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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo]  Sun de-emphasizes GNOME devel platform, supports KDE
From:       Charles de Miramon <cmiramon () kde-france ! org>
Date:       2003-09-17 11:54:05
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Le Mardi 16 Septembre 2003 23:35, Navindra Umanee a écrit :
> (possibly only of marginal interest to kde-promo)
> 
> http://www.gnomedesktop.com/article.php?sid=1350
> http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4549
> 
> It looks like Sun is basically using GNOME as a shell and is promoting
> Java as the development platform as opposed to GNOME technology.
> Furthermore, according to OSNews, KDE/Qt libs are installed and
> available by default.

This document written last August by StarOffice/Sun engineers about their plan 
for OpenOffice 2 gives a clear picture about their actual strategy for the 
Desktop : creating a clone of Windows 98 + MsOffice 97 with a Gnome shell and 
OpenOffice 2 pushed to look even more like MsOffice. 

http://tools.openoffice.org/releases/q-concept.html

The Java development platform looks today nothing more than a marketing 
gimmick.

My analysis is that Sun Strategy adds very little value to the stack and that 
something like Mad Hatter can be very easily copied by any other American IT 
company (Novell, HP, Red Hat). I hope their customers won't be gullible 
enough to believe they will get top-notch support when it will certainly be 
outsourced to India.

My feeling is that the big American IT companies may start sniffing that the 
"contract of the century" for Linux could be the American Military. For a 
rational mind in the Pentagon planification department, it makes a lot of 
sense to standardize to one OS from the battlefield PDA to the Mainframe in 
Washington, to get one set of standards / development platform used by the 
Army but have the possibility to split contracts between 3 or 4 major 
American players to have truly competitive biddings. You may add above that 
the Army will get more security and more stability and you get a winning 
argument. If the Military moves in this direction, the big American IT 
company are going to scramble to show how they master every level of the 
Linux technology, not least Linux on the desktop. 

Cheers,
Charles
-- 
cmiramon@kde-france.org
http://www.kde-france.org

 
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