Re: Discussion vs. consideration (of KDE/KIllustrator)

["Orn E. Hansen" <hanseno@usa.net>]

Since you said "everyone", I'll put in my 2 cents worth.

  I cannot for the life of me, see any gain in one more library project,
not one bit.  And as everybody knows, I'm not very convinced about the
GNOME project either.  Personally, I see it as just one more project
bubble in the Linux community... where everybody seems exited, but one
that will burst into nothing long before it ever gets anywhere.

  There are a lot of these projects out there, already... instead of the
GTK library, why not support the LessTif project? It provides source code
compatibility with Motif, and it too is in need of widget programmers?  I
mean, anyone who is going to use Unix style computers for anything (including
moi), is going to get themselves motif... so, supporting a free motif clone
that enables you to use all those motif applications already available, is
a great advantage.  But, instead, people make a FreeQt project, and then a
GTK++ project, and a god knows what else.  There simply isn't place for all
of them...

  And more over, on the subject of GNOME and KDE... the Qt library is free
enough to use it in any free Linux distribution.  It is free for personal
use, and I don't see that as a problem.  Unless people are going to make
*free* Linux distribution, that is going to be used for _commercial_
porposes, which I find disturbingly inapropriate... because for such
purposes, people should pay the licencing fee.

  Of all of these projects, KDE has gone the farthest... mostly because the
library it uses, is the most complete.  And basically, it only needs to veed
out the major bugs and then it is a ready desktop.  For GNOME, it is a far
bigger path to walk, before it even becomes useful... so, in ernest I see
most of these project splattering as foolishness.  None of them are ever
going to be anything, because everybody is working against another.

  Meanwhile, there already is a new Motif 2.1 and CDE 2.1 out there.  A new
concept glued together... and all the Linux community can think of, is to
hammer together thousands of projects that are trying to build a Windows 95
style start button... which already exists in fvwm95.  A new GTK free window
manager, which we already have a dozen of... and one more file manager.

  The only thing, that is really worth noticing is the CORBA part.  Which, I
don't think should be discussed, but rather a small group should get together
and just create a RFC style document that would be dispersed around the major
groups and made available on the Internet.  Which would basically state, *this
is the environment we expect Linux application to comply with*.  Now that is
what we need... we need to define the environment and backbone on which our
applications are to exist, and work within.  We need to define a Desktop
environment API... and please, don't mention GNOME... because gnome isn't
it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Orn Einar Hansen                         oe.hansen@oehansen.pp.se
                                          oehansen@daimi.aau.dk
                                        voice+fax; +46 035 217194