Future of KDE
 

After the Nokia-Microsoft deal, the future of Qt doesn't look very bright. Many developers think that Nokia has no interest in Qt for the desktop.

http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/14/update-on-qt/

And since KDE is based on Qt, and KDE is the (sort of) default desktop environment for Slackware...

What are your thoughts?

fgcl2k

It depends on the upstream IMHO
Pat doesn't decide KDE's future :)

KDE is not the default. It's just one of the many DE (Desktop Environment) provided/Supported within Slackware. It's your choice to pick one of them as your default

There are so many possible things that could come of KDE if QT was completely dropped by all potential corporate sponsors.
Perhaps a group of KDE devs would spawn off and maintain it?
Perhaps KDE would transition to another GUI tool kit? If that was GTK, I think there would finally be a de facto standard for most gui apps on linux. It would be more interesting to see them use the Enlightenment libs.
However, the least likely thing to do would be creating a new GUI tool kit that's not even QT based.

But I don't even use KDE anyway so I don't know why I'm bothering to speculate.

Either way, Slackware needs a feature rich Desktop Environment and it's unlikely KDE is going anywhere. I doubt Gnome would come back to Slackware... but who knows what the future holds.

Qt's development repository is still getting several commits/merges every hour, so Qt's development hasn't slowed down (yet).

If Nokia does drop Qt, then it will obviously be forked. In that case, the best case scenario would be a company that has existing software written in Qt stepping up to sponsor it. Amazon (whose Kindle desktop software is Qt) and Google (Earth is written Qt) are candidates.

QT is fully licensed under the GPL, and has other protections in place, so it's perfectly safe. If Nokia ever tries to do anything funny it will simply be forked and things will continue on as usual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28f...k%29#Licensing

For precedent, look at the history of X11 and Xorg.

KDE's main problem is not Qt licensing. Even if Nokia will abandon Qt, there are some protocols, that last option will be automatically Qt under the BSD license.

The problem is that KDE is a DE which is developed by professional programmers, paid by Nokia today. Do not imagine that KDE is written by a handful of geeks! It's a incredible complex thingy! ;)

What will happen when Nokia will abandon KDE4? Look what happens with Qt3 and KDE3, which are already abandoned by their developers.

The idea is that today, although we like to play with open source applications, those that are very complex, like KDE, GNOME or Linux kernel, are developed by companies who have commercial interests.

I don't think Nokia was thinking of the desktop when it acquired Qt.

In any case, Qt won't even need to be forked if Nokia abandons it since there are strong safeguards built into its licensing.

Are you sure about this? It sounds completely wrong to me, and it's contradicted by KDE's Wikipedia article.

Here you go:

i'm not sure whether the article in DistroWatch is correct, since it's user's choice to pick up the DE being used. There are two big DE in Slackware, which are KDE and XFCE, but there are others too and Slackware never use "default" for DE selection. Everything is based on user's preferences

KDE is the default desktop. If you run the installer and just keep pressing ENTER to accept the default choices, you get KDE.

It's true that KDE is not the only desktop or WM supplied in a stock install, but that's not what "default" means.

Try to find who is the members of The KDE Core Team, then try to find how many works full-time for KDE and which companies pay their bills, to do that ... ;)

You'll be surprised.

BTW, you know which company develop Mesa/Gallium? Surprise! VMware Inc. Anyways, I found disturbing that Slackware don't ship the VMware Mesa/Gallium driver. It's funny, to exclude from The Game, right the main developer support! :doh:

I don't have to do that. If you've already done it yourself, post your links.

Happen to know personally one of the developers / creators of Konqueror. And he explained to me how it works out the development of KDE. Also, why Red Hat has created GNOME, as an alternative to KDE. There is nothing wrong, of course. Some guys live writing OpenSource code, another guys live selling OpenSource.

In few words, the companies are heavily involved in OpenSource development because they have commercial interests. OpenSource is just another business model.

And, let's be realistic, but without those companies and their commercial interests, we can not develop/maintain highly complex application suites like we use today.

You have claimed that most of the funding for KDE's development comes from Nokia specifically. You have not convinced me.

And no, this claim isn't worth anything.

Well, if that make you happy, one of Nokia employees / that guys sponsored by Qt Software at Nokia, who work full-time into KDE Core Team, is David Faure. ;)

And, another merry guy is Aaron Seigo. :hattip:

I should continue?

Whose homepage doesn't mention Nokia at all. In fact, his CV specifically says that his presence on the KDE team is sponsored by Trolltech. Not Nokia.

If I remember right, Trolltech is now an Nokia subsidiary, known as Qt Software. I missed something?

Yes you did. It's entirely possible for Trolltech to continue to sponsor him even if Nokia stops sponsoring David Faure.

Let's go back in time. ;)

It was once, a company called Trolltech, who wrote and sell the libraries called Qt.

One day, the bad guys at Nokia have paid a disgusting amount of money, and they bought Trolltech, what is now a division of Nokia, nothing more, and it's called Qt Software.

Q: Who pays Mr. Seigo? :D

Trolltech, of course. That's what it says on his paychecks and on both company's record books. Which company produced Wall-E?

You have claimed that that all the money for KDE development comes from Nokia. You have listed two developers (out of a pool of far more than that) who are sponsored by either Nokia or its subsidiaries and said "should I stop there?". If you want to prove your point, then post a table showing the entire KDE core team and the sponsor of each member.

Very correct. But now, Trolltech is just a division of Nokia.

What will happen if Nokia decides to close this division, as unprofitable?

Logic would be the developers are fired, and Trolltech will disappear. And we get exactly to the topic of this thread. ;)

Then, David Faure, Aaron Seigo and others, will have to find a new job. So what will happen to KDE?

I don't believe Trolltech exists anymore (at least as a name) since it has been folded into Nokia. In any case, for what it's worth, here are the patrons of KDE: http://ev.kde.org/supporting-members.php.

What I don't know/understand is what benefit Nokia sees in supporting KDE other than promoting the use of Qt.

Nothing. The Core Team developers being sponsored by companies other than Nokia (and its subsidiaries) will still be there.

No, I say KDE's main developers are paid by Nokia. Of the thousands of KDE developers, a few dozen, most importantly, live from the KDE.

But I think that we should not argue on this topic. It is absolutely natural for this to happen.

There is a handfull of companies who pay OpenSource developers: RedHat, HP, Oracle, Novell, AMD, Intel, Nokia, Google, even Microsoft ...

Yes, this is the point we are discussing. Thanks for clarifying.

I doubt very much that the entire "KDE core team" (which is a management team, btw) is being sponsored by Nokia (or its subsidiaries).

It depends on how big the interest of these companies in the development's Qt and KDE ...

I can't see anyone than Novell and Ubuntu? which can be interested to support Qt & KDE.

A speculation would be that Nokia would have attempted to provide, through KDE4, an alternative to the Windows desktop.

There are a lot of fans of WindowsXP. A complete desktop with lots of nice effects and Qt4 imposing a in-facto standard for Windows applications should have been an appealing prospect ...

PS. If it seems surprising, in principle we can configure Windows XP to use KDE4 as desktop shell, although it can turn into a console system, which uses only the CMD.

I hope Slack reincorporates gnome one day. Until then, I'm quite happy with Slackware 13/64bit and added-back-in gnome (GSB).

I absolutely agree with you! :D

Given the prospect of marriage between Nokia and Microsoft, I think we should be prepared to not be caught with our pants down ... ;)

+1 for reintegrating Gnome from me too! (And thanks to GSB for their work.)

Slackware would just keep releasing with an older version of KDE. Forever. and Ever.

If that is what you are worried about, then what about Mono? There is no licensing danger to Qt and KDE, but the same can't be said of Gnome's reliance on Mono.

Years ago mickeysoft made an "investment" of $150,000,000.00, Canadian Dollars in Corel and within weeks "Corel Linux" and "WordPerfect for Linux" disappeared without a whisper.

Mickeysoft has just paid Nokia $1,000,000,000.00, U.S. Dollars. I wonder what they are going to get for their money this time?

A better microsoft phone?

Seems success of M$ in its combat with OS community. If it will kill KDE4 many people will drop Linux - cause they now are more KDE4 users than Linux users. Today Linux is promoted on a base of some candy for eyes. Look around - almost every major distro is doing like that. And 'user friendliness'. Eg. nowadays ubuntu reached the level of stupidity compared to all M$ systems. If you want some help click here, click there, window will open, mark "the foo" "the bar" leave epmty, press enter or click right mouse button (and your computer will blow up) - doesn't work?

In theory.
:)

KDE has a future??!! If you had told me that when 4.0 was released I could never have believed it:)

KDE is still supported by Novell, and the OpenSUSE team, since is has like slackware KDE as default DE. And when Nokia will stop developing Qt, it will still be open source. Geeks can always continue to support it. And after all, Qt is stable already, and has lots of features. Why trying to change a winning team.

While i prefer the GNOME UI in general myself too, i dont see that happening any time soon.
And theres many reasons, like:

GNOME cant be installed properly using pkgtools. Its way too complex and modular for that. It may be done using something like an SBo queue file for example but still..
On top of being modular its development model is very confusing. Its extremely difficult keeping track of all the versioned dependencies between its core modules, especially for the last couple of years, ever since they started working on making GNOME 3 reality.

Personally id be happy if koffice was replaced with a libreoffice source build, assuming we cant have both.

Agreed. In my opinion LibreOffice would make a welcome addition to Slackware.

I agree too.

Markus

But GNOME can be installed via GSB which uses "native Slackware tools, like installpkg, upgradepkg and removepkg".

Without slapt-get's dependency resolution?
I think it could only be possible if you follow a certain order of packages you installed.
Which would make it innapropriate eg. for the Slackware installer.
Unless there were things like eg. aaa_gconf.

Hey guys,
stay focus. If you want to discuss a future of gnome in slackware - let open a new thread - no one is really interested in your desktop preferences.

And, may I say, if KDE4 will be killed by M$ by this deal with Nokia, why the hell this won't happen to Gnome? The scenario may be different but gnome can be as dead as KDE4. About Novel - someone forget that it is already in one bed with M$. So, better don't count on it.