[CS-FSLUG] Qt relicensed as LGPL

[Eduardo Sánchez]

On Thursday 15 January 2009 16.38.04 Timothy Butler wrote:
>
> 	The big challenge, it seems to me, is that KDE has always had a hard
> time focusing on the end user. "Oh, there are ten different ways
> using three different daemons to turn on sound in the main, end user
> configuration tools -- jolly, good, Joe Sixpack is gonna love this."
> Of course, Joe Sixpack doesn't. He wants a thing that says "Sound:
> on/ off."

They have an usability team, and they have been working since at least 
two years (i.e., roughly the KDE 3.5 timeframe). The fruit is appearing 
slowly: see Dolphin, or the new systemsettings, for an example.

>
> 	GNOME sometimes has gone overboard, but I think their approach gets
> closer to what every typical user I know wants: to hide as much
> complexity as possible. After all, that is what desktop environments
> are about. Where GNOME goes too far, and KDE with increased
> commercial interest could do (the LGPL may help here, as you note) is
> hide that complexity not completely but behind buttons that say
> things like "Advanced Options."

In fact that is the particular approach they are doing now. See 
systemsettings for an example.

>
> 	Their other big task is to kill redundancy. KDE often has kept
> multiple mediocre apps that do the same thing, as opposed to having
> one really good app. Kill all but one and make it the best it can be.
> Oh, and kill the K in front of the name of everything.

Hmmm... the only real instance of it was the KEdit/KWrite/Kate thing. I 
think KEdit had to be kept around because it had an input method that 
was hardcoded, and was unavailable for other KDE apps. That is, because 
it had real users.

About the "K", is a subjective thing, but it's fading away, in my 
opinion.

>
> 	What KDE really needs is to get someone from Mozilla over to run the
> organization. KDE reminds me a lot of Mozilla back in the bad old
> days when the behemoth later known as Seamonkey was Mozilla's main
> offering. It was too complicated and unwieldy. Firefox and
> Thunderbird are successful in large part because they are clean and
> easy to use, with great guis using commercial grade logos and icons,
> but also extensible for power users.

Oh no. I hate Firefox. It's a bloated mess. Why should I need a 10 MB 
download for a single browser? Firefox is like a cancer. I use it 
because some sites (such as GMail) won't work with Konqui.

>
> 	(Incidentally, that's yet another apt comparison to Mac OS X too,
> and why I love using it. I can extend away with included and cheap or
> free addons to do all kinds of robust UNIXy things, but when I'm on a
> tight schedule and don't want to have to do anything complex at all,
> or even look at a complex configuration dialog, I don't have to.)

Yes, this is a valid point.

Blessings,


Eduardo

-- 
Eduardo Sanchez, B. Th.
Traductor Público Inglés-Español
http://shadow.sombragris.org
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