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Leading itemsThe Qt licensing change continues to make waves. Here are a few developments in this area that are worthy of note.
The conclusion that can be drawn from all this, unfortunately, is that the desktop wars are not yet over. Opinions remain strong on all sides, and compromise seems unlikely. One can only hope that this division settles into a healthy competition before too long. Principia and Bobo become ... ZopeAs we mentioned in a lead-in on our daily page, Digital Creations has moved ahead with their plans to open up the source code for Principia, an object-based web development platform, and integrate it with Bobo, a popular open source web toolkit also developed by Digital Creations. In fact, they've gone even further and dropped their Aqueduct relational database integration product in as well. The result is a new product, the Z Object Publishing Environment, to be known as "Zope" for short. Zope now has all the elements it needs to be positioned as the free, open source alternative to many popular commercial web development packages. You can find more out about Zope at the Zope website, which may or may not be on-line by the time we publish. In addition, the first beta release of Zope will be officially announced tomorrow, December 4th.As we learned more about the process by which Digital Creations decided to take their primary products open source, we were intrigued by the impact of venture capital funds upon this decision. To find out more about that, check out this week's feature article, The Road to Open Source: Venture Capitalism? . We feel this story is an example as to why open source just makes good business sense.
Who owns "Open Source"?The Linux world appears to have a bit of a mess on its hands, due to competing claims of ownership of "open source."In one corner we have Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, and others. They recently put out an announcement of the founding of the "Open Source Initiative" as a California non-profit corporation. OSI's charter includes the management and defense of the "open source" trademark. In response, Software in the Public Interest(SPI) posted this message in which they assert their ownership of the trademark. The positions seem to be strongly polarized, and the truth of the situation is not immediately evident. Certainly, according to this entry at the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office the (pending) Open Source trademark is owned by SPI. Bruce Perens claims that he, acting then as president of SPI, transferred the trademark to Eric Raymond on March 20, 1998. He says that the paperwork has been sent to the USPTO and the change will eventually show up in their database. Thus, Eric and OSI claim the legal right to the trademark and the ability to control how it is used. In response to a query, Eric sent us this messagereaffirming that point. SPI's claim is that Bruce transferred the trademark without authorization from the SPI board of directors, and thus the transfer is not valid. (It is worth pointing out that the SPI board, at that time, was made up mostly of people who are now members of the OSI. One could conceivably conclude that the March 1998 board would have been in favor of this transfer. On the other hand, it appears that the USPTO was not notified of the transfer of the trademark while the current OSI members were on the SPI board). SPI's position is that any moves regarding the trademark should only happen after extensive consultation with the Linux community. They have set up a mailbox at opensource-consult@spi-inc.org and are asking that people send their opinions on the matter. The response period is long - through the end of the calendar year. Note that responses will be made public unless the responder requests otherwise. It would be unfortunate if this dispute were to end up in the courts. An ugly battle will not reflect well on free software in general. It could also permanently tarnish the image of the "open source" term; in the end the victor could find that they battled for something which no longer has value. Wedding pictures! Nina Miller sent us a pointer to a page full of pictures of her and David's wedding. David Miller in a tux... |
December 3, 1998
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityDebian has announced their fixes for the zgv buffer overrun and a possible security flaw in the fsp package. Here is the Samba Team's official responseto the recently reported Samba problems in the Red Hat and Caldera operating systems. In addition, Caldera's Security Advisory for Samba is also out. After much debate, it has been confirmed that Netscape 4.5 on all platforms can be used to read system files from a remote location. Georgi Guninski filed the original report on Bugtraq, which sparked a lively debate and a great deal of feedback. As a result, it appears that all versions of Netscape 4.X are vulnerable except 4.08. For those fans of Netscape 3.X, take heart; Netscape 3.04 was tested and found not to be vulnerable. ZDnet reported a Linux Worm on November 30th. No confirmation for their claim was found and it was followed by more rational reportingfrom CNet and CERT. In short, a vulnerability in IMAP was found and fixed in June, but sites that have not upgraded their copy of IMAP are vulnerable to an attack. The attack is not a worm of any kind. As Jed Pickel of CERT said, "'It's something we see every single day,' added Jed Pickel, 'It's not anything out of the ordinary. XFree86 3.3.3 contains several security fixes, for those that missed the announcement elsewhere. Aleph One posted a short list of the fixes to Bugtraq. American Power Conversion Company (APCC) is beta-testing new firmware to fix the APC PowerNet SNMP Adapter Security Issues we've previously reported. Paul Mansfield, who contacted APCC about the vulnerabilities initially, posted a a followup report. The November issue of the SANS Security Digest is available. Particularly for people supporting multiple operating systems, it is a good review of recent security reports, in case there are any applicable to you which you missed. This is a free service of the Systems and Network Security Institute, a "Cooperative Research and Education Institute". |
December 3, 1998 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current development kernel version is 2.1.130. Linus announced this one as the basted turkey release; he claims it goes well with red wine. Among other things, this release is alleged to have a definitive fix to the "UP flu" and some other problems. For the adventurous, there is 2.1.131 prepatch 3 available at press time. 2.1.129, released just after the last issue of LWN went out, was presented by Linus as "perfect and bug free." That was meant in jest, of course, but the truth is that 2.2 is getting closer. We may yet get a new stable kernel in our Christmas stockings. Simon Kenyon has announced a "history of the Linux operating system" project. He's looking to gather a lot of information, including interesting postings, information about contributors, anecdotes, etc. Please see the announcement and drop him a note if you have something to contribute. As an offshoot of the history project, some folks have tried to put together a complete archive of released Linux kernels. Initially it seemed that there were a lot of missing kernels, which, of course, bothered those who want to collect the whole set. But Riley Williams has managed to put together an almost complete collection of historic Linux kernels. They are all available for download; people with time on their hands can boot 0.97 for old time's sake. A proposal for the "Linux kernel compilation project" has been circulated. This project is trying to address the sorts of compilation problems that arise occasionally for subsets of users when a new kernel is released; the thesis is that these problems usually represent a bug in need of fixing somewhere. If a new kernel could be quickly and automatically built with a large set of configurations, many of these problems could be found and fixed sooner. The proposal and a followup posting have the details. Problems with the international crypto patch for the Linux kernel? That question came up after this messagewas posted; the author had found some suspicious things in the crypto patch. In some cases, plain (unencrypted) text could possibly be leaked directly into the encrypted stream. The discovery prompted a series of updated crypto patches, initially one which fixed the plaintext leak. More followed; the current version of the international crypto patch is 2.1.130.1. As this work was being done, the difficulties of dealing with national crypto laws came up yet again. In particular, U.S. export laws make it virtually impossible for any sort of interesting crypto work to be done here; this seems to be the government's way of forcing an important industry offshore. To try to get around some of these hurdles, Oliver Xymoron has announced a new mailing list dedicated to the creation of tools which will facilitate cooperative international crypto development. These tools are likely to involve the use of "postal mail to email gateways", since U.S. allows the export of crypto code on paper (but not on a wire). Some useful 2.1 networking documentation has been released. Andi Kleen has rewritten a number of networking man pages to reflect the new features available in the upcoming 2.2 kernel. He's looking for reviewers; see his note if you would like to have a look and send him your comments. Horacio J. Peņa has put together a policy routing mini-HOWTO. This version is terse and not for the beginner, but it's a good first start at describing one of the useful new networking features. It's clear that the world is changing when the mainstream trade press covers a development kernel release. In this case, TechWeb covered the 2.1.129 kernel release with an eye toward 2.2. "Torvalds plans to release a 'pre-2.2' kernel in another week, then take a vacation while others tinker with it. He'll add any last-minute fixes and officially release the 2.2 kernel before Christmas." |
December 3, 1998
Since we're a weekly publication, chances are we'll be behind a rev or two on the kernel release by the time you read this page. Up-to-the-second information can always be found at LinuxHQ. |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsCalderaAccording to this PC Week article, Novell is investing in Caldera. In addition, they have plan to open up "portions of" the source for their NDS (Novell Directory Services) system. Details on what would be opened, and under what license, are lacking.For those of you trying to get KDM working on a Caldera 1.3 system, you will want to check out this HOWTO on the subject. KDM is a KDE replacement for XDM. DebianOn November 23rd, Ian Jackson posteda draft new Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) due to "loose wording" in the original that has led to many lengthy debates on whether or not a package met the guidelines. A change to the DFSG is very critical for Debian, since the document is used to determine what can be part of the core Debian installation and what must go into non-free. In particular, the exception allowing modifications to software to be required to be distributed in patch format is gone, which would make many popular programs no longer compliant with the DFSG. Dale Scheetz posted a note with some arguments against the modifications.In turn, Ian provided his rationale for why the existing patch clause in the DFSG is harmful. The latest version of his suggested new guidelines is also available. He plans to propose a resolution on this issue before the end of the year, so it is important to review the possible modifications and voice your opinion soon. Oliver Elphick followed up the new version with his own proposal which takes the current DFSG and adds a preamble and some exceptions. It met with a favorable response from the first several people posting followups. The Alpha version of slink was frozen on November 29th. The port has come along so well that it is now slated to be a full, official release, rather than just a developer's snapshot. Note that it will take a while for the mirrors to catch up. The Sparc32 version is just behind the Alpha version. It has been agreed that it will be frozen and tremendous effort is now going into fixing the last few release critical bugs and compiling all the required software to "catch up" to the i386 port. No official report of the actual freeze has been seen as of yet. MandrakeThe December 1st edition of the Linux Mandrake News is out. The biggest news, of course, is that Linux-Mandrake 5.2 (Leeloo) is available for FTP Download. It contains the final 2.0.36 kernel, an enhanced version of KDE 1.0, and many Mandrake-specific enhancements, including an international installation procedure.We talked with Gael Duval of Mandrake shortly after the announcement of the license change for Qt. The license change was seen as a dramatic win for Mandrake, since their distribution will be completely open source once Qt 2.0 comes out. Gael commented, "It will lead to a larger acceptance of Mandrake in the Linux community." Red HatThe shape of Red Hat's "enterprise support" program is beginning to emerge; see their Enterprise Computing Division page to see what they're up to. Included are a number of support programs (up to a $60,000/year "platinum" 24x7 program), training, and certification.S.u.S.E.Bodo Bauer has posted a preliminary list of new features currently expected to be in the 6.0 release, which is still over two months away. glibc is the most obvious and well known feature, egcs 1.1 will be included and XFree86 3.3.3 is planned for inclusion as well. A large amount of new hardware is listed and the manual is apparently undergoing some major rewriting. He also mentioned the possibility that Extreme Linux will be included as well.The list should be fairly accurate since the German version of S.u.S.E. appears to have already been announced. German-capable readers can see the 6.0 release page; the rest of us can read it via Babelfish. |
December 3, 1998
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed. |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development toolsJavaThis ZDnet article indicates that Sun is following up its win over Microsoft by drafting new licenses for Java, ones that are more open and potentially herald the release of Java as open source code."We think there are some interesting advantages to the open source model," said Alan Baratz, president of Sun's Java software division, in Cupertino, Calif.Don't expect Java to come out under the GPL, but a new, more open license and full access to source code could provide a means for Sun to achieve full promise of Java. This article in Internet World reports that Linux with TowerJ is now the fastest Java virtual machine around. Linux has tended to get thrashed in this area, so this is a great step ahead. The latest JDC Newsletter is out. WebMacro 0.7, a Java server-side web template engine and servlet development framework, has been announced. PythonHere is this week's Python-URL!, full, as always, of useful pointers to Python happenings.
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December 3, 1998 |
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Development projectsSimon Damberger has released the perl script that generates the MouseOver News siteunder the GPL v2. Here is his short announcement. William Henning has added WinChip C6 results to his Linux Kernel compilation benchmarks article. Cyrix, AMD, Pentium and Celeron chips are already represented. Reports on XFree86 3.3.3 are starting to come in. The good news appears to be that the S3V server is indeed working better, both supporting 24bpp and no longer locking upon exit. The bad news is that the SVGA server did not get the 24bpp fixes, so the S3V server, theoretically obsolete, is required. In addition, there are reports of XFree86 3.3.3 running slower on some hardware and freezing on other cards. | |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessCorel has announced a deal with the KDE project wherein KDE will be shipped on the Netwinder. "Corel Computer intends to participate with the KDE Project to bring new skills and technology to this phenomenal desktop environment. Corel Computer has shipped a number of NetWinder DM, or development machines, to KDE developers who are helping to port the desktop environment." There is also a TechWeb article about this announcement. Caldera will be getting into the "black box" (or "blue cube?") server market, according to this TechWeb article. The "Vertical Business Server" will be another low-cost, web-administered server, available early in 1999. IBM's Transarc subsidiary has released its AFS "enterprise filesystem" for Linux. See their press release for more. This amounts to another high-level recognition of Linux's potential role in the corporate world, and another small step by IBM in the Linux direction. Those of you using the Ingres II beta edition from CAI may have noticed that it expired on December 2. If you've been bitten by that expiration, head on over to the Ingres beta page and you can get a new copy (Thanks to Jussi Torhonen). According to this TechWeb article, Microstate has released their Java application server as open source. D. H. Brown and associates have released their latest ranking of server operating systems. The results: AIX tops the list, and NT sits at the bottom. Linux is not yet part of the study, but the word (from Newsbytes) is that they will include Linux as of the first quarter of 1999. It's been a while since we covered the progress of UCC 2B, the (U.S.) proposed "shrink wrap software" law which would dramatically increase the rights and protections of software publishers. Here is a summary of the latest moves on this law, and what they mean. It's interesting, scary stuff. Under (c), if the publisher places language in the fine print of a mass-market license (which you aren't allowed to see until after the sale), the publisher can place a restraint (such as by encrypting your files) that affirmatively prevents your access to your own information on your own computer. Under (d), the publisher is not liable to you for any losses caused by that restraint.If this thing becomes law, it will have the interesting effect of making proprietary software that much more expensive, difficult, and risky to deal with. The hollowness of "who do you sue?" will become ever more apparent. One wonders if the people behind this bill aren't free software advocates in disguise? Press Releases:
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December 3, 1998 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsPlease pardon the length of this section this week; we got a little behind on the Linux articles since we did not publish last week. Over the last two weeks we got a lot of general and introductory articles, a fair amount of press about Linux products, as well as articles about the Microsoft trial and a trailing batch of columns about Comdex. We'll start with the general interest pieces:
An increasing amount of the attention Linux gets from the press has to do with new products and corporate moves - almost as if Linux were a normal operating system. Here's a selection from the last two weeks.
A couple of pieces in the non-English press:
One of Microsoft's lawyers hit on the idea of displaying a Red Hat box as evidence that there is no monopoly in operating systems. Here's a selection from the flurry of press that resulted from that move, and a couple of other Microsoft and Halloween pieces.
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December 3, 1998
``Having tasted Linux success, Nichols started knocking off his Windows NT servers one by one. Now, all but a few of the servers at WaveTop run Linux.''
``...whereas Linux proponents will come and go, Microsoft has no choice but to support Windows NT''
``If you've been listening to your I.S. staff gossip around the cappuccino machine, you've heard them boast that their departmental LAN is running on a near-perfect operating system called Linux. Pay attention; in three years you may be installing it on all your company's servers. ''
``sure people run production sites on linux. i know alot of these people. they dont get much sleep and have grown opaque from the lack of sunlight.''
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesThe folks over at Hardwire are looking for ways to better integrate Linux into their hardware testing procedures. They are actively looking for suggestions from Linux folks; head on over if you have any ideas and let them know. (Thanks to Chris Walton).The new Linux-centric 32bitsonline is now, well, online. EventsThe LinuxWorld Conference and Expo has announced its keynote speakers: Micheal Cowpland (Corel), Mark Jarvis (Oracle), and, of course, Linus Torvalds. They also state that they expect 8000 attendees. See the announcement for more.Linuxbierwanderung, or the "Linux beer hike" will be happening next August in Bavaria, under the sponsorship of Electric Lichen, LLC. Participants will divide their time between Linux lessons, Bavarian hikes, and, of course, beer. This one just sounds like too much fun. Here's the Linuxbierwanderung web page for those who are interested. On December 5th and and 6th, between between 11:30pm and 6:15am in Paderborn, Germany, an attempt will be made to build the world's greatest Linux cluster (codename CLOWN = CLuster Of Working Nodes). The project is sponsored by Linux User Groups in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands, in association with Linux-Magazin. Check out the project website for more details (also available in German). The Linux/Unix Users' Group of Virginia Tech is holding an InstallFest on Saturday, December 5, 1998, on the campus of Virginia Tech. Here are more details. Peter Toft wrote a short articleon a recipe for making your LUG the biggest in the world, based on his experience with SSLUG, (Skane Sjelland Linux User Group). Linux Expo has put out a press release hyping next May's conference. Web sitesThe Brazilian site "Matrix" has set up a Linux area, those who read Portuguese may want to check it out. It includes news, introductory pages, documentation, and other good stuff. (Thanks to Augusto Cesar Campos).Sunsite.unc.edu has been renamed. This venerable site, still the home of the Linux Documentation Project and much other good stuff, is now known as MetaLab.unc.edu. User Group NewsA LUG is forming on Long Island, NY. The LUG is sponsored by F.L.A.T. the State Univ. of NY FArmingdale Linux and Associated Technologies club.Help WantedProgressive Systems, the "premier Linux Network Security product" company, has several job openings available in Columbus, Ohio. |
December 3, 1998
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Software AnnouncementsHere are last week's software announcements for those who didn't see them in the daily updates page.
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Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Ports Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekIBM's announcement of AFS for Linux is another nice bit of recognition. But anybody who is thinking about actually deploying AFS would do well to have a look at the Coda filesystem pagefirst. Coda is a descendent of the same CMU research project that produced AFS, is free (and included in the 2.1 kernel), and is potentially better. Do you pine for the nice days of Linux 0.12, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you finding it frustrating when everything works on Linux? No more all-nighters to get a nifty program working? If so, the IOS (Improved Operating System) project may be just what you're looking for. They are trying to write their own free system from the beginning, and they're looking for volunteers. It's ambitious, but, at this point, we know it can be done... (Apologies to Linus Torvalds for playing with his words, and thanks to OS News for calling this project to our attention). Our list of "links of the week" candidates is getting shorter; we could use some suggestions. If you know of a good web site that is of interest to the Linux community, please drop us the URL at lwn@lwn.net. Thanks! |
December 3, 1998 |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to editor@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them. Our mail was dominated by letters on the change in Qt licensing and our reporting on this change two weeks ago. Here's a selection. Please see also an editorial on the QPL sent to us by Paul Iadonisi, which is a bit too long to be included inline here. | |
From: Alan Cox <alan@cymru.net> Subject: Two things To: editor@lwn.net Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 19:19:31 +0000 (GMT) One the Gnome hackers don't give a hoot about the Qpl. Its good that Troll has taken a small step in the direction they have, and that the KDE folks are talking about licensing changes to make all their licensing line up clearly and cleanly Gnome is based on a belief in doing things right, doing them effciently and openly in a technical superior fashion. The fact Gnome is a true GPL/LGPL project is actually perhaps of less importance - but major importance to some. Contrary to rumour the gnome-hackers are busily at work as determinedly as ever. None of the core people actually can work out what the person in the random message you cited wrote if anything. Even Martin Konold (the Linus of the KDE project so to speak) has said he wants to see Gnome continue so there is choice. Secondly: The 2.0.x series kernels have a long life yet. If we get 2.2 by December then it will probably be out before 2.0.37. Free software isn't driven by the same rules as the proprietary "make them upgrade" model. Look at other industries, things do not become instantly obsolete. I get a lot of requests that 2.0.x continues long after 2.2 is out. Linux is popular in ISP and high reliability environments. These are the kind of people to whom "if it aint broke don't fix it" is a religion. Future Linux 2.0.x kernels like the 1.2.13lmp kernels before them are a commitment to that community. Alan | ||
To: editor@lwn.net From: "Michael K. Johnson" <johnsonm@redhat.com> Subject: GNOME Morale Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 11:26:43 -0500 Contrary to your statement in LWN of November 19th, morale in the GNOME camp has not dropped considerably since the QPL was announced. No one in the GNOME camp is quite sure precisely what Greg S. Hayes is resigning from; he is certainly not a core GNOME developer, and so far his resignation (from the mailing list?) has been a stampede of one. As you reported, the QPL's adherence to the OSD is questioned, and it is quite clear that it is Troll Tech's intention not to provide LGPL-like conditions for Qt. One of GNOME's many distinctives is LGPL (or similar) license conditions for its libraries, allowing commercial software vendors as well as free software authors to build GNOME software. GNOME's raison d'etre has not changed an iota. Your kind and persuasive arguments that GNOME should continue are gladly read; they are among the many that GNOME developers have already come up with for continuing, regardless of the very slight change in Qt's license conditions. michaelkjohnson "Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature." -- Fran Lebowitz Linux Application Development http://www.redhat.com/~johnsonm/lad/ | ||
From: Daniel Tasch <taschda@dmapub.dma.org> Subject: your article on qt To: editor@lwn.net Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 14:26:15 -0500 (EST) I am writing in regard to the following that appeared in LWN: "In other words, it is not the GPL, but it is probably good enough. It does mean that linking KDE (which is GPL'd) with Qt is probably still legally questionable, but that is something the KDE people can easily fix if they want by tweaking their own license." Unfortunately, you do not understand. The can't change the license. KDE is GPL, and to change even one period in the license (GPL) they would have to get the consent of every single KDE developer, and the consent of the author of every GPL program from which they borrowed code. This would be virtually impossible to do. So KDE remains GPL, and the licensing problems remain. Only one of two things will fix this problem, a GPL Qt, or a GPL Harmony. Period. -- Dan Tasch taschda@dmapub.dma.org | ||
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 17:26:46 +0100 From: Martin Cracauer <cracauer@hanse.de> To: editor@lwn.net Subject: Your comments on KDE One thing is missing from your pro/contra QPL discussion: If the KDE folks would decide to switch their own code form GPL to something compatible with the QPL, they couldn't integrate any GPL from other source anymore, nor could they "KDE"ize GPL applications without permission by the original authors. Especially the latter would be a great loss since KDE isn't just a collection of programs, it's a way these programs work together. I also questions whether this is Troll's or the GPL's fault. | ||
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 18:09:39 +0100 From: Waldo Bastian <bastian@ens.ascom.ch> To: editor@lwn.net Subject: Gnome and KDE Hi People at LWN :) As one of the many KDE developers I would like to make some remarks about your editorial. You state: > KDE, for all that it is clearly the best desktop that Linux has, Thank you very much. > looks an awful lot like so many other systems out there. True. KDE tries to incorporate those UI features which have proven themselves useful. It's neither a goal to look like MS-Windows or to NOT look like MS-Windows (or whatever system). The goal is to look good and ergonomic. > GNOME was founded with a vision of doing things differently: tighter > integration of applications through the CORBA bus, a more artistic > and experimental look, choice of window managers, no dependence on > any one company, etc. I am not that familair with GNOME that I can comment on their vision. I would like to state however that some of the above is not that different from the vision of KDE: * CORBA integration has been planned for some time now in KDE. The KOffice package makes extensive use of CORBA. After the release of KDE 1.1 the plan is to integrate CORBA in other components as well. * Unlike popular believe, KDE is not a window manager. Part of KDE is KWM, a window manager. It is not necassery to use KWM. Any other window manager can be used with KDE as well. It does have some advantages to use KWM, since some features of KDE are not possible with non-KDE-aware window managers. KWM, however, is not the only KDE-aware window manager. I believe Window Maker is KDE-aware as well and possibly others. * People probably wildly disagree on the issue "what looks good?". KDE currently has modest support for themes. Most widgets however, are based on Qt-widgets which come in two flavours (Motif and MS-Windows look I believe). I am told that the 2.0 release of Qt will support themes for the widgets. By then KDE should be fully "theme-able". I assume Gnome has this already. The two biggest differences between KDE and GNOME in my opinion are the fact that GNOME has chosen to use a fully free toolkit instead of a commercial one and the fact that GNOME is largely C based in contrast to KDE which is C++ based. Both these choices have their own pro's and con's. > The fact that KDE will now sprout up on a lot more desktops does not > change the value of that vision. The competition between the two > desktop projects has also clearly helped to push both forward. This is certainly true. Somewhat more cooperation between the two projects would however be very welcome. I would like to point out that KDE (probably quite like Gnome) is just a bunch of people working on the same project. All those people have an opinion of their own, the opinions in this message are my opinions. I am sure there are KDE developers which have quite different opinions. Thank you for your attention, Best regards, Waldo Bastian bastian@kde.org -- Patcher of the HTML Widget, Lord of the broken Tag. | ||
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 15:44:47 +0100 From: Avus <top249@g26.ethz.ch> To: editor@lwn.net Subject: QPL and OSS; Gnome facing a new situation Dear LWN Editor, I usually enjoy reading the LWN very much and want to congratulate you to this publication. This weeks editorial, however, makes me a bit unhappy. It downplays the importance of Troll Tech's move to make their product Open Source; we're talking about their key product, and not a peripheral one like Mozilla, which Netscape couldn't sell anyway (they make their money with servers and advertising). You write that "not everybody is happy with Troll's new license", which is absolutely clear at the moment, given the very emotional discussions in the recent past. The large majority, including the most prominent Linux personalities, have approved of the license (RMS hasn't commented yet). You also fail to mention that this is only a DRAFT, not the final version. I'd rather propose some clarifications than condemning it aforehand. You say "it is not the GPL, but it is probably good enough". What means 'good enough'??? As a strong supporter of Open Source I think it is BETTER than the GPL (in this case). This may sound provocative, but don't forget the following: - The GPL isn't compatible with (many) other OSS licenses - The GPL is very long, and still very unclear, e.g. in the case of what 'part of the system' means. Therefor we have a lot of confusion wether linking to certain libraries is legal or not. - The GPL V.2 doesn't know about (Corba) objects: Is such an object treated as a library or as a separate programme? In the former case a commercial programme couldn't use a GPL'd object, while in the latter this would be possible. Example: StarOffice/Worperfect wants to call a GPL'd KDE/Gnome configuration object. Is this legal? The main confusion that occurs is about the STATUS OF PATCHES. This is what leads Khimenko Victor in one of the above letters to the conclusion that the QPL is not OSD compatible. Bruce Perens has said he'd clarify the patch clause in the OSD, but I suggest that "patch" should also be defined in the QPL. QPL IS OPEN SOURCE: The OSD demands that "modifications and derived works" must be allowed. But is also explicitly mentions that a "patch+pristine source"-only distribution is possible (art. 4). A patch does not contain any original code, so it is neither a modification nor derived from it. A patch is "source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time" (OSD, art. 4) It can therefor have a DIFFERENT license, in QPL's case a freer one. However, after the patch is applied to Qt, the resulting work is modified and has to be under the same license as before, the QPL. GNOME and the new SITUATION I do agree with the editor that Gnome (and Harmony, BTW) should continue. But they should really focus on what's technically important now. In the past, I'd got the impression that they've sometimes hidden behind the licensing issue. Furthermore, I agree interoperability should now be of much greater importance. Especially the Corba objects compatibility should be rediscussed. The Gnome developers have to ask themselves if it was really necessary to choose an incompatible object model with MS OLE2, instead of working together with KDE on OpenParts. This looks a lot like the Not Invented Here syndrome... But it's still not too late to change that. Regards B. Avus p.s.: Just for fairness I'll comment on some of the misinformation you've unfortunately spread: a) You *do* have a choice of windowmanagers (use whatever you want). b) KDE presented and used Corba objects first (KOM/OpenParts), the whole KOffice is based on it. Gnome/Baboon(MS OLE2) came later. c) KWM has sophisticated theming capabilities (see kde.themes.org). Widget themes will come with Qt 2.0. | ||
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 13:12:48 +0200 From: Leandro Guimaraens Faria Corcete Dutra <leandrod@amdocs.com> To: freeqt@modeemi.cs.tut.fi Subject: Editorial for LWN I support the continuation of the Harmony project as it is, or better still as GPL instead of LGPL. Since the main reason for its existence is that KDE and related software is GPL, I see no reason to choose the weaker LGPL, which would encourage the release of even more proprietary software. I have no C programming skills, but would consider supporting the project in a less technical role and would surely use Harmony instead of Qt anytime. I agree with Carl E Thompson on the serious shortcomings and one-sideness of the QPL. I would also advance the idea that the patch mechanism enforced by QPL is the same one which made Linus Torvalds quit Minix in favor of his own kernel. -- Leandro Guimaraens Faria Corcete Dutra Amdocs Brasil Ltda | ||
To: editor@lwn.net Subject: QPL and the gtk+ C++ wrappers From: Guillaume Laurent <glaurent@worldnet.fr> Date: 25 Nov 1998 19:50:26 +0100 (cc-ing the Gtk-- mailing-list) Dear LWN Editors, After the recent news from the Gnome and Harmony project which one can read on LWN, I can't resist to report that it's business as usual over here :-). Actually, this is the first message on the matter to ever appear on our mailing list. (actually business is not quite as usual, we have a feature-freeze in mid december and are hoping to release Gtk-- 1.0 in sync with gtk+ 1.2). -- Guillaume. http://www.worldnet.fr/~glaurent | ||