Date: Sat, 16 Dec 1995 12:35:05 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Cc: jdc@crab.xinside.com, velte@cdrom.com Subject: Interested in CDE, anyone? Message-ID: <6090.819146105@time.cdrom.com>
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CDE, in case you've been living under a stone for the last 5 years, is the Sun/IBM/... (COSE?) Common Desktop & Development Environment - reputedly the best thing since sliced bread and an attempt to finally standardize the X desktop. I wouldn't really know since I've yet to actually see what it looks like, but I've read about it a fair bit and was intrigued enough to follow a recent lead.. A company I just got off the phone with is currently working on a Linux port of CDE and is quite interested indeed in the idea of bringing the same product to FreeBSD. There are a couple of problems to be ironed out, however, most notably the fact that they lack the local manpower to actually do the port themselves (they're in Texas) and are constrained by their software license to not ship the source out of the company, making a "telecommuting port" something of a non-solution. I was myself forced to regretfully decline their offer to go to Texas for a month and do it. :-) This doesn't slam the door on the idea, necessarily, it simply makes the job a little more complicated. Before we embark on a creative solutions program, however, I'd like to know a couple of things: 1. Is there any serious interest in CDE for FreeBSD? E.g. would it help you get FreeBSD into some commercial environment if you had this as a checklist item? Would you or your company be willing to fork out, say, $395 for a copy? Knowing this in advance is of importance if we're to successfully gauge whether the time is ripe for CDE or if we shouldn't perhaps just wait awhile longer for greater "critical mass." 2. Assuming that the answer to #1 is "yes", would anyone perhaps be interested in forming a "consortium" to actually help these folks port, support and sell the product for FreeBSD? They would appear to be somewhat balanced on the knife-edge of being under-capitalized yet unwilling to go outside for capital and lose control of a chunk of their company. They're therefore trying to work out "shoestring" arrangements where any outside investments in time, equipment or outright capital are traded against future royalties and special pricing. This assumes mutual faith in there being a market, of course, and some other source of income for those working in such a consortium until copies are being sold. I'm also Cc'ing Walnut Creek CDROM (hi Jack) on this since they do have the capital and, to a rather lesser extent, the manpower, but it's also not really directly in their core area of business and I actually somewhat doubt that they're necessarily going to jump at the idea. We've never even tried to sell a product in this price range, to my knowledge, and I think that a "FreeBSD Professional" would require additional bundled components as well to be a real success, namely a commercial X server and Motif. I'm also pretty sure that they'll not be entirely keen at the idea of parting with any of their precious resources. :-) CDE is one of those checklist items that also has great potential to be valuable to FreeBSD not so much by itself, but for the additional software players (who develop under the platform) it attracts. Imagine having CDE, DCE and SPEC-1170 compliance; that would certainly get certain segments of the industry to sit up and take notice! :-) We have to take such a challenge one step at a time, of course, and this would be (IMHO) a good one. The central question is simply in ascertaining whether or not the timing's right and the objective is currently worthy of the investment. Given additional time, perhaps the folks in Texas will manage to scrape together enough money to do it anyway, with or without outside help. Is it better to wait and take the gamble? Anyone in the Texas area looking for porting work? Thoughts welcome! Jordan
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