Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld) [LWN.net]

Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 3, 2008 23:04 UTC (Sun) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287)
In reply to: Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld) by dlang
Parent article: Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

"Holding KDE to a different standard then other software packages is the real problem here."

Where is the different standard, and where is the problem? There is one X.org. There is one Samba. There is one kernel. But there are many desktops. Just what totally unique "must have" feature-set does KDE bring that the people who actually pay for LTS are willing to pay for?

I'm not saying KDE doesn't have some unique features. And I've no quarrel with folks who prefer KDE over Gnome, as a personal preference. The difficulty I have is with people who push their personal prejudice to where they've convinced themselves that because Canonical won't pay for their favorite toys, Canonical's market research must be wrong -- a proposition for which no one here has yet presented any evidence.

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Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 4, 2008 0:25 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

no distro (including Ubuntu) is required to ship any software.

if they don't want to ship KDE then they should say so, and that will be the end of it.

but claiming that they can't ship it because the upstream developers won't commit to
supporting it for three years is not being honest because very few (if any) of the other
upstream developers will commit to supporting their software for the same time.

so if 3 years of upstream support is a requirement for a package to be installed most other
packages should be ripped out. if it isn't then KDE should be included (or the real reason for
it not being included should be stated)

personally I don't use either KDE or Gnome, they both eat up to much of the system to suit me,
so it's not as if I am personally impacted by the decision in either direction. However, I am
calling BS on the stated reason for not including KDE.

Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 4, 2008 15:58 UTC (Mon) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]

The other packages, like GCC, Gnome and the kernel are used both by Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I
think the point Canonical is trying to make is that there are many people who are paying for
long term support for Ubuntu, and that the cost for supporting e.g. Gnome and GCC for 3 years
is split up among all these people, butthe  number of people willing to pay for Kubuntu
support for 3 years is somewhere in the vicinity of none, making it economically unsound.