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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Sun's Desktop Division making headway
From:       Karl-Heinz Zimmer <khz () kde ! org>
Date:       2001-08-29 6:09:16
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On Wednesday 29 August 2001 05:50 am, Greg Turpin wrote:
> On Wednesday 29 August 2001  3:31 pm, Karl-Heinz Zimmer wrote:
> > On Tuesday 28 August 2001 11:08 pm, Richard Bos wrote:
> > > A huge article, however during the introduction of the people,
> > > something is said why Sun choose gnome.  It does not tell the real
> > > details why gnome was chosen though.
> > > http://www.linuxpower.org/display.php?id=213

> > Of course it does not tell the real details, those are never told in
> > public.

> > The most important real reason surely was that they wanted something
> > they could control: Sun always tries to *own* important  technology they
> > use, e.g. that's the reason why the *bought* Star Division instead of
> > just agreeing to cooporate with it: they wanted to have control over
> > StarOffice.

> > Of course gaining control over KDE is an impossible target - and so they
> > choose to take gnome instead, talk with Miguel, make kind of a deal...
> > you know the rest of the story.

> Yeah.  But, the reason that really stood out was the fact that QT is only
> released under the GPL - not the LGPL.

I have never seen Scott talk about that being the *real* reason in this case
but _did_ see him standing in front of us (I was StarOffice developer at that
time) and telling us that they likes StarOffice so much that they wanted
to own it.

So for me it is obvious, they just wanted to kind of 'own' the gnome
project and that is what they did: told their ~50 former CDE developers
to concentrate on gnome and push development.

> Isn't that bull?  Everyone bitches and moans about QT not being
> GPL, and then, when Trolltech does it - it isn't enough!
..

As I told you before: in are sure this 'reason' was only used as an excuse
because they were sure they would never succeed in gaining control over KDE.

> This is all bad for mainstream acceptance of KDE though.

Please don't see this as an invitation for starting yet another flame war
but IMO the contrary is true: The mainstream (who ever that might be) is
not looking /that/ glad seeing Sun controlling the Gnome development.

They are happy with a _free_ desktop (like KDE) they can use and support
or even modify as they want to, not yet another Sun project (like Java,
that missed the ECMA certification because they did not want to give up
just a little bit of control power over it).

Companies looking for ways how to make *decisions* over free software
projects are taking the great risk of all the world sooner or later
seeing what happened: the conversion of a former free project into a
'company project' - still being kind of free but the decisions being
made by the people who tell those 50 developers what to do next...

> Other companies will start going the GNOME route as well.

May be.  Perhaps not.  That dependes from many things - e.g. from the
question whether those companies like being in a 'java like' situation
where one company is making decisions about the advancement of the thing.

But this is only my personal opinion and of course I might be wrong, so
don't take everything to heart.  :-)

Karl-Heinz

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