Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

> Gtk applications work great on all these platforms and have for years now.

yes, just as there have been (open and closed) Qt applications on all these platforms .. or
web apps or java apps or ... the interesting distinction here is that it's a complete desktop
stack from the basics of painting, widgets, io and config files (and everything in between
those goal posts) all the way up to multimedia, configuration management, hardware detection,
messaging, etc.

it's not just an application widget and utilities set .. it's a full integrated desktop stack.
some of that stack has existed in bits and pieces here and there for a few years, but even in
kde3 it wasn't as complete as it is now with such a coherent set of api's ... all of which are
portable.

that is something very interesting and new.

it's one thing to write portable apps, it's another thing to do so with the help of a desktop
toolkit and it's yet another to do full desktop integration and services in a consistent,
cross platform and future proof manner.

there are myriad issues in this space that have held up apps coming to linux as well as free
software happening on proprietary platforms. one example is a good cross-platform (light
weight, standards compliant, embeddable, open and inexpensive) web widget (webkit, grown out
of khtml, has finally addressed this). another is multimedia where most solutions for cross
platform devel of even basic media handling required writing a plugin scheme or having a bunch
of compile-time source code switches.

so the point, which i don't think is nitpicky at all, is that we now have a set of APIs for
such things that all work together and are all portable without exposing the ugly underbellies
of each system.

interesting, if trivial, example: the other day i was adding support to generically launch a
terminal. that defaults to the system specific preferences (able to be changed by the user),
and those defaults are coded differently on win32 vs linux (and likely vs macos, though that
hasn't been done yet). to accomplish the same previously with the general app toolkits (gtk+,
qt), you'd be left doing your own cross platform jig.

so we've successfully moved the conversation up another rung on the ladder from "does it
compile and run?" to "does it integrate?" and "does it have full access to all the desktop
frameworks one would expect for a modern app?"

for too long open source cross platform apps have had to make various concessions for that,
and in the end usually look slightly out of place everywhere they run. the missing piece is
*desktop* framework level integration.

btw, i'm really working on my brevity when speaking/writing. as you can se from the above,
sometimes single sentences blow up into multiple paragraphs or even pages... sometimes in the
effort pare things down a bit verbally i do end up missing some details. the interview was
already rather long ;)

> Gtk applications work great on all these platforms
> and have for years now. 

you and i may have different definitions of "work great". the Gtk+ on MacOS project is helping
immensley for that platform, but even now .. erg. and on windows, sadly i have to say, it
still has a lot of room for improvement.

really, apps like Firefox should not need to reinvent the toolkit to behave and look native.

kde3 apps on win/mac suffered from exactly the same issues, btw, including the few of them
that were ported natively to windows (e.g. kexi)

> The question is quite clearly (to me, anyway) referencing the fact that 
> KDE development must be done under the GPL

i read the question in the original interview as being about KDE usage rather than
development. i wasn't avoiding any elephants, but rather talking about what the question
seemed to be about, which was usage in large environments.

i agree that for many large environments, particularly corporate ones (and less so for
educational ones), software development is an issue that goes hand in hand with the platform.

personally, i don't see the GPL as an issue at all in this case, but i certainly wasn't
avoiding it.

> if Trolltech* doesn't want to support non-GPL KDE development

that would be insane, since that's how Trolltech creates revenue (non-GPL development). =) 

> But to ignore the issue (which is very real) almost sounds to me like 
> he's trying to trick enterprise customers into thinking the license 
> permits something it doesn't.

i feel you crossed a line here by implying i'm trying to trick someone. that would be a pretty
low thing to do, and certainly not anywhere near my thoughts or intentions. ascribing such
crass motives when they don't exist is really rather poor form. =(

now .. that said, i don't see what 'the issue' is. enterprises pay for tools all the time, and
many also engage in open source development. either way, you are free to write your code using
pretty much any Free Software license you wish (not just GPL, see the Trolltech license
exemptions page for the official list, which gets added to as needed, btw) or you can support
the ecosystem by purchasing the tools you use.

there are thousands of proprietary Qt applications out there, and the satisfaction rate is
exceptionally high.

and perhaps that's why i didn't talk about it: for me and those who actually use Qt/KDE in
such environments it really isn't an issue. it's an issue that exists primarily in the minds
of people who use other toolkits.

well, that and i think the usage question is the first question that needs to get answered
anyways: not every deployment target cares about the topic of in house desktop app development
(whether that's because they just don't have custom apps, or they outsource all that, or they
have a web app policy, or....) and before one gets to "so.. what's the software development
like?" question the "so.. can we actually use this software in our shop?" question must be
answered.