| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica)The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica)Posted Jul 3, 2008 7:47 UTC (Thu) by sbishop (guest, #33061)Parent article: The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica)
I've been a died-in-the-wool KDE user for a long time. Now I'm trying to make myself like GNOME. I suspect that KDE's days may be numbered. Its licensing has always been an issue. It isn't the default desktop for any of the prominent distributions. C++ has its place, and it may be the best language for writing OSS desktop applications, but it understandably scares a lot of people. And I think that there are two other factors at work here too, which I haven't seen mentioned before. First, let's pretend that you could, in some way, measure how well defined an OSS project's goals are and how strictly managed it is. I think that the average of those two metrics would give a good indication of a project's long-term prospects. (I'm not taking into account developer resources, which I think is a mostly orthogonal issue.) Some projects, where the goals are open-ended, need strict leadership. (Languages are a good example of this; consider Perl 6 versus Python 3000.) Some can get a way with a relative free-for-all, like the Linux kernel. (It's a Unix work-alike and there's a "Unix way".) As we're seeing with KDE4, though, the desktop GUI is still an area of active experimentation, but the KDE project's leadership structure is highly democratic. (I don't know much about how GNOME is governed, but I think that in this regard it is to the project's benefit to have the inferior toolkit. It may keep the developers from being too creative.) Second, consider the release schedules of successful OSS projects: release early, release often, and keep the regressions to a minimum. Proprietary software releases are much fewer and farther between, with large differences between them. But KDE is an open-source project atop what is developed like proprietary software. 4.0 seems to be the worst of both worlds, exacerbating the problem by combining the Qt3 -> Qt4 transition with other major changes.
(Log in to post comments)
The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica) Posted Jul 3, 2008 11:37 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] "Its licensing has always been an issue." Yes, because GPL sucks, right? What kind of free software-project uses GPL anyway? "It isn't the default desktop for any of the prominent distributions." OpenSuse, Kubuntu, Slackware, Mandriva...
The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica) Posted Jul 3, 2008 14:17 UTC (Thu) by sbishop (guest, #33061) [Link] "Yes, because GPL sucks, right? What kind of free software-project uses GPL anyway?" You'll notice that I didn't mention how I feel about it. I simply said that it has always been an issue. It has been beat to death so many times that it has become a hot-button issue even, as you've demonstrated. "OpenSuse, Kubuntu, Slackware, Mandriva..." Let's see. I'd say that Suse qualifies as a prominent distribution, but you referred to _OpenSuse_. Why? Oh, yeah... Kubuntu? Are you trying to prove my point for me? Slackware and Mandriva? I did say "prominent", remember?
The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica) Posted Jul 3, 2008 15:02 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] "Let's see. I'd say that Suse qualifies as a prominent distribution, but you referred to _OpenSuse_. Why? Oh, yeah..." And why exactly doesn't OpenSuse qualify? It's on second spot on distrowatch, right behind Ubuntu. "Kubuntu? Are you trying to prove my point for me?" Kubuntu is a prominent distro, and it uses KDE. Why doesn't it qualify? Just because you say so? As to Mandriva... It's on spot six on distrowatch. Slackware is very popular among geeks. Why don't they qualify? Again: because you say so?
The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica) Posted Jul 3, 2008 15:55 UTC (Thu) by sbishop (guest, #33061) [Link] Distrowatch? Are you kidding me?! Janne, I would be happy to reason about KDE's long-term prospects with you or anyone else. But I'll need something to work with. I have no interest in a high-emotion, zero-content flame exchange.
The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica) Posted Jul 3, 2008 17:40 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] From the person who whined ambiguously about licensing and then stated that they were being deliberately obtuse, that's a bit rich. If you don't want flames, don't stand around banging bits of flint together in underwatered woodland.
The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica) Posted Jul 3, 2008 19:13 UTC (Thu) by sbishop (guest, #33061) [Link] I didn't mean to be obtuse, but I see that perhaps I was. Let me try this again. I have never heard of anyone who has chosen KDE over GNOME because Qt is GPLed. However, there have been whole distributions that have gone with GNOME over KDE because Qt is GPLed. For instance, I remember the disappointment of hearing that Bruce Perens had chosen GNOME for UserLinux, way back when. (See http://www.linux.com/articles/33279.) But that hasn't turned out to matter much. ;) Whether or not this is sensible behavior, it happens--to KDE's detriment. And again, what I think doesn't matter one bit. I certainly don't have anything new to say, which is why I only mentioned the whole issue in passing.
|
|
||||||||||||