Re: SEUL: KDE?

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

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   Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 07:09:11 -0400 (EDT)
   From: Jay Bloodworth <jay@pathways.sde.state.sc.us>
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   I vote emphatically against KDE.  Two reasons:

   1) It's ALPHA.  The web pages are very clear about this.  SEUL needs to be
   feature rich and bug poor.  I don't know what kind of schedule the KDE
   people are trying to keep, but it appears it's gonna be awhile before KDE
   is ready for primetime.

We must build our plans based on the state of software when SEUL will
be realised not in today's state.  If we go for a quick release of a
not overly ambitious project (my proposal) then KDE will probably not
mature enough for our project.  If we go for a more ambitious SEUL
released in 98 then KDE will probably be mature by this date.

   2) It's not free software.  GNU self-righteousness bugs me sometimes, but
   I think it's important for those of of who rely on free software to do all
   we can to encourage it's development.  Choosing an interface for SEUL that
   is not free means we are doing nothing to support the productions of a
   high quality free GUI.  I think that's just bad karma.  More
   pragmatically, going with KDE places real financial restrictions on
   commercial software companies who may want to develop for SEUL.  I don't
   want to burden SEUL with those limitations.

KDE is free.  It is even GPLed.  But it is based on the non GPLed Qt
library.  Programmers can use this library for free as long it is for
developping free Unix software.  They must pay if they develop
commercial or non Unix software.  I don't think users of software
based on KDE must pay for having the shared libs.  This licence is
very reasonnable but the problem is than one day the authors of Qt (or
the company having bought their company) can revert this licence (I
don't think it is possible with GPLed software).  I am no lawyer but I
don't think they can cancel the licence for an existing version only
for future releases.

However if we want a user-friendly dektop then KDE is by far the best
free product I know.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

==================== The Linux.  Use the Linux, Luke! =======================

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