Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius) [LWN.net]

Tom Callway interviews KDE's Aaron Seigo. "Aaron: In a nutshell: KDE has grown up in just about every way imaginable in the years I've had the pleasure and privelege of being a contributor. The successful maturation of the project is certainly one indicator of its success, and the fact that it has done this while the active leadership has gone through a couple of generations shows that this likely to continue on. If anything defines KDE, it is the deep internalization of the values and goals of the group within every corner and sub-project." (Found on KDE.News)

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Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 28, 2008 17:37 UTC (Fri) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link] (21 responses)

Hrm... I'm always a little puzzled by Aaron's sense of advocacy. This bit seems a little spun:

KDE is now the first free desktop whose apps compile on every major platform.

Now, clearly Gtk applications work great on all these platforms and have for years now. So I guess there's some hidden distinction being made between tools like the Gimp, Pidgin, Wireshark or Inkscape, which are quite clearly cross platform, and "Gnome Applications" in general, some of which maybe aren't? It seems there's an implication being drawn here that isn't supported by the practical facts. It's great that KDE is now cross platform. But to claim that they got there first on the basis of nitpicky distinctions is really pushing it, IMHO.

The section on "KDE in the Enterprise Market" also seems to be a little heavy on the spin side. The question is quite clearly (to me, anyway) referencing the fact that KDE development must be done under the GPL, which tends to scare business customers more than the LGPL which allows them to choose their own license for their products. Aaron completely sidesteps this proverbial elephant in the room and recites some cliches like "KDE is first and foremost a Free(dom) Software project." and "single vendor situations are just bad business."

I mean, look: if Trolltech* doesn't want to support non-GPL KDE development, then just say so. There are lots of good, justifiable reasons for this. 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.

* Not KDE, really: the GPL-only issue fundamentally comes from the license for Qt Free Edition.

Otherwise, though, great interview.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 28, 2008 18:31 UTC (Fri) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link] (3 responses)

> 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.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 29, 2008 0:11 UTC (Sat) by coulamac (guest, #21690) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't think you were taking potshots at Gnome or other desktops.  

The particular claim about the first cross-platform stack is not exactly correct, however.
For the last several years, the Gnome developers have been working avidly to make sure that
GTK+ with freedesktop.org technologies *is* their desktop stack and that there are no Gnome
libraries per se.  Recently, for example, the Gnome-vfs libraries were made obsolete by
gio/gvfs which lives in GLib.  So, to make a big distinction between Gnome applications and
GTK+ applications is a bit of an anachronism these days.  To the extent GTK+ is cross-platform
(and it is), so to are the Gnome/GTK+ applications.  You don't find much bonobo in Gnome
anymore.

Also, my understanding is that the KDE libraries are universal APIs for which platform-native
backends do the heavy lifting.  Are the Solid, Phonon, and Decibel backends for Windows (XP,
Vista) and OSX fully functional?  If not, then you may be back to the fact Qt, not KDE
exactly, is fully cross-platform.

Advocacy is well and good, but scrutiny of advocacy is also a good thing.  Cheers!

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 29, 2008 5:24 UTC (Sat) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]

> GTK+ with freedesktop.org technologies *is* their desktop stack 

so ... which fd.o technology maps to phonon? solid? sonnet? threadweaver? ... for decibel
there is the tapioca stuff in gnome, but the kde and gnome works are based on a common spec
not just commond (let alone a cross platform integrated one), so it's a little like saying a
html widget is at the same level due to HTML being a w3c spec.

really what it comes down to is putting the APIs in front a developer and seeing what works
together, are coherent, deliver powerful desktop service integration, etc... this is one area
where KDE4 really shines already (and will do even more so with each passing release as
features continue to be added and bugs squashed in each of these frameworks). 

> Gnome-vfs libraries were made obsolete by gio/gvfs which lives in GLib.  

yes, this is a nice step, very similar in several ways to kio.

> So, to make a big distinction between Gnome applications and
> GTK+ applications is a bit of an anachronism these days. 

it's not about making a distinction between "gnome" and "gtk+" apps. it's about making a
distinction between "function that exists and is natively cross platform" and "function that
doesn't exist". i'm not making odd divisions here, but simply outlining some real differences
in features.

because unless i missed it (and who knows, maybe i did, feel free to point me to them) but i
haven't seen things like these frameworks elsewhere in the free software world presented as a
coherent, cross platform set.and that includes GNOME. 

this really shouldn't be a huge surprise since, just as with kio and the gvfs stuff, KDE is
often first out of the gate with various features. not always (see my comment below regarding
PolicyKit, for example) but often. to deny that is to ignore the actual history and timelines
of both projects. that isn't a knock on GNOME, btw; they have slightly different aims and
goals and their own interpretation of how to achieve them.

> universal APIs for which platform-native backends do the heavy lifting

only in part. this is mostly true for solid, much less true for phonon, threadweaver, sonnet
(which all add considerable value) and not accurate at all for decibel, akonadi, etc. which
implement things pretty much from the ground up.

> Solid, Phonon, and Decibel backends

solid, no; the rest, yes. people are working on the solid backends. 

> scrutiny of advocacy is also a good thing.

scrutiny is fine indeed. let's just keep it informed and civil. your comment here is a good
example of both qualities, so thanks for that =)

i *do* wish people could make positive statements that are factually accurate about free
software projects without other free software projects dragging them own. i do like how pgsql
and mysql, e.g., get along these days even though adherents of each feel their choice is
superior to the other. unfortunately in other areas such as the desktop or high level
languages (e.g. python vs ruby) it's all a bit "crabs in the bucket" at times.

for the record, i dislike it when kde supporters are similarly counter productive over efforts
in other teams. to the point where i have actually talked with some such people in person in
the past to sort things out. i'm fully prepared to not only learn from others but recognize
their successes, and i'd like to think others are capable of the same. =)

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 30, 2008 6:15 UTC (Sun) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]

>> 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). =) 

That was the Trolltech revenue model. Nokia has other priorities and it is very easy to see a
conflict with Motorola, a notable source of income in the old (pre-acquisition) model:
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=21C81706-8...


-Brock

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 28, 2008 18:47 UTC (Fri) by chr_reisinger (guest, #41249) [Link] (6 responses)

AFAIK Gtk on Mac requires X11. Qt 4.X and KDE 4.X programs are native applications, and Gimp,
Wireshark or Inkscape, arg Gtk+ and not Gnome apps.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 28, 2008 19:35 UTC (Fri) by alexl (guest, #19068) [Link]

Not anymore, since a while:
http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx/

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 28, 2008 19:54 UTC (Fri) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link] (4 responses)

Gimp, Wireshark or Inkscape, arg Gtk+ and not Gnome apps.

Right, this is the nitpicky distinction that annoyed me. By the same logic, .NET applications are not "windows" applications and Carbon applications are not "Macintosh" applications because they don't use the same set of toolkit libraries as some other applications that we already call "windows" or "mac" apps.

It's just silly. Sure, you can define the argument that way and be "logically" consistent. But it's fundamentally meaningless. Gimp, Wireshark, Inkscape, et. al. interact very well with the "desktop" in a cross platform way, and use the "official" Gnome means to do so. Pedantic argument about their "Gnomeness" isn't helping anyone here. These apps are first class citizens on a Gnome desktop, and arguing otherwise is just plain misleading.

Thus, my disappointment (sorry, Aaron) in seeing that kind of argument show up in print (metaphorically in print, that is), from a very influential source, and in a context where technical discussion instead of marketing spin would have served us all better.

KDE4 is cross platform now, and that's really cool. Sneaking in potshots about the "other" desktop that flies in the face of clear reality (I've known people who have been using Ethereal/Wireshark and Gimp on windows for years) and then justifying them via spin and semantic minutiae is very much not cool.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 28, 2008 21:27 UTC (Fri) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link] (1 responses)

> Sneaking in potshots about the "other" desktop that flies
> in the face of clear reality

in the interview, i stated it as a plus found in KDE, not as a potshot at other desktops.

> justifying them via spin and semantic minutiae

i don't think that being platform native, integrating with platform specific frameworks,
moving the abstractions and support up from the realm of "builds, works, has widgets" to "has
broad desktop service integration" and doing it with a 100% free software platform qualifies
as "spin or minutiae".

if you think it is (and it seems you do =), i would suggest looking at the code that has made
this possible and then consider your position again. the volumes of software that make this
possible are non-trivial, well thought out and compelling. i can understand how it is easy to
not realize the scope of the undertaking and dismiss it as "minutiae", but that is really not
an accurate appraisal of the results.

being able to say with 2 lines of code, "give me the number of CPUs on this system, now give
me a thread pool of that size" in a way that is both platform independent, easy to do (from
finding documentation to actually writing it) and that uses the system native facilities for
doing this is pretty impressive. and that's just one example of using just two of these cross
platform frameworks together (solid and threadweaver, in this example).

please, show me which other free software stack provides for that kind of of
feature/integration capability that is also consistent (e.g. not a patchwork of N different
separately sourced libraries) and portable. i don't think you'll find it, because it doesn't
exist outside today outside of KDE4.

i don't consider a widget and dialogs set, even if paired with nice things like xml parsing or
network stacks, to be a complete desktop stack. in fact, if you were to suggest such a thing
to companies that produce proprietary desktop systems they'd probably laugh and rightfully so.

being content with "well, gtk+/qt lets me run my GUI on these platforms" is simply not enough,
in the sense that we can do much, much better than that.

and it's not just the proprietary platforms either. a big reason there are so few f/oss apps
that have multimedia features is that it's so hard to do! the feature sets available vary from
Linux distro to Linux distro (not to mention the BSDs and OpenSolaris) and even the available
media frameworks are different between distros and over time. to me, multimedia is one
component of a desktop software stack, and i don't see another stack out there that is
portable and integrated in the same way that Phonon is in this category, allowing for things
like native DirectShow on Windows, QuickTime on Mac, GStreamer/Xine on
Linux/BSD/OpenSolaris/Windows/Mac (VLC and mplayer backends are also being worked on, btw)
with no client side code changes.

it's not a knock on anyone else's work in other areas to say, "hey, look what we've done
that's good."

if it makes you feel any better, i'm disappointed that we (KDE) don't yet have better
PolicyKit support in KDE and applaud GNOME for doing rather well with that in the GNOME
desktop. i don't feel it's a knock on KDE to recognize that work in GNOME in the least.
*shrug*

so there are strengths and weaknesses in all things. it so happens that the cross platform
desktop capabilities of KDE4 are simply one of its strengths. it really shines in this regard
due to its combination of Freedom, portability and completeness at the desktop services level
.. so expect people to be talking about it.

now, i don't expect you to be convinced by what i say here. you have already stated you don't
offer me much credibility. but i think it would be great for you to look further into these
matters as perhaps you will discover things you had not noticed up until this point. iow,
don't take my word for it, the code can speak more voluminously than i ever could.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 29, 2008 10:38 UTC (Sat) by jordip (guest, #47356) [Link]


And for the curious, the two lines aseigo refers to, are not a quick hack or a special case
but part of a larger multipurpose API
Should look like:

int procs = Solid::Device::listFromType(Solid::DeviceInterface::Processor).count();

Weaver::instance()->setMaximumNumberOfThreads(procs*2);

I can not speak about differences between KDE API and GNOME API, never used seriously none of
both. If someone can write some equivalent GNOME code, a silly comparison can be done :P.
I have used Qt and GTK+ and Qt really really beats GTK+. 

GNOME moves really fast (the 6 month release schedule was a great idea), it has a clean and
simple interface and it is pretty stable. If I had to deploy an corporate environment I'd use
it. 
But KDE seems like the future for me, in 4.1 and 4.2 the several WIP components will be put in
place. And starting from 4.3 (where I think things will seem mature) will be much better than
anything.

gtk - gnome distinction

Posted Mar 29, 2008 1:10 UTC (Sat) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't know the details, but here is what I know:
A few years ago a gtk application was an application which used gtk, a 
gnome application was an application which used gtk, the gnome vfs, the 
gnome config framework and the gnome component model (corba ?)

Is this still true today ?
What makes an application to a gtk or a gnome app ?

Alex

gtk - gnome distinction

Posted Mar 29, 2008 12:12 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

The distinction is becoming less meaningful over time as more of the "GNOME" technologies are
getting incrementally merged into base level libraries like GTK and glib. 

Refer http://live.gnome.org/ProjectRidley.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 29, 2008 9:10 UTC (Sat) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] (2 responses)

The "controversy" surrounding KDE and Qt never ceases to amaze me. First the complaints were that "KDE uses toolkit that is not free software!". So the complaint was about supporting and using free software. Now that Qt is licensed under the GPL, the complaint changed in to "KDE makes it harder to write proprietary software!". It never ceases to amaze me how the complainers could make a total 180 degree turn in their argument. First it was because KDE was not really free software. Then it was because KDE does not bend over backwards for writers of proprietary software.

I thought that this was about free software? Why exactly should we care about those who want to push proprietary software on us?

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 29, 2008 12:31 UTC (Sat) by midg3t (guest, #30998) [Link] (1 responses)

The complainers didn't make a 180 degree turn. The people complaining about non-free compatibility is a different set from those who complained about free-compatibility.

At least in theory.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Apr 7, 2008 13:28 UTC (Mon) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]

I think so too. I know I was one of the people who complained about the non-free:ness of QT
back in the day to the extent that I avoided KDE. But though I may wish that our platform
API:s where all licensed under LGPL, having QT under the GPL is not at all a problem for me.

I'm sure some of the people are still the same people who have simply decided to dislike KDE
(or get payed to dislike KDE), but I belive they are in a minority.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 30, 2008 16:53 UTC (Sun) by wstephenson (guest, #14795) [Link] (6 responses)

> The question is quite clearly (to me, anyway) referencing the fact that 
> KDE development must be done under the GPL, which tends to scare 
> business customers more than the LGPL which allows them to choose their 
> own license for their products.

If I may correct this alleged fact, KDE is licensed under the LGPL, so you 
can develop for it using any license you like.  The difference is that Qt 
is licensed under either 

*) the GPL (with a clause allowing a number of other open-source licenses 
which are not GPL compatible, see 
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/license-gpl-exceptions.html)

or

*) a commercial per-developer license which you pay for.  

Thus, you can develop 
*) a closed source KDE app for your business, having bought the license

or 

*) you can develop an open source KDE app for your business for free

or

*) you can just use and redistribute GPL KDE and Qt as-is for your 
business or as part of your product for free

I hope this isn't too verbose, but I keep hearing allegations of confusion 
and fearful proprietary businesses when KDE and Qt are mentioned, who 
don't have a problem integrating dual-licensed things like MySQL or GPL 
things like the Linux kernel, so I want to make it really easy for them.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 16:29 UTC (Mon) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link] (5 responses)

Yes, all of that is correct (although I have a vague memory that at least some of the KDE3 libraries were GPL, not LGPL, but I'm no expert). The confusion you are trying to clear up with your multi-pointed argument is precicely the "problem" to which I'm referring. Enterprise customers don't view KDE as very friendly, because at first glance they can't install a distribution and develop for it legally. They need something else (a Qt license) that doesn't come from the KDE project or their linux vendor.

You can't pretend this isn't a problem. Every major free desktop vendor (Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Sun) is pushing Gnome by default, not for technical reasons, but because they can't sell KDE in the same way that they can sell Gnome. They need to partner with someone else (a giant mobile phone vendor, no less) to support KDE development. Why bother?

That is the question that I believe (strongly) the interviewer was asking Aaron, and that he dodged.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 17:02 UTC (Mon) by wstephenson (guest, #14795) [Link] (4 responses)

> although I have a vague memory that at least some of the KDE3 libraries were GPL, not LGPL,
but I'm no expert.

Nothing released as part of KDE 3( or 2 or 1)'s kdelibs module was GPL.  You may be thinking
of private GPL components that are not part of the platform.  

> Every major free desktop vendor 

and that's the problem I have with your line of argument.  You say free but you're talking
about proprietary development.  You're turning "Free Qt is GPL" into "Companies can't develop
legally with KDE".  There are precedents of companies performing proprietary development with
paid-for software, you'll agree, and there are also precedents of companies producing products
using GPL components.  Take NetworkManager or the Evolution client, for example.  Or MySQL, as
I said earlier.  But when it's Qt or KDE you perceive it as an insurmountable problem.

> Why bother?

My personal answer to this question is developing with the LGPL alternative is like performing
invasive dental surgery on yourself. In the dark.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 17:33 UTC (Mon) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link] (3 responses)

OK, last post. This is going to fall off the lwn.net front page soon anyway.

You say free but you're talking about proprietary development.

I never said "free" in this context, and I'm not making a principled argument (hell, I'm not even making an argument "against" KDE in any serious way). The issue is practical: I offered an interpretation to a question that Aaron received in the linked interview, and to which he didn't substantively respond (and still haven't responded).

There are precedents of companies performing proprietary development with paid-for software [and also] of companies producing products using GPL components.

Right. And there is an overwhelming precedent showing that companies performing "free desktop development" prefer to offer their products under a licensing model that matches what their customers are accustomed to seeing from other technologies. Is this good? Bad? Really, I don't care. It's a complication and a problem, and it is verifiably costing KDE customers.

And the examples of NetworkManager and Evolution seem like straw men to me. Those aren't required for development on the platform as a whole. The overwhelming majority of desktop applications, especially custom-developed proprietary ones, will never touch either. The analogy to Qt (the fundamental toolkit to which everything that displays on the desktop links, by definition) is kinda weak, IMHO.

But when it's Qt or KDE you perceive it as an insurmountable problem.

Certainly not insurmountable: LGPL Qt, or clone it. I'll happily admit that I'd love to see this happen. KDE development for non-free tools* is just a non-starter currently. It can be done, but it's not worth it to most dispassionate observers.

* Most of which are simple things: installers, configurators, query front ends, etc... They don't need or want all that multimedia goodness or desktop integration. They just have to run and be licensed appropriately. I've done several of these for my day jobs, and gadgets like pygtk work great. There's just no free(beer)ly licensed** KDE equivalent.

** And yes, I'm aware that technically GPL software is fine when used internally within a single corporate entity and doesn't need to be released publicly. Try explaining that to a software engineering manager sometime and see how long it takes for them to tell you to "just use Gtk".

... developing with the LGPL alternative is like performing invasive dental surgery on yourself. In the dark.

Sure, and I'm sure it's a well supported and strongly-held opinion. But smart people disagree, and KDE needs to market to those smart people out there (and to a bunch of dumb ones who just want something that works without licensing complexity) if it wants to succeed. Technical brilliance isn't enough, and never has been.

The interviewer understood that, which is why Aaron was asked about the non-technical aspects of KDE4, specifically its lack of appeal to "Enterprise" customers.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Mar 31, 2008 20:40 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Technical brilliance isn't enough, and never has been.

Actually, in the free software world, it is. Take your bloody marketing rubbish somewhere else.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Apr 4, 2008 16:15 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (1 responses)

Those smart ppl disagreeing are mostly managers who don't know sh*t.

And the overwhelming precedent you are talking about - I'm pretty sure a lot more software has
been written with Qt, both free and non-free, compared to GTK. What serious business would
want to develop with something which is supported by just a handful of random ppl? Qt has a
company with over 200 ppl (these days, add Nokia to that number) behind it. Way more solid.
Besides, it is better documented, you get commercial support - sorry, but I'm confident
companies using GTK rather than Qt are an exception.

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead (Sirius)

Posted Apr 4, 2008 17:33 UTC (Fri) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]

That's just flaming. I mean, have you actually installed and used a recent version of Ubuntu,
Fedora, Solaris or OpenSuSE?  Are Red Hat, Novell, Sun and Canonical "just a handful of random
ppl [sic]" to you?  I mean, just stop. This isn't helping, and it make you look dumb.

There's an overwhelming collection of software available for both desktops, and neither is
going away.  The insistence of KDE people to engage in this kind of "Gn0me is teh sux0rz!"
flamage (either explicitly, as you and wstephenson did above, or implicitly in Aaron's
interview) just drives me nuts.  It's not helping anyone, least of all KDE.  Please grow up,
and learn to live with the rest of the community.  You don't have to use Gnome if you don't
want to, but after ten (TEN!) years isn't it about time you learned to live with it?