Re: Some ideas

[Ed Cogburn <ecogburn greene xtn net>]

Brady Hegberg wrote:
> 
> I just want to say that we need to strike a balance between competition and
> cooperation.  Competition is a good thing...it keeps people on their feet
> and in the end it's good for the user which is all of us even (especially?)
> the developers.  I have a website that I've been forced to improve over and
> over because of competition.
> 
> The only thing I'm worried about is that commercial application vendors
> will come in and start splitting themselves up amongst the widget
> sets.  Adobe does Photoshop using GTK+ (wouldn't that be kind of ironic?)
> then Lotus uses QT to do 123 then Intuit does Quicken with GTK+
> etc...  This is all conjecture of course but it could become annoying.


	Someone more knowledgable about Qt's license (the new one) should
pipe in here, but it seems to me we'll just end up with a
situation similar to Motif.  Companies which use Qt will be forced
to provide a statically linked version of their product to ensure
that folks without Qt will be able to use their product. 
Companies using GTK (or GNOME/GTK) can not only provide dynamic
and statically linked versions, they'll be able to distribute GTK
itself with their product, maximizing user choice.


> 
> >I think this whole KDE vs. GNOME thing sucks, it would be GREAT if both
> >projects could be alot more cooperative, share ideas, maybe even one day
> >(dare i say it ?) merge. Both projects want the same thing: the best desktop
> >available; and everyone is always talking about how every _work together_ in
> >the Open Source world...


	Well there is some cooperation between KDE and GNOME supposedly
(using same Drag-n-Drop protocal, etc), the problem isn't
KDE-GNOME (both are GPL), its the non-free widget set that the KDE
people chose to build on.  With hindsight, I'm sure the KDE people
would have done things differently, but the damage has been done. 
KDE isn't going to switch to another widget set, and the Harmony
project to create a Qt 'clone' is defunct, last I heard.
	Sadly, the new license for Qt still doesn't help.  A recent
discussion on Debian distribution's mailing list indicates that
they still can't distribute Qt in their 'main' (completely free
software as defined by the Debian Free Software Guidelines)
section.  Qt will have to remain in the 'non-free' section.
	In the meantime, lets just let the competition between the two
end up improving *both*, that doesn't hurt anybody.


-- 
Ed C.