The big news today is no doubt Novell’s acquisition of Ximian, Inc. So it was that much more interesting to get the chance to speak to Ximian’s lead primate, Miguel de Icaza, today and ask him some questions about Ximian, Novell, and their future.
Disclaimer: This interview was conducted via telephone. All of Miguel’s answers were transcribed as he spoke and should be regarded as paraphrases of what was said, not verbatim reproductions.
1. As the lead of the Mono project, do you see Novell having immediate use for Mono?
Yes, of course, I’d say there’s use immediately in every company! A few companies have already deployed applications and
projects that are Mono based, even though it’s not 1.0 yet, but they know the risks. Mainstream deployment, however, should
really wait for 1.0 release first. By that point, we’ll have finalized our APIs and know what we’re dealing with. But it’s
definitely useful today – even Microsoft released .NET products when it was pre-1.0.
2. Do you know the future of Ximian Gnome, Red Carpet, and Evolution? Most people would agree that Evolution has become the de facto e-mail client for Linux, and Red Carpet has become a way to distribute software easily within a corporate environment. Will these packages continue to be developed by Ximian developers?
Everything will continue operating as is. They [Novell] want to learn. They want to integrate. Our products will absolutely continue to be developed. Ximian will be a business unit. But it’s exciting, because we’ll be developing slightly differently. There will be a connector for groupwise. We’ll want to be integrating the desktop with a Novell environment. But we will continue to support our products, and we will continue to support open source.
3. It’s already been suggested that Ximian’s attractiveness to Novell is the knowledge and experience reverse engineering proprietary Microsoft protocols. Many casual and business Linux users know Ximian for adding polish and UI changes to an otherwise rough interface. Do you think either one of those impressions may fade as your priorities as a Novell entity are altered?
With Connector and Evolution – you’re often talking about tools used to migrate from Windows to Linux. when there’s no
migration, though, you’re really talking about “best of breed.” Ximian simply didn’t have the resources to provide what we
ultimately wanted – without the channel it’s difficult to get your products out. It costs a lot of money, and few people
realize that. We want to bring our products to more people. Novell can offer this. To get to your question though, no – I
don’t think Ximian as you know it will change significantly.
4. What, if any, is the Ximian team’s experience with Novell products?
Some of us knew about this purchase before it happened. We had to chance to use NetWare and really learn about it.
Obviously, we’ll be getting to know them as we look to adapt their programs into ours. Red Carpet and ZEN Works, for
example. I see those two working together, down the path.
5. Will Ximian remain an independent entity or will it be absorbed into
Novell proper? Will the brand name Ximian still exist?
Obviously, long term, something will change. In the short term, however, we will continue to operate as is. We will be
known as “Novell Ximian Services” business unit. NXS. Kind of like that Australian band.
For now, our logo and name will remain.
6. Many OSNews readers see how Ximian products and developers can add value to Novell products, but few have been vocal
about value Novell can add to Ximian beyond being a financial backer. Do you see Ximian products being enriched by this
acquisition?
Definitely. As we discussed, one of the biggest benefits Novell brings is an immediate increase in our channels of
distribution. Their availability and name will offer us a lot. People don’t understand the big burden of open source. They
want their software to be open source, they want their software to be free. There have been discussions – Ximian is great,
but how long will it be around? So they also want a company standing behind the products. This is what we can accomplish
now. In Europe, we don’t have the same ability to distribute our product, so we have to form agreements with other
companies… Our distributions channels are limited. With Novell, we have an established name and business. We have a way
to reach more customers.
7. Novell’s on-again off-again interest in Linux is a departure from its
core business. Will Ximian developers contribute to NetWare and its
associated tools or do you expect Novell to expand further in new
directions?
There’s really no good answer for that. We were a private company, so not everybody knew about this ahead of time,
obviously. Those who knew were able to play around with NetWare and really see what it’s all about. We implemented support
for Netware connectivity in Gnome within a week. We think we can do great things here. People at Ximian are excited about
this.
8. Nearly all Ximian tools focus on the end user. Conversely, nearly all Novell tools focus on the network. Some see
this as a match made in heaven, others see little value two such company can add to each other. Do you see any situation in
which Ximian and Novell might pursue a “Windows free network” project or do you think it more likely that Novell will stay
its course of integration into mixed environments?
Well, you have to realize that there are three parts to Red Carpet. Most people know only what is usually seen – a GUI
client. But there’s also an HTML-based interface and a command line. The second two are really meant for server use. Many
people use the Red Carpet daemon to administer software across their network – add, remove, modify. So, Ximian isn’t really
just a client-side entity. Next we want to work on integration with directory services. We really don’t have two different
goals.
9. Can you share with us any Ximian programs in which Novell has expressed an interest?
Everything. They wanted to work with us on every level. We all got together, Groupwise, Red Carpet, NetWare, Evolution,
Mono…they had interest in everything and seeing how everyone can benefit.
10. Novell has made other acquisitions in its efforts over the years to
compete with Microsoft (WordPerfect, QuattroPro) that have ended up less
than ideal for the acquired companies and their employees. How do you feel
about that and have you discussed with Novell “worst case scenarios” that
ensure Ximian’s survival if Novell’s focus shifts again at some time in the
future?
Ah, but you’re focusing only on the negatives. Cambridge Technology Partners, I believe it’s called, Novell’s consulting
group, is successful. Don’t forget that ZENworks and Novell’s J2EE projects have also been successful. Let’s be realistic –
Sun and Microsoft have had failures too. No one is perfect. This is a different Novell. Actions performed under previous
management had different goals; going head to head with Microsoft isn’t really the motivation here – we want all of our
products to be enriched by this.
Well, thanks Miguel, I know a lot of our readers have an interest in Ximian and are very excited for you!
Thank you.
Better Novell support in Linux can’t hurt. If Novell can properly execute their strategy of moving Netware to Linux, I think they may finally be able to resucitate themselves from the doldrums they’re in right now.
-Erwos
At least from this interview it sounds like good news. Though I’m wondering why companies like SUn, Novell and others invest in GNOME instead of KDE? Technically KDE is just as good as GNOME, the UI maybe not quite, though it does have some big advantages in features. Why invest in GNOME, is it just the license?
Because Novell and Ximian are americans. GNOME vs KDE is really America vs Europe.
Qt is owned by Trolltech [sic] as opposed to GNOME which is not ‘owned’ by anyone. That is the major reason why SUN invest in GNOME as opposed to KDE.
I do not think that GNOME vs KDE has ever been about “America” vs “Europe”. Gnome begun in Mexico, and spread to all the world within weeks. The same happens with KDE: it begun in Germany, and quickly became an international effort.
Anyone who wants to paints this as a clash of continents or bigotry has a fairily limited imagination (no offense, some of us are born to post to OSnews, and others to get Nobel prizes on literature).
GNOME started after KDE, and was historically lagging behind; so the GNOME team really focused on making a few things very good. We have made mistakes along the way, but GNOME2 is just a fantastic platform to build on:
* Accessibility is very important today, and it has got into the mindset of Gnome developers to keep it inmind at all times. Just like most developers today just write i18n code by hearth.
* Simplicity: Gnome produced the user interface guidelines, and the team did a wonderful job at making everything comply. Some of us disagreed about one or two things. But in the end, consistency was more important, and the end result shows. Gnome is a very comfortable user interface to use.
* GConf: everybody knows that am no fan of GConf, but I have to say, that GConf took by a storm the community; everybody got on the same page, and everyone adopted it. Together with the UI guidelines, this helped a lot making Gnoem more consistent. Havoc (and Elliot who planted the seeds) did a great job.
* The LGPL license: the fact that anyone can write proprietary apps with the Gnome libraries, means that it is easier to get corporate adoption as something that will be part of the platform. Nothing wrong with Qt today, am just saying: this is an advantage.
* The Foundation: I think it was important to realize that we needed
I am pleased to see that Miguel himself is responding to the America v. Europe bit.
Make the new logo simple – just replace the ‘n’ in Ximian with the red Novell ‘N’.
I would expect that RedHat could buy Ximian, which is a very good project in my opinion, since RedHat has a tradition on it (acquire good projects – cygwin for example).
But to be acquired by Novell it is totally unexpected for me as an interested user. I guess Novell needs to get credibility about their Linux projects.
(…)
I am an European, and despite, I dislike many USA attitudes, I think that both Gnome and KDE projects are “citizens of the world” (as Socrates said, not me …). I also think that the developers of both projects talk as friends to each others, 99.9 % of the times.
“Because Novell and Ximian are americans. GNOME vs KDE is really America vs Europe.”
Nice flamebait. Complete BS. Do you reckon it might be that Oracle, Sun, IBM, or the average Joe doesn’t like being restricted to either being forced to release everything they write under the GPL or pay a million dollars per desktop to Trolltech?
Novel bought Ximain.. not gnome. I doubt they care about GNOME at all anyways. I think they care more about Evolution and Mono (and maybe red carpet).. Also there is there is no “KDE Company” to buy..
The US versus Europe thing is bunk. Plenty of GNOME developers exist in Europe and plenty of KDE developers are in the US. There are probably more KDE users in Europe because of the popularity of SuSE, and there are probably more GNOME users in the US because of the popularity of RedHat, but they are both international efforts.
“Nice flamebait. Complete BS. Do you reckon it might be that Oracle, Sun, IBM, or the average Joe doesn’t like being restricted to either being forced to release everything they write under the GPL or pay a million dollars per desktop to Trolltech?”
This is also a myth. Most large companies, such as Oracle, Sun, and IBM, license software from other vendors all the time (and at the same time, other people license software from them..).. Sun chose GNOME way back when primarly because it was written in C. They had a lot more developers who wrote in C. KDE/Qt is written in C++.
As far as I know, Oracle doesn’t use either gtk/GNOME or kde/qt. IBM’s only product that applys here is Eclipse, whose SWT-java toolkit can use gtk. This is also because it’s easy to wrap a plain C api. There has been plenty of people waiting for a kde/qt interface for SWT to Eclipse doesn’t look like a piece of dog-shit in KDE
“This is also a myth. Most large companies, such as Oracle, Sun, and IBM, license software from other vendors all the time.”
But it isn’t a myth. If you want to program using KDE tools and interfaces, you either have to release your code under GPL or buy the GPL-free version of KDE. While it is true that these larger companies are willing to license technologies, but all these companies are also smart enough to avoid being held at gunpoint by TrolTech. TrolTech is charging around $2000 per desktop, which is clearly highway robbery. They are charging that much without even having a monopoly. Why bother with them when there is another alternative (Gnome) that is just as good or almost as good and is being actively developed to fix any shortcommings it might have.
>Because Novell and Ximian are americans. GNOME vs KDE is >really America vs Europe.
Why are (almost) all Americans so paranoid about the Europe-USA “war”? We simply didn’t agree the way you (or better GWB) started the war in Iraq. Is it a crime?? Germans still love the “american way”, millions of germans (and Europeans) spend their vacation in the US. Would that be if we hate the “Americans”? No, so I think there’s nothing to fear about the Europeans.
Ximian is US, KDE ist european? What a f***in’ BS!
OSS is multinational, so ist the culture in the US (and in Europe)! Please keep that in mind…
“Gnome begun in Mexico”
I didn’t know that.
“If you want to program using KDE tools and interfaces, you either have to release your code under GPL or buy the GPL-free version of KDE.”
Just as a clarification: as stated above, this is untrue. From the KDE Licensing Policy (http://developer.kde.org/policies/licensepolicy.html):
—-
3) Source files that are part of a library in kdelibs must be licensed
under the terms of any of the following licenses:
*) LGPL as listed in kdelibs/COPYING.LIB
*) BSD license as listed below.
*) X11 license as listed below.
—-
But yeah, since KDE apps will use Qt as well, you’ll have to buy a commercial license for its usage unless you want to GPL your app.
That last post was by me. Forgot to fill in the appropriate fields, apologies…
IMO success of Linux is up to its commercial support. I’d just love to see a full Netware@Linux solution, as well as I’d like to see Adobe, Macromedia or even MS developing for GNU/Linux…
There is nothing wrong with it. The kernel will be free forever, just let users or CIOs decide whether to use 3rd-party commercial apps or not. There are already some successfull precursors like VMware, IBM and Oracle.
I always read crap like “The success of linux depends on its desktop capabilities, installers…” and stuff. Crap, crap, crap! The success of the open source movement solely depends on 3rd-party (hence commercial) support!!!!
Moving power in the OS market is, was and will ever be business. And enterprises just need commercial support and commercial apps.
Hey NovelL, gobble up Red Hat if you can. Then integrate the technologies into Red Hat without the “red tape”, pile on Ximian desktop and BAM. Add in Wordperfect office and evolution running natively and you have a perfectly good universal server / desktop platform. Get the third party vendors involved (Hello Larry, nice to see you out on my yacht tonight, let’s have a spliff!) and cluster everything together for less than SUN and IBM.
Are all of KDE’s libraries GPL, i was under the impresion taht only a few were, and some libraries like KHTML were not GPL.
Anyway, I’m glad that GNOME is getting more funding. (What’s good for Ximian is good for GNOME.)
But, i really wish KDE would get more funding because the architecture is just awesome. Kparts rocks from what bit of time I played with it and everything about KDE’s architecture seems excellent.
I also love the speed and ease of which i can create applications. With Python and the Qt GUI Toolkit I’m in heaven. Using Eric 3 + Qt Designer + and all of Qt’s features making applications is easy. There is nothing this easy on GNOME, I’ve tried the tools and they don’t measure u to the KDE equivalents.
Very nice interview, Adam. Thanks for taking the time to post it.
Hope there are more to come, I love the GNOME, KDE, Xfree etc interviews.
Anyway one BIG suggestion for Ximian: GET A NEW LOGO! The monkey looks like a freaking devil, anyway it looks evil. Please change to something that makes people have a positive reaction. When my mom saw me with XD2 she asked me why I have a wallpaper of the devil! yes, its just a logo but still important IMO.
Still, congratulations on XD2, great DE, just wish it didn’t completely break my KDE desktop, but stll good job.
Also, i agree KDE deserves more commercial backing too.
OK, get the office pool ready. Put me down for: Miguel de Icaza will be out within 6 months, and Ximian IP will be run into the ground by Novell within 18 months. You heard it hear , first, folks
” IBM’s only product that applys here is Eclipse, whose SWT-java toolkit can use gtk.”
not quite, IBM also used gtk for sashxb:
http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/sashxb/?referer=sashxb.or…
Poor Miguel, needs to calm the masses. Can’t imagine him answering, “What have we done?!”
The answers were more-or-less expected. What I’m curious about is the manual transcription part. It’s not illegal to record a conversation with permission of both participants of the call. Perhaps some paranoia about the devices not working?
Are you referring to the interview transcription? Can I remind you that this was announced TODAY and that the interview was generously granted by Ximian and their PR firm with almost no delay? I can tell you that I was certainly not prepared to set up some sort of audio contraption.
The only downside to an exclusive phone interview is that it’s nearly impossible to record word for word. I thought the disclaimer was pretty clear, and if not, I hope Mr. de Icaza would let me know so I can change it!
“Gnome begun in Mexico”
I didn’t know that.
******************************************
¡Pues ahora ya lo sabes, cuate!
IIRC, Miguel is a graduate of UNAM, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Mario
While I like Netware et.al. this leaves me with the fear of an pay-only Evolution in the mid-term…
…we shall see…
Just as a clarification: as stated above, this is untrue. From the KDE Licensing Policy (http://developer.kde.org/policies/licensepolicy.html):
—-
3) Source files that are part of a library in kdelibs must be licensed
under the terms of any of the following licenses:
*) LGPL as listed in kdelibs/COPYING.LIB
*) BSD license as listed below.
*) X11 license as listed below.
Is KDE’s licensing even legal? If kdelibs is linked against Qt, and Qt is GPL, then KDE must be licensed under GPL, not LGPL. This is something that has puzzled me for a while now.
Is KDE’s licensing even legal? If kdelibs is linked against Qt, and Qt is GPL, then KDE must be licensed under GPL, not LGPL. This is something that has puzzled me for a while now.
Ummm, no…. If you write anything in QT and it doesn’t has to be GPL. It only has to be GPL if you distrub the QT’s source code, that’s all. The best example will be look at Opera Linux version; it’s written in QT and closed license. 🙂
So after a couple of years of fame, Miguel will be found naked, hanging from a belt in his hotel room after a drug-fuelled, orgy of erotic asphixiation.
Don’t laugh – this is how the lead singer of INXS died…
Ummm, no…. If you write anything in QT and it doesn’t has to be GPL. It only has to be GPL if you distrub the QT’s source code, that’s all. The best example will be look at Opera Linux version; it’s written in QT and closed license. 🙂
Yes, because they paid Trolltech for a license. If you can’t or aren’t willing to pay Trolltech for a license, then you have to license anything that links against it as GPL. Therefore, if you link against kdelibs, which are linked with Qt, then your app must either be GPL, or you must pay Qt for a license. KDE hasn’t done that.
I have been a fan of both Ximian and Gnome for awhile. I never got into KDE even though in an unrelated story on ComputerWorld a study found KDE almost as easy as XP.
But anyway, Novell has the magic wonderous ability to turn everything it touches into shit. So, it scares me.
Gnome with a lot of help from RedHat and Ximian btw, is so very close to being incredible. Still some of the nagging issues really get me know.
1) Edit launcher right click option does not work in gnome-panel menu or the applications:// view.
2) No mouse cursor theme support and the switch mouse look does not work anymore in Ximian for SuSE 8.2 anyway.
3) Samba view in Nautilus needs a way to copy file locally and open it in the app requested like Konqueror does instead of telling you are sh*t out of luck and copy it to your desktop. Konqueror even monitors the files and offers to upload it if changed. Why the hell can’t Ximian’s Gnome do this?
4) No secure caching or place to securely record a default username/password for samba browsing.
5) No browsing into archives in Nautilus (I hate it but lots of people want this). How long would it take to make a File Roller view even without the File Roller people’s help.
6) No right click option for text, pdf and ps files for printing in Nautilus.
7) Icon themes install option puts the damn theme in the wrong folder.
8) Need to fill the utility gap left behind by server-focused distros like a cron/at editor app like Gcrontime and Grubconf for example.
9) A decent modem dialer program with configuration of ppp even if you have to do a root prompt.
10) xsu or some other support for graphical su options on non-redhat boxes like SuSE (using kdesu is embarrasing and stupid forgive my venom).
11) Too many damn options labeled System. There is a System drop down menu and System settings. In the preferences there is a System subsection and the My Computer icon launches the System view. Aaaargh!!!
12) The new fileselector no matter what it becomes in Gnome 2.4 needs a list view badly. It is helpful when attaching a file to a email to be able to sort files in large dir by size and date etc…etc..
13) No integrating multimedia. No, btw I do not want to eventually do everything through Nautilus. I am talking sound-juicer and totem and rhythmbox and coaster connected to each other with rip and burn and play options placed strategically. Play a CD and click the rip button to rip to ogg with sound juicer and then turn around and create new list of audio files in rhythmbox and click burn to put it back to CD with coaster.
24) Apotheke. Hackers and sysadmins use linux. We want a CVS view in the file manager. Apotheke does this for gnome and it is pretty darn slick. It needs to be in Ximian Gnome so badly it is not funny.
So close and yet so far.
< Ummm, no…. If you write anything in QT and it doesn’t has to be GPL. It only has to be GPL if you distrub the QT’s source code, that’s all. The best example will be look at Opera Linux version; it’s written in QT and closed license. 🙂
Yes, because they paid Trolltech for a license. If you can’t or aren’t willing to pay Trolltech for a license, then you have to license anything that links against it as GPL. Therefore, if you link against kdelibs, which are linked with Qt, then your app must either be GPL, or you must pay Qt for a license. KDE hasn’t done that. >
The KDE Group has special permission from Trolltech for their licensing, Trolltech allows them to distribute under the LGPL for the exposure that KDE brings to Trolltech. As for the GPL only clause of the QT free stipulation, I only have one thing to say, not everyone follows the rules and their is really no way of knowing what they used to write the software.
Yes, because they paid Trolltech for a license. If you can’t or aren’t willing to pay Trolltech for a license, then you have to license anything that links against it as GPL. Therefore, if you link against kdelibs, which are linked with Qt, then your app must either be GPL, or you must pay Qt for a license. KDE hasn’t done that.
If you write an addition to kdelibs (a collection of libraries), it can be under the LGPL, unless your code used QT libraries. If you write code that uses kdelibs, that code falls under the license restrictions of the QT licenses (QPL,GPL) used (because there are core libraries in the kdelibs collection that use QT).
Now, another issue is the cross-platform nature of QT. TrollTech has only released QT under the dual/tri license (QPL/GPL/commercial) for select platforms, including Linux and Mac OS X. This means that porting QT applications won’t work as well as one would hope unless a commercial license was bought to for the app. you wanted to port (i.e. you have to buy the commercial license to port a QT app to Windows, unless you ported GPL QT itself to Windows as is done here: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/qt2-win32/ ).
Yeah, I know, KDE is slightly off-topic and QT licensing is very off-topic; mod me down if you want ;]
NDS is a Novell offering, and it certaintly isnt shit. GroupWise is also a very good product.
I only have one thing to say, not everyone follows the rules and their is really no way of knowing what they used to write the software.
With this dual licensing, I am especially curious about what Qt does with any fixes I submit to the GPL version – they are clearly not allowed to use my GPL’d patches in their commercial licensed version. Has no one forked Qt in order to have a GPL-only version of it?
now, the question is why sun etc are interested in gnome more than kde. the answer is c (the language). not america / europe clash.
but, surely miguel the clown took the subject and ended up with promoting gnome 2, as if that was the question. migy, this is not an advertising area (although eugenia is your friend).
To link to a GPL library, you do NOT need to use the GPL. You just need to use a compatible license. The LGPL is compatible with the GPL, so no concession is required to link LGPL code to GPL code. Even the X license is compatible, provided that the source IS provided. The page at http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses lists the GPL-compatible licenses.
MS was quiet and even kindly about Mono development until now. But if now it is backed by Novell, is there any risk of legal action, à la SCO ??
> Qt is owned by Trolltech [sic] as opposed to GNOME which is not ‘owned’ by anyone.
Trolltech ‘owns’ Qt as much as Ximian ‘owns’ Evolution or RedHat/Owen Taylor ‘owns’ GTK. So ‘own’ for you means to be the copyright holder while distributing it under GPL?
> Nice flamebait. Complete BS.
Same from you.
> to release everything they write under the GPL or pay a million dollars per desktop to Trolltech?
Neither is your price correct nor that there is a per seat fee.
> Are all of KDE’s libraries GPL, i was under the impresion taht only a few were, and some libraries like KHTML were not GPL.
All KDE libraries including KHTML are LGPLed.
> Evolution has become the de facto e-mail client for Linux
I deny that. Is this bootlicking really necessary?
> Ximian’s attractiveness to Novell is the knowledge and experience reverse engineering proprietary Microsoft protocols.
What reverse engineering? AFAIK their connector uses WebDAV, they didn’t reverse engineer the Outlook<->Exchange protocol.
No kidding about that “de facto e-mail client for Linux” comment. I find KMail and Kontact to be much more effective and less irritating. Evolution is overkill to just check your mail. I use a PDA for my schedule and have no wish to hook it up to my computer. I don’t like managing my phone book on my computer, either. Why should I have to load up all that extraneous crap?
Evolution is just like OOo in that respect. It needs to be broken up into seperate components which can be embedded if desired into a shell app. Oh, wait, I forgot that this would be absolute hell with Gtk.
The architecture behind GNOME is pathetic and very poorly documented. Novell should have bought Trolltech instead, or at least a large portion of it.
As it was, Trolltech makes a profit (as does Borland’s Klyix) because of its dual-licensing system which also allows it to be a good FOSS citizen. Ximian, OTOH, has been a money hole because it used LGPL components which allow companies to coopt its code w/o paying a cent for it, and not contributing back.
Microsoft will SCO your behind when it is ready take back what it has allowed to develop. If things turn bad or if M$ feels that .Mono is a threat to it’s monoploy well…. .Mono will = @LL Ur C0d3 B3l0ng T0 M$ 1337 H@x0r B1ll G@t3$ !
> Evolution is just like OOo in that respect. It needs to
> be broken up into seperate components which can be
> embedded if desired into a shell app.
Actually, Evolution is broken up into seperate components and actually those components can be embedded if desired into a shell app.
> Oh, wait, I forgot that this would be absolute hell with
> Gtk.
No, actually it is pretty easy to do this using Bonobo and actually does Evolution do this, using Bonobo.
The architecture behind GNOME is pathetic and very poorly documented. Novell should have bought Trolltech instead, or at least a large portion of it.
> As it was, Trolltech makes a profit (as does Borland’s
> Klyix) because of its dual-licensing system which also
> allows it to be a good FOSS citizen.
I, as a former Delphi 2.0 -> Delphi 4.0 developer is waiting to see the very first OpenSource Kylix application that is actually used by more than one person at the same time. Kylix is not widely used at all.. and deployment of Kylix applications is very, very hard. (And don’t tell me it’s not, I as a Delphi programmer, have tested Kylix a lot. And I do know what I am talking about, trust me).
> Ximian, OTOH, has been a money hole because it used LGPL
> components which allow companies to coopt its code w/o
> paying a cent for it, and not contributing
I know, I should not be feeding the troll ..
XPde was designed with Kylix. Maybe it’s not “widely” used, but quite a lot of people have downloaded it, even if it was just to take a look at it.
http://www.xpde.com
These trolls. Why would Novell want trolltech. How do you compare Ximian and Trolltech. They have nothing similar in their portfolios aside maybe Mono being a development environment, and GTK# which is not for sale anyway.
Does the recent acquisition of Ximian by Novell mean that the Ximian version of Openoffice will finally get Wordperfect file support ? I ask this because this is the single biggest issue limiting the use of OpenOffice at our department where I work as a sysadmin. The only alternative we have at present is Staroffice, but the value-added additions which Ximian has contributed to Openoffice are really valuable. I am currently using Ximian OpenOffice under Gentoo- I am really impressed with it and look forward to seeing future developments….
Much was made of Miguel de Icaza, dissatisfaction with the QT license and thus decided to create a new desktop.
Question: wouldn’t it have been quicker and simpler (especially several years ago when QT was a much smaller library) to have written from scratch a LGPLed version of QT. The LGPL is the key advantage of GTK over QT in my opinion. QTs advantage is its elegant simplicity.
Compared to the work effort you are taking on first doing GNOME and now re-writing .NET framework, this would have bought the open source community a whole lot more and wouldn’t have split the desktop efforts for the last couple of years.
wouldn’t have split the desktop efforts for the last couple of years.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with that. Consider how different Gnome and KDE actually are. I myself use neither, though I do use a lot of Gnome apps. Every once in a while, I give KDE a shot to see what the difference is. And every time I do, I’m amazed at the difference. KDE has menus everywhere, options galore. I’m totally lost in it. In comparison, Gnome 2 stuff is a different world. If Qt had been copied, we would still not have a single unified desktop: we would’ve had a fork.
Not true
I’m using everyday DivxFix and Yet another Nvidia configurator tool…..
what is killing me is the size of YANT shipped whith the kylix lib… maybe they should allow a library included in the standart distribution libs.
So people could send kylix ligth sized apps
To link to a GPL library, you do NOT need to use the GPL. You just need to use a compatible license. The LGPL is compatible with the GPL, so no concession is required to link LGPL code to GPL code. Even the X license is compatible, provided that the source IS provided. The page at http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses lists the GPL-compatible licenses.
Part 2b of the GPL license states: “You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.”
As I read this, any code to uses GPL code (and that includes linking against it) must be released under the GPL license as a whole. This contradicts the fact that you can use the LGPL or any other ‘compatible’ license if it contains or is derived from a program released under the GPL.
The GPL FAQ also states this: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfLibraryIsGPL
But…
If you scroll up a couple of lines at the FAQ I gave you the link of, you will see this (of the previous question): “If I add a module to a GPL-covered program, do I have to use the GPL as the license for my module?
The GPL says that the whole combined program has to be released under the GPL. So your module has to be available for use under the GPL.
But you can give additional permission for the use of your code. You can, if you wish, release your program under a license which is more lax than the GPL but compatible with the GPL. The license list page gives a partial list of GPL-compatible licenses.”
And also the GPL license states the following: “These requirements [those of part 0, 1 and 2] apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works.”
Doesn’t this contradict the other parts I quoted from the GPL FAQ and mean that the quoted message at the top is correct?
This is a bit unclear to me and by some extra research I came to the following two conclusions.
1) As stated in the first part I quoted from the GPL FAQ and the GPL itself. Any work that contains or is derived from a work released under the GPL falls under the license of the GPL as a whole. The the GPL compatible license stuff means, you can include the GPL compatible licensed work in a GPL licensed work and release the work as a whole under the GPL. But this contradicts the second part I quoted from the FAQ and the GPL.
2) When you release you application you must release it under the GPL as a whole if it contains or is derived from a program released under the GPL.
But if you build an application that links with a GPLed library, but it doesn’t contain or is derived from that library, then you can release it under a GPL compatible license. But this one contradicts with the parts I quoted from the first part of the GPL and the GPL FAQ.
Now I don’t know which one is correct (or that I didn’t understand it at all and none of the above is correct) and I would really like to know what IS correct. Can someone clear this up for me?
mtdman: I believe a group of developers in the OpenOffice universe are already working on Word Perfect support, but I might be wrong. I will bring your feedback back to Ximian though.
peter: There were various reasons; KDE was not very large at the time, so reimplementing the desktop using Gtk+ was simpler than cloning (with potential quirks) Qt. Also, there was a vibrant Gtk-based community, by virtue of the GIMP.
But that being said, there are many other metrics for building your desktop; Even if GNOME had not happened, other forks would have appeared. Today there are various other desktop environments around, one of them would have taken the momentum that Gnome took.
I think it is this, correct me if I am wrong.
If you want to distribute GPL’d code with your program, then you should use GPL for your program.
If you want to link you program to your GPL library/program, then you can use a compatible license.
I think LGPL allows you to include LGPL’d code in your GPL’d programs, but you must return any modification to the original.
The linking bit should be the main difference.
Apenas fuera de curiosidad, qué distribuciones de Linux son populares en México. Soy de Puerto Rico y he visto que SuSE es más popular seguido de cerca por Conectiva. El uso del GNOME es bastante alto allí pero KDE también se parece ser más popular. ¿Me preguntaba si usted ha notado cualquiera de esta estadística en México?
Sorry but how many contracts did ximian last year ?
2 3 cents ?
If you link with a GPL lib your code has to be GPL as well. That is why the ‘L’ in LGPL used to standard for Library (before RMS changed it to lesser). The LGPL allows you to not have to distribute the source to the given library if you have not made modifications to the original source. A very handy clause for people who wish to allow commerical, closed-source development to occur with thier GPL’d sources. Myself, I just use the zlib license. Pretty straight forward to read and understand.
KDE’s license policy as shown on http://developer.kde.org/policies/licensepolicy.html doesn’t work due to Qt/X11 being available GPL’ed but due to its QPL license which allows all kind of open source licenses as long as the sources are publically available. The QPL’ed Qt/X11 was there first and already served KDE sufficiently, the GPL’ed Qt/X11 was only introduced due to all the outside concerns that QPL wouldn’t be GPL compatible. Qt/Mac is only available GPL’ed which means that the binaries will have to have the GPL license as well, but this doesn’t affect the sources nor is it a problem since the lowest common denominator among all license used in KDE is the GPL. A similar rule will apply to the GPL’ed Qt/X11 port to windows.
Also in contrary to one comment above the commercial Qt license doesn’t demand a fee per desktop but one per developer who’s working on a closed source Qt app, nothing less and nothing more. Furthermore the fee itself is not fixed at all, everyone is free to negotiate the exact amount to fit it in the usage and circumstances.
Hi Miguel,
It is interesting to here you and the Novell VP say that
conquering Microsoft is not the goal, that the goal is to
provide customer solutions. It may be wise to say these
sorts of things in order to stay below Microsoft’s “KILL
IT!” infrared target alert system, but in order to compete
for desktops, whether in homes or enterprises, you will be
facing Microsoft. Therefore, I hope you really ARE
targeting Microsoft, because they will be targeting you.
I was working at Microsoft when they were working on the
early versions of Windows NT. I was testing the network
support along with a small team of other testers.
We exercized the network drivers and services in many ways.
One area was the Netware File and Print services. It took
a long time for Microsoft to get full Netware built into
Windows NT. I remember that Novell at the time repeatedly
dismissed Microsoft’s threat to their empire. They discounted the notion that system and network administrators
would want to deal with the overhead of a full GUI interface and general purpose desktop. We in the testing team were
somewhat amazed at Novell’s cluelessness. They seemed to
fail to grasp that Moore’s Law dictated that any network
performance overhead in the UI would rapidly fade into
insignificance and that having a full GUI desktop would
allow for a wide variety of third-party sysadmin tools
to add value to whatever Microsoft came up with.
When Novell bought up various office suite components,
it was clear right away that they didn’t have the
corporate culture and mindset to tackle the desktop
with complete and undivided focus. That is what Microsoft
fosters in its employees: paranoid, single-minded,
well-thought-out, rabid and unrelenting pursuit of market
domination and profit by leveraging strengths, identifying
weaknesses overcoming them.
I know Ximian has many very smart people and you folks
work very hard on the problems you tackle. You share
with Microsoft a focus on solving customer problems,
and that’s great. I hope that your synthesis with
Novell yields a company that can bring a full-fledged,
integrated enterprise and business Linux desktop to market.
I hope you do a lot more usability testing with folks from
your target markets. Novell can afford it.