Several months ago William Lamb witnessed a heated debate in the open source community, an article titled “The Future Belongs to GNOME; Inertia to KDE,” in which it was suggested that GNOME was overtaking the KDE project by being more responsive to the user community’s needs.It became obvious while reading the postings that users do not have a place of their own in the open source development process. The author would like to respond to some of the ideas he saw posted and propose an outline for the proper relationship between free software users and free software developers.
Creating a Place for Users in the Open Source Process
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
And the original article “The Future Belongs to GNOME; Inertia to KDE,” is at:
http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=…
KDE is doing very well in the Linux world _because_ they are listening to their users. Trying to spin KDE’s success in some bizarre fashion is William Lamb’s way of throwing a tantrum.
I would say that not only does momentum belong to KDE, but acceleration as well. There always seems to be something interesting happening in the KDE world. I think it’s great to have Qt as the KDE foundation as automatically you get hundreds of large paying customers driving improvements to the base.
When Apple went looking for best of breed browser components, where did they end up? With part of KDE of course.
The KDE community is open, well documented, and always looking for good ideas. It seems to me that the author has an axe to grind against KDE.
But the KDE depend on QT. It has two separated version: the commercial (and IMHO too expensive) and the open editation. It make commercial software and KDE integration impossible. You cannot create commercial KDE application, because KDE is based on free version of QT in every linux distro.
“But the KDE depend on QT. It has two separated version: the commercial (and IMHO too expensive) and the open editation. It make commercial software and KDE integration impossible. You cannot create commercial KDE application, because KDE is based on free version of QT in every linux distro”
Nonsense. I don’t know what kind of integration you are talking about, but I have many commercial KDE applicatons runnning side by side my non-commercial ones.
QT gives you a great toolkit of you are going to develop freee software. If you are going to profit, you might as well pay for the tools that allow you to do so.
Sounds reasonable to me.
It’s already happened and long ago. Borland is doing it right now with their Kylix Delphi and C++ compiler/IDEs.
I would agree however that by making QT kind of a “KDE tax” for commercial software vendors, that it is a disadvantage as that requirement does not exist with GNOME.
However as the past/present has shown, commercial shops have still preferred QT/KDE. Thats saying a lot.
…Btw, the icon for this story and others is inappropriate. Free Software is a subset of Open Source. They are not equivalent.
The reality is that the FOSS community is primarily made up of developers who cannot think outside of code and features. Apple, Microsoft, and IBM all spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Human Factors and Usability Testing. Yes, it is similiar to beta testing in that it is a time consuming and highly iterative process. However, it requires the skills of people who specialize in Human Factors and Information Architecture. (BTW, usability has little or nothing to do with widgets, alpha blending, or 3D animated windows.)
These people make it there business to create feedback cycles through formal and informal approaches such as surveys, observation, and analysis. Most Human Factors and Usability professionals are not developers – but instead hold degrees in cognitive psychology and related behavioral sciences. Information Architects are not database or web designers but instead they are keenly aware of usability principals and are trained in iterative design and visual prototyping. They typically have the experience of directly interacting with end users and translating users’ conceptualizations into effective and usable interfaces.
Myself, I’m a developer by training. But I had the privilage of working with these people and they totally changed the way I look at a UI. Appeal to them first and you (the FOSS community) will find a path for end user participation.
QT really isn’t that expensive when you consider what you get.
Almost any company can afford QT licenses.
As for his comments about sourceforge, I can only agree, sourceforge needs a “layout” overhaul
I read as much of the article as I can stomach, and all I can say is that it is rubbish. It completely ignores everything that has happened to get OSS where it is today. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not one to say “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” is the open source Bible, but it is pretty freakin’ close. William Lamb tries to assign OSS developers a “responsibility” to program certain useful programs. This is fine if you are being paid, but when you are writing a program for fun or to accomplish a goal your only responsibility is to yourself. As Eric Raymond stated: “Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch.”
The reason OSS works is because developers have fun doing it. I know certain people get paid for their work, but most supporters are just contributing patches in their free time. To say they have a responsibility to make you free software is ludicrous.
Imagine a world in which users choose open source software not because it’s free or because they like the idea behind it, but because they get better support in the free software world than they do from software companies.
That world exists and I live in it. I get better support for Gentoo than I ever have from any hardware or software manufacturer. Help is fast, free, and friendly and I don’t have to deal with a tech support monkey reading from a script. I am sure others have the same experience both with gentoo and with other distros. The support is there. If you don’t see it, you aren’t looking.
About support in Gentoo:
>The support is there. If you don’t see it, you aren’t >looking.
http://forums.gentoo.org
The nicest helpfull place on this planet, well moderated and newby friendly. That is, it helps that the installation of Gentoo isn’t point and click, it takes out the cruft
.
Not an attack on Gnome *per se*, just the rampant idea that users should drive all decisions. As an architect, there are times when you need to tell users to shut up. Otherwise, we could all end up with the WinUI.
I use KDE, and the reason why is quite simple: consistency. I find KDE apps very consistent. That comes from a considered approach, taking in inputs, but then focusing on a solid architectural approach. Gnome apps IMHO are far too loose in this regard, and thus the problems. There are offending KDE apps (like KBear) which I will not run because of UI issues; however, overall, KDE is just plain crisper. (I’m keep trying Gnome though 😉
Remember, too many cooks spoil the soup.
Usability isn’t the major factor, the major factor is ensuring that when a piece of software is written and documented, that it actually does what it supposed to do. A end user doesn’t want to load a programme and find to get something to work (that should world simply according to the documentation), they have to use 100s of workarounds.
Instead of making workarounds, make sure the blasted thing works. For example, I was setting up Redhat 9. During the modem installation process, it failed to detect the modem even though it was turned on, hooked up to the serial port and read to roll. I had to manually specify what port it was on. For a so-called “usability expert” they’d blame the GUI, it if were me, I’d blame the developer for not testing it properly and taking bug reports seriously. When there is a bug report, it is there for a reason. It is there to be used as a reference so that the issue can be resolved, it isn’t there to fill up harddisk/website space.
“Otherwise, we could all end up with the WinUI”
If that’s such a *bad* thing, why do the major (read KDE/Gnome) desktops seem to try to emulate the WinUI so much?
Gnome is much more ‘usable’ than KDE. However, neither is even close to being as usable as the WinUI in terms of GUI productivity IMHO.
> Apple, Microsoft, and IBM all spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Human Factors and Usability Testing.
I agree with all the point you made in the article, but a lot of the research they do simply doesn’t get put into the products they make. Apple do a fantastic job, and IBM seem to as well (I went to a HCI conference last year where a guy from IBM was talking about usability testing of some Java development tools), and MS seem to be implementing a lot of stuff lately as well.
However, a lot of usability research is simply neglected or overridden by other priorities. Let’s face it, what is the usability value of Microsoft Bob? Remember, these companies are not in the business of providing the best usability experience for their customers: they are there to make money, and if usability considerations conflict with that interest, then it’s clear which will be the winner.
Myself, I’m a developer by training. But I had the privilage of working with these people and they totally changed the way I look at a UI. Appeal to them first and you (the FOSS community) will find a path for end user participation.
Hmm, were you part of the latest usability discussions on the GNOME mailinglists? There is a lot of this going on right now and almost every project I follow is actively discussing how to design the UI, is using the HIG as a reference, considering accessability issues (can’t be stressed enough!) and often asking the usability experts on the usability team for input.
There is really a shift of mind going on, one that is really important. I was impressed how _fast_ this led to excellent results and how soon the majority of the developer and user community was actively taking part of it.
Sure, companies spend millions of dollars into usability testing, but then again, they spend even more millions of dollars into software development and that hasn’t stopped the free software community from developing competitive software.
>I don’t know what kind of integration you are talking about,
>but I have many commercial KDE applicatons runnning side by side my non-commercial ones.
If you have a windows, you can use the win32 API and the full windows architecture in your application. If you develop Gnome application you can use the full Gnome architecture. But you can not develop commercial KDE application. The KDE architecture available only for the GPL software. You can run any commercial application, but this application cannot use the KDE services. Can you tell me any commercial KDE application (based on kdelibs, kparts, stb) ?
Is it just me, or is Sun heading up a slander campaign against KDE? These articles about KDE being “inert” sound just like the “Linux is Communism” complaints that Microsoft leveled just a short time ago. I see KDE adding new features every six months, while GNOME completely rewrote their internals and is now still trying to catch up with their old version 1.4 feature set— it just really doesn’t add up at all. Ever since Sun announced its switch to GNOME for Solaris, it’s like they want us to feel unpatriotic towards OSS if we use anything other than GNOME.
In truth, I LIKE GNOME– I think it’s visually more appealing than KDE, but… I get more work done with KDE.
“Can you tell me any commercial KDE application (based on kdelibs, kparts, stb) ?”
I haven’t looked into it very far, as I don’t use KDE, but isn’t that what The Kompany ( http://www.thekompany.com ) does? Or am I missing something?
I don’t get what the author’s point is. What he wants is exactly what commercial software companies provide.
But he doesn’t want to pay for it. Hey, nice one. I bet there are thousands of OSS developers out there that have just seen the light.
Of course! here I am writing a program because I needed to scratch my itch, and all this time I haven’t realised I could have been doing customer surveys on which way they would prefer me to scratch my itch.
Don’t you get it? The Free/OSS community is the result of what happens when you mostly take the user out of the software development process.
The user gets involved precisely when they need to, and that is when they care enough to make the effort actually join the community. Don’t want to make an effort? Then what use are you to us?
And this model is extremely successful. The OSS community is by and large pretty happy with what they have acheived, the way they have acheived it, and intend to keep doing it as long as they can because it is fun.
If my project doesn’t attract a critical mass of blissfully happy users, so what, I enjoyed writing it. I didn’t write it because I have an overriding urge to ‘implement all the current standards relating to customer feedback processes’ I wrote it because I wanted a tool and didn’t have a suitable one to hand.
I am more than happy to implement features my users ask for. Unless I am asked impolitely, unless it is too much hassle, or unless I have better things to do.
That is the way the OSS community deals with user requests, and the way it will always be, as it should be, until you start introducing financial or other incentives to force programmers to do your bidding.
Nowhere in this article does it propose any mechanism for rewarding the programmers for providing better support and documentation.
Personally, I believe the reason articles like this are written is that the author and an overwhelming number of users have essentially had free-as-in-beer software due to widespread piracy for so long that they are simply incapable of appreciating the value of the OSS programmer’s effort.
Like a spoilt child, all he knows to do is scream when he doesn’t get what he thinks he deserves.
The company write pure QT applications. The KDE libraries are PURE GPL IIRC meaning one is required to open their source code if linked against them. GNOME on the other hand, all the libraries are licensed under LGPL meaning that both FSF and commercial software can use them. Mono’s classes however are X11/MIT licensed and only the compiler etc are GPL.
QT is cross platform, its cheap and you get very good support without having to go to some mailing list. GTK and GNOME are good but I dont see Suns support as a big deal. Not trying to troll and not trying to start flames but Miguel De Icaza is important to Sun, he was instrumental in bringing the Linux OS to the Sparc platform and he has many Sun contacts, also many high level Sun developers work on GNOME, so naturally Sun will go with GNOME. I am in no way saying GNOME is crap or criticizing Sun and I am in no way putting down Miguel or his achievements. I have met Miguel I like Miguel he is a very cool guy and very down to earth hacker. If he was working on KDE or associated with KDE in any way tho, Sun would be just as commited to KDE. My company has standardized on the KDE environment, we are commited to it 100% and most of our products are written in QT. QT is a great investment and very powerful development environment. I am personally in all my Open Source work supporting KDE and QT and I use it as my primary DE. I have many problems with GNOME 2 and yes I do submit bug reports and ideas to the GNOME project so I am not that biased, but I feel KDE is a more superior desktop.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3611
Sorry folks, I think KDE is doing pretty well compared
to gnome..
1- MacOS/MacOSX Finder – 757 votes, (21 %)
2- KDE Konqueror – 621 votes, (17 %)
3- Windows Explorer – 475 votes, (13 %)
4- Norton Commander or clone – 394 votes (11 %)
5- Gnome Nautilus – 360 votes, (10 %)
You’re quite wrong. The KDE libraries are licensed under the LGPL, while Qt is licensed dual GPL/QPL. Thus, the only thing that you need to do when developing commercial is pay the Qt license. The Qt license might seem expensive, but you have to take into account the fact that commercial Windows developers almost always pay $1000 a developer for a copy of Visual Studio, the Qt license really doesn’t seem so expensive, especially given how much nicer Qt is than MFC.
“As an architect, there are times when you need to tell users to shut up. Otherwise, we could all end up with the WinUI.”
What are you talking about ? Most OSS projects suffer badly because they listen to every users, so they’re loosing focus in the long run. WinUI is designed by a single entity, hence a better focus, hence a WAY better UI than anything available on the market. Put it the way you want, most users, including myself, prefere lot more WinUI than OSX, Gnome, KDE, etc. OSX behing a very close second. Gnome & KDE so far behind they’re not even in the competition.
GPL == commercial
You can write an application and license it under the GPL, box it and sell it just like any other commercial product out there. If you complain about it you are just showing your ignorance and lack of creativity. This is why Hollywood is dying, y’know.
Or is it too difficult for you to comply with the license? No problem, you can write your own license and use QT for only a few thousand dollars. Much cheaper than writing your own widget set. Or if that’s not good enough for you, you always have the option of using those LGPL widget sets that won’t force you to license your application under the GPL.
Or you can do what everyone else is doing and just make Windows programs, but I think you’ll find a lot more competition in that market.
I think that Gnome sucks if compared to KDE.
I understand that the dependence of Qt (and its license) is not good for business but I think that the Gnome project must make a Qt clone (remember Harmonia project ?) made from scratch and LGPL. It is easier thar reinventing the weel and trying to make another GUI standard.
And I don’t see any problem with C++ for GUI programming. It is more readable than C fot this type of object oriented code.
Ever since Sun announced its switch to GNOME for Solaris,
Umm, Sun ditched GNOME as the default. If you are going to criticize at least check your facts.
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/freelicense.html
[i]The Free Edition licenses do not allow the development or distribution of commercial software.[i]
I think that says it all. Also, if KDE’s libs are LGPL but they are based on QT which is GPL then they should be GPL as well, right?
Subject should have been No Commercial Software with GPL QT
Umm, Sun ditched GNOME as the default. If you are going to criticize at least check your facts.
SUN has neither ditched NOR said they’ll make it the default desktop. They HAVE said they will include it with a future Solaris release, I assume once STSF is ready, then they’ll include it.
I stress again, they have never said that they were going to make it the default desktop. They have repeatingly stated the default desktop will remain CDE and GNOME will be there for those inclined to use it.
For all you KDE license hating folk spreading misinformation to the extreme when googling for 2 seconds would tell you otherwise, please visit the following link:
http://kdemyths.urbanlizard.com/mythTopic.php?topic=10
I stress again, they have never said that they were going to make it the default desktop.
They did at one time say GNOME was going to be the default. They have since changed GNOME to be included but not as the default.
I know KDE say that the libs are LGPL, but if KDE libs are LGPL then I could write a closed source app using KDE libs, right? But they link against QT, which is GPL (unless you pay) and as far as I understand the GPL doesn’t allow the license to be changed except by the original author (in this case Trolltech) and you cannot even so much as link againt GPL libs without the whole project becoming GPL, so how can KDE libs be LGPL if they link against QT? Is this a loophole in the GPL, just write a wrapper library that links to the GPL library and release that under the LGPL just tell the user they require libXXX?
“…Btw, the icon for this story and others is inappropriate. Free Software is a subset of Open Source. They are not equivalent.”
Erm…they’re not equivalent, no…but a subset? I always thought of Open Source as a bastard child of free software. But hey, I guess that’s what makes me a zealot.
“I haven’t looked into it very far, as I don’t use KDE, but isn’t that what The Kompany ( http://www.thekompany.com ) does? Or am I missing something?”
IMHO the products of thekompany.com are pure QT based, not KDE.