Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 17:28:38 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Fredrik Olausson <fredrik@speechcraft.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The desktop apathy Message-ID: <20010527172838.A11174@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010527082742.049003f0@localhost>; from brett@lariat.org on Sun, May 27, 2001 at 08:36:02AM -0600 References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0105252316300.294-100000@molly.telia.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20010527082742.049003f0@localhost>
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Brett Glass said on May 27, 2001 at 08:36:02: > with a viable business plan. (Ximian and Eazel both fell pray to the > GPL "poison pill.) Were KDE or GNOME BSD-licensed, companies could have > come out with their own unique flavors of them and might have filled > that role. But the GPL rears its ugly head again, and by precluding > unique improvements by vendors (and hence their ability to create > well differentiated products) prevents them from succeding. Haven't we heard this from you before? Why don't you start your own BSD-licensed desktop project? > Today, most users of the BSDs (AND Linux) effectively use Windows > as their GUI. I'd say most users of BSD whom I know use linux as a GUI -- that is, their window manager / desktop environment was developed on linux, though it may be ported to run natively on FreeBSD. The "BSD community" as such has made no contribution to the desktop, so can't complain if the existing options are GPL'd. At least I think that makes more sense than what you're saying. If the mail server (administered by someone else) is running BSD but my desktop is running Windows and Eudora, I wouldn't count myself as a BSD user -- any more than I'd count everyone who uses Yahoo as BSD users. If you're using a windows desktop, you're a windows user. I also think that right now KDE is far superior to Windows in functionality, ease of use, customisability, and visual appearance -- except in the cases where it has to interface very closely with the system (graphical system configuration utilities, etc) which are difficult because of the lack of standardization in linux itself, even when one doesn't worry about FreeBSD. Anyway, I don't really care about point-and-click system management tools. And KDE has done everything else without blowing the $13 million or whatever which Eazel spent on a file manager alone. I see no room for pessimism. I do, however, doubt very much that anyone will develop a BSD-licensed desktop environment. The BSD license is geared to some things, and not to some other things, and I think it is attractive for a program like bzip2 (where the aim is to establish a standard), but fundamentally unattractive for a desktop environment or a word processor. Any such effort will be GPL (or similarly restrictive license) or out-and-out commercial. - R To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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