“The conversation ambled toward one of his first loves, KDE.
“It’s not a boxers vs. briefs argument. Although the
copyright/copyleft arguments made against KDE aren’t very fair,
what I get with Gnome is simplicity. If I actually get to move code
simply over onto other platforms, so much the better. Gnome isn’t
rocket science,” he said, “and it’s also not Windows or the Mac UI,
either. But the ethnic purity arguments are . KDE is cool, Gnome is
cool, but Gnome is an attitude where KDE is a more evolved
front-end….”
“Looking at the CVS trees that exist for many important Linux
apps (let alone the kernel), I wonder about the efficacy of
business plans that revolve around the constant-upgrade business,
and how open source methodologies seem to wash the negative
effects. Let me think aloud. The commercial successes in software
development may have started differently, but most have wound up
with a similar plan. The plan is designed to seduce you, the
decision makers into buying into a specific product or product
grouping. Eventually, you wear the logo on your sleeve. A
salesperson would say that they have the hook in your mouth, as in
fishing. The job at that point is to pull hard. That’s because the
initial license purchase is only a fraction of the life cycle of
revenue that’s in the plan….”
“There seems to be a point where code development never
stops, unless the code has become a reasonable and stable platform
for something else, or until it can’t be supported as attention has
shifted to something else. It seems that no code is finished.
Only interest seems to shift. There is, in Linux, the great
temptation to constantly update. Some of it’s good as an evolving
platform. Some of it’s bad because it’s not driven by the need for
solidification.”