KDE Under The Microscope

Posted Oct 4, 2003 20:40 UTC (Sat) by davidl (guest, #12156) [Link]

People use Gnome, Fluxbox etc. because they want to. No one is going to stop them from using what they want to use. The next stage of free software development is to be able to get all of these environments working together through open standards and innovative software. To be able to use different tools but have the 'integration' that people sometimes require is going to be the next great thing for free software. Commercial IT companies will no longer be able to market 'integration' as something innovative. They will have to give us something that actually means something.

As a company Trolltech get a lot out of a desktop environment that uses their Qt developed toolkit software - and a desktop environment that will continue to grow. However, this is done at the behest of the KDE community. Qt was chosen not because people wanted to somehow financially support Trolltech but because Qt did, and still does, a good job.

Considering that the Qt library is published under the GPL, should Trolltech go in any direction the KDE community doesn't like then there would be a forked version of Qt - OpenQt or something. It is in Trolltech's best interests not to do anything stupid that forces this. Trolltech is at the mercy of KDE and its community, not the other way around as some non-enlightened people seem to think.

I'm sorry, but I am sick of reading comments posted by people who are hostile to absolutely any free software project/commercial company relationship and who just don't understand the situation. We are not going to get free GPL'd software everywhere, nor should we have commercial software everwhere. I think everyone benefits from a successful marriage of the two. Look where commercial software has got us - "Oh, you have to buy X to make Y work". That's exactly why free software is now such a success :). The current situation we have with commercial software is just silly market stagnation.

A free software project gets the resources and development that a commercial organisation can bring and community members can contribute, have fun hacking, become well rounded IT professionals and sell their labour skills. A commercial organisation gets kudos, a potential growing environment in which to sell its products and more importantly, a community where ideas can be bounced around and Research and Development undertaken. Apple, JBoss and MySQL are among many organisations that have found this out quite successfully. The GPL, other free licenses and the sheer critical mass of open standards and protocols ensures commercial companies can't do anything stupid and if they do their bottom line and credibility *will* suffer as a result. They won't be able to simply pay this lip service.

Free software is the fundamental 'glue' that can help software everywhere work together and ensure we haven't got the ludicrous and childish 'lock-in' we have presently - but it isn't an answer to everything. Some of the more politically hostile amongst us in the free software community need to understand that 'pure GPL'd' software *absolutely* everywhere is a silly unachievable goal. Not mentioning any names :). KDE is an example of how a free software project and a commercial software company can collaborate successfully without suspicion. The use of free software licenses such as the GPL and the community process at its heart ensures the future success of this kind of relationship. No one need be hostile towards it.

Had to get that off my chest before we got any more silly KDE/Trolltech comments. Sorry.

Back on subject. The reports were a reasonably interesting study into how, not just KDE, but other free software projects may work and their motivating factors.