[Kde-bindings] some info needed

[Richard Dale]

On Tuesday, June 22, 2010 01:00:33 am Arno Rehn wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 June 2010 01:22:55 Richard Dale wrote:
> > On Monday, June 21, 2010 07:58:51 pm Arno Rehn wrote:
> > > Currently I don't have much ambitions to carry on working on
> > > Qyoto/Kimono, since not many people are using it and it's a closed
> > > platform after all. I'm CC'ing the kdebindings ML, so other people can
> > > help as well.
> > 
> > I think that would be a great shame. I'm sorry I've done nothing to help
> > out with Qyotoassemblygen, and feel that I should have done more. In
> > combination with using the Smoke runtime, it is the most innovative C#
> > bindings project out there.
> 
> It's certainly not that I haven't had enough enough help and/or support
> from your side. I agree that SMOKE is the most advanced C++ bindings
> technology out there and we really have top-quality C# bindings.
> 
> > We should certainly get projects like Qyotoassemblygen and smokegen onto
> > git instead of in kdebindings. I think the fact we are stuff in
> > kdebindings using svn is beginning to damage the bindings projects.
> 
> qyotoassemblygen is already on gitorious.
Oh come to think of it I think you had already told me that. So should 
kdebindings put the non-kde specific parts of the tools on gitorious to 
encourage maximum co-operation with other gitorious based projects like Qt and 
MeeGo? 

> > Why do
> > we put so much effort into  KDE based bindings when 90% of people only
> > want to use the Qt-only ones? I don't know.
> > 
> > I agree we've had zero success with getting anyone to use the Kimono KDE
> > C# bindings, although I think there has been some interest in the Qyoto
> > side. Maybe we haven't put enough effort into hyping and blogging about
> > what we have, or telling the Mono community about it. i still feel there
> > is a lot of potential in the project when other C# bindings seem quite
> > popular. For instance, like on the iPhone and I wonder if there might be
> > a place for a libdui/MeeGo Touch development environment.
> 
> It's just that I come to think that C# bindings will have no success in the
> F/OSS community. There are a few people who don't care whether .NET is a
> closed platform and therefore develop and use .NET software even on Linux
> and other open OSes. However, the number of these people seems to be
> extremely low.
I'm not so sure that is true, there are quite a few people using Mono I  
think. Just because there aren't many killer applications that are bundled 
with distributions like Kubuntu (there are killer C# applications for Ubuntu) 
doesn't necessarily mean that people aren't writing custom in-house 
applications, or playing around with the development environment in their 
spare time just to 'learn stuff'. I not sure there will ever be a KDE killer 
application written in Python, Ruby or C#, but that doesn't mean we have 
failed in producing very nice development environments for those languages. 
Not everyone wants to rewrite konqueror in Perl, but they might want to hack 
up a cut down browser in Perl using QtWebKit to deliver a custom app in much 
less time than it would have taken in C++ for their company's invoicing 
department.

> Mono/.NET applications will never be treated as 1st class citizens (not
> even 2nd class, I'd say) in any of the larger projects, like GNOME or KDE,
> simply because .NET is a closed platform. Microsoft could make every
> promise they want for not sueing people, but as long as they don't open up
> the platform, .NET will never be accepted in the F/OSS world.
> And they even have a point here: As long as there are efforts to support
> .NET on other OSes, including Linux and OS X, all the closed Microsoft
> stuff will spread and push the open alternatives aside.
We are not supporting .NET, we are providing a nice Mono based C# development 
environment, and that is not the same thing at all. I don't care about C# apps 
not being first class citizens in KDE because the reality is that no non-C++ 
language is a first class citizen. That includes QtJambi too. The one language 
that might become a first class citizen in KDE is probably JavaScript. We are 
not spreading 'closed Microsoft stuff', we are just providing a nice 
development environment for an interesting programming language (C#). The 
implication of this 'spreading closed Microsoft stuff' is that somehow 
developers are victims who aren't in control. Once a developer has been 
infected with the C# way of doing things, they will never be able to change. 
That is just rubbish. A poor programmer might always want to program in the 
language they first learned, like C#, Java or COBOL. But a good programmer can 
adapt in about a week. As far as I'm concerned if the good programmers aren't 
locked into one language, who cares about the average/bad programmers. 
Developers are not victims of giant cash rich corporations like Microsoft, 
quite the opposite, we are actually in charge - they nead us, we don't need 
them.

> A very popular case currently is Silverlight. It's bad enough that there is
> Flash, which is also a closed platform, but now even Silverlight apps start
> to flood the internet. And that decreases chances again for HTML5.
I don't buy this argument, from the point of view of Qt/KDE programmers using 
the bindings we have developed, C# is just another programming language. I 
don't care about Silverlight, but the main thing wrong with it is that is uses 
proprietary codecs. I does use a very nice .NET runtime that works well with 
dynamic languages like IronPython. HTML5 is no better that Flash or 
Silverlight if it uses the same proprietary crap like H.264 instead of Free 
codecs like the new Google one.


> Well, back to topic: Yes, there are quite a few people being interested in
> Qyoto on Windows and OS X, but honestly that are not the communities that I
> care most about. I mostly focus on the main KDE platform, which is Linux,
> and hopefully soon also MeeGo. If it's working there and has some users,
> then I won't mind porting it to other platforms. But I don't feel like
> maintaining a project whose userbase is completely outside of my main
> working platform.
Yes I agree it is a pain in the arse to support Windows and Mac OS X, if you 
are mainly interested in the superior Linux based programming environment. 
This comes down to us not doing enough to 'sell' the platform to Window or Mac 
OS X programmers though, so that there is a viable self contained community to 
do the porting, and it doesn't all come down to us doing it.

-- Richard