I ran across (with the help of slashdot :) this interview with Mr. Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, and found it very interesting. It's a good insight into how a commercial entity is successfully, or hopefully successful, working with the open source community to make things better. I've complained a lot here about the Linux desktop experience and Mark feels the pain and is trying to do something about it.
A couple of interesting points he brings up. One is on the Gnome/GTK versus KDE/Qt battle that's been going on for years, and for years too long IMHO. And he mentions the point that I think is really underlying the issue and that's licensing. GTK is popular because it's LGPL which allows for software using it to pick their own license. Qt is technically and aesthetically better, but sorry, unless it's commercially friendly in a free form, it's going to lose the battle. And apparently it is losing from what is stated in the article.
And as long as the battle continues and the Linux community spend their limited resources on two desktops, the Linux desktop user community is going to pay the price. Mark discusses why he sees Mac OS X as the biggest winner lately in the desktop wars. It's because of Apple's dedication to providing an innovative user experience. That's going to be hard to achieve with Linux without the community rallying behind fixing it, or a major vendor stepping up and investing in it. It sounds like that's what Mark is going to do with Canonical, but they aren't really a major vendor with big pocket books, at least not at this point.
Anyway, an insightful read. A lot of the discussion should be familiar with the Eclipse contributor community. Working and influencing open source is a difficult task and requires some specialized talents. And apparently that bodes well for those that figure it out.
About projects picking their own license: isn't this why there's the GPL license exception (http://doc.trolltech.com/main-snapshot/license-gpl-exceptions.html), so that you can pick another license if you want, say the EPL?
ReplyDeleteAnother try with the URL: here.
ReplyDeleteBut it doesn't let you pick *any* license, only the ones they have listed. In particular, I can't see how you can develop closed software with the exception. You still seem to need the Qt commercial license (as always, IANAL, so I may be wrong).
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, the exception has some really confusing wording.
Nice post.
ReplyDeleteI agree, working effectively in open-source requires a special skill-set. That was something I had difficulty explaining to a previous employer, also to colleagues working at companies that haven't played in the open-source world.
I'm a bit disappointed that companies don't be more proactive in training their employees in how they should interact in the open-source world... but I guess there's not many people out there that qualify to do the training. Training around legal things isn't enough... it's more than that... there's a certain community aspect to it.
Gaining influence in open-source is difficult but the basics is just to be involved and go from there. Eclipse makes this apparent by always preaching it is a meritocracy.
Hi Doug
ReplyDeleteYes sure, closed software has to pay.
Hm, but spontaneously, I don't know any commercial software that uses GTK, and Qt can be seen from time to time (e.g. Skype, Virtualbox).
Gnome and KDE are built from fundamentally different designs (code, not UI wise). As long as they have different designs, they will appeal to different people and this is a good thing.
ReplyDeleteAt work, the "most successful OS of all time" is a constant source of pain for me. I can't change that because I have no choice. At home, I have and I have chosen the desktop that suits me. Something where I can get my work done because my time is precious.
The license issue is a non-issue for me, even though I once developed software for Qt. As an end user, I can install KDE without paying any royalties to anyone (even though the developers surely deserve them), and that's that. The rest is for the lawyers.
"I don't know any commercial software that uses GTK"
ReplyDeleteI'm hard pressed to think of any commercial software that runs on Linux, which is the bigger problem.
Well, anything built on Eclipse is GTK. An Eclipse running on Qt would be very problematic from a licensing point of view, at least for commercial plugins.
There's some software built on wxWidgets and that's built on GTK.
Anyway, I'm just pushing for Nokia to release Qt to the wild and hopefully that would help bring unity to the Linux desktop. The cost of choice is to high in this game.
I wanted to read the interview you mention, but sadly can't find the link in your post, could you please post the link? (sorry for replying so late, but I'm catching up on my RSS feeds)
ReplyDelete