOME in any way. The core GNOME technologies - GLib, GTK, and so forth - are not written in C# and have nothing to do with Mono. The licensing of those core GNOME technologies is the LGPL, in fact, precisely to ensure that there is no risk in developing for that platform. No one 'owns' it, and no one can 'taint' it. You will be able to run GTK and GNOME anywhere you compile it to run, be it SUSE, other Linux distros, Solaris, or whatever; again, as LGPL, you can do whatever you want with it, if you abide by that license. In particular, you can run any app you want on such a platform, which is the question here. The claim that "Targeting the Gnome desktop environment could prove dangerous in the long run" simply shows a lack of understanding of what GNOME is and how FOSS licensing works.
Regarding Qt, Qt is dual licensed as GPL and proprietary. If you want to run FOSS apps on KDE, you have no problem (at least if your FOSS license agrees with what Nokia will accept, and that includes most of those existing today). But if you want to run proprietary applications on a desktop, Qt is a poor choice. For starters it costs money. Furthermore, Nokia can charge whatever they want for proprietary licenses, and this might change at any point; there are no guarantees. However, if you are willing to take that risk, then Qt/KDE is a nice platform (although the portability, one of its main advantages, seems lost in this particular context, since it appears a single desktop is going to be chosen).
So, if you want to develop a FOSS application, both GNOME and KDE are fine (just make sure with KDE that you agree to the licensing). If, on the other hand, you want to develop a proprietary application for a particular desktop, I would say GNOME is the way to go.
There is a hitch here, though: since September, Yahoo! appears to have switched Zimbra from Mozilla Public License / Zimbra Public License to something called Yahoo Public License... which is not very good. It says, in fact, that essentially if Yahoo decides someone is not fulfilling the license, they can revoke it. That means that Microsoft will have a kill switch on all Zimbra installations, if I understand it correctly.
Does anyone have a copy of the last version of Zimbra which was MPL/ZPL, before the move to YPL?
[...]
Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal. In other words, Microsoft is offering the Yahoo! board a deal, while saying, "if you don't like it, we'll go straight to the shareholders, we don't need your approval." That's a pretty plain threat of a hostile takeover. Very classy. Well, respect and manners were never Microsoft's strong suit, not as a company and certainly not of Ballmer either.
Your argument assumes Moonlight competes with Silverlight, but is appears false.: Microsoft engineers have collaborated with those from Novell to improve Moonlight, and Microsoft has officially recognized Moonlight. Such a thing would of course never happen with Wine or Google Docs, because those in fact are competition.
This just proves what was obvious for quite some time now. Microsoft doesn't, and has never seen Apple as a competitor; in fact, Apple is just a 'beard' to prove that Microsoft supposedly isn't anti-competitive. What does scare Microsoft is Linux.
Anyhow, not that it matters, but the truth seems to be the latter. Several groups and entities were opposed to OOXML, including many FOSS organizations like the FSF. And also IBM. Given IBM's money, perhaps it acted more than the others, I have no idea. If IBM did anything underhanded or unethical, then that would be very wrong, regardless of the worthiness of the goal. But, as it happens, Microsoft was caught buying votes, not IBM, so these accusations of Microsoft's are just ridiculous.
What is telling is what happens if the game 'freezes'. The sudden lack of coordination between your intentions and the movement of the ship makes you focus on the joystick very suddenly.
It shouldn't depend much on how you hold the pencil, regardless of that you should feel resistance from the table at the point the pencil touches it, and not in your fingers. (But, like optical illusions, this doesn't work on everyone all the time...)
No, the sound should not be relevant. This should be done gently, so you don't hear almost anything.
:)
Well, your sensory experience appears to be fairly nonstandard. You're special
Yep. In fact, all sensory experiences are 'phantom', in that the experiences are all in our head, and do not depend on our bodies. Most of them, happily, correspond to our actual bodies, but for phantom limb pain victims and other various conditions, this breaks down.
Well, there is variation in human experience, so I wouldn't suspect anything is 'wrong' with you. You might just experience sensation or talk about it differently.
However, this experiment is not about suggestion. Done right, the lecturer doesn't tell the students what to expect before they try it for themselves.
Anyhow, try this: hold a pencil, and close your eyes. Have a friend hold a book in front of you, and tell him/her to move it around for a while so you don't know where it is. Then try to find the book with the tip of the pencil, with your eyes closed, moving the pencil gently. What sensory experience do you have at the instant when you find the book?
Actually, this sort of thing is pretty easy to demonstrate.
This is the example I was taught in psych class. Use your finger to apply pressure to your table. You feel pressure in the tip of your finger. Now use a pencil to apply pressure to your table. You then feel pressure at the tip of the pencil, and not in your fingers where you hold the pen.
Note that, if you make an effort, you can feel the pressure on your fingers from the pencil. But the natural experience is to feel pressure in the pencil, as if it were part of your body. What this in fact proves is that the brain can make you 'feel' sensations anywhere, and not just in your body.
This system is already in use here in Cannes by the MIDEM organisation and is called SIMRAN. Throughout this conference you will see contact details and information. I recommend you look at it. I should disclose that I'm one of their investors.
As Nokia owns their development platform, they do have a huge bargaining power.
Qt in itself is hardly any use for Nokia (unless they are really disappointed with Maemo/GTK), but Opera is important. They probably saved money by buying Trolltech first.
Of course, I could be wrong
I think that's a very interesting theory. If Nokia is looking to own a complete platform, then buying Qt and Opera makes a lot of sense. While Qt integrates well with WebKit, Nokia can't own it, so Opera might be the way to go.
Look at Novell's current focus on Mono, and how Mono is focused on GTK#. Also, that SLED defaults to GNOME. I think these show very clearly that Novell prefers GNOME.