Commercial Free Software projects and KDE

[Martin Konold]

Am Mittwoch, 30. Juli 2003 18:36 schrieb Ralf Nolden:

Hi Ralf,

> commercial projects but that doesn't imply that there's an automatism that
> those projects to become successful have to dominate the way KDE goes.

I think it is the other way. Due to the fact that KDE, by means of its 
superiour development model, is so usefull for commercial development of free 
software that projects like Ägypten and Kroupware have been possible. 

E.g. I cannot imagine that anyone would have succeeded to create such a full 
featured and stable Kolab client for Linux on the grounds of either 
proprietary components nor Mozilla or GNOME technology. Kalles peoples made a 
sound technical decision.

The fact that the main development of the kdepim people with kmail, 
kaddressbok and korganizer will lead to a very cool Kolab client in the 
future is simply fantastic and shows how well the community works together 
with commercial companies producing free software.

> > > KDE is way less complicated than any other piece of software when it
> > > comes to requirements.
> >
> > Reading that sentence alone makes me laugh.

Technically KDE is a much easier framework to create powerful applications in 
a short timeframe with limited ressources. The stability and maintainance of 
older versions is exceptional withing KDE. We even still provide patches for 
old KDE 2.

> > There are projects that the KDE community
> > will like and there are ones that are not desireable.
> > Still it is worth thinking about how to support the projects
> > that will lead to improvements for KDE.
>
> Sure, but not the KDE way in the first place ?

Yes, KDE was there in first place and working together with companies has 
proven to be a potential symbioses before. May I mention TT, Kalles and my 
companies as examples. In the end it was always a win/win/win 
(KDE/company/users) situation.

> The Cathedral and the Bazaar.  We're the Bazaar :)

The famous paper from ESR is more recent than KDE and while we share a lot 
with the process described there we also differ a lot. E.g. GNOME was later 
very closely modeled after ESRs model. Though the simple fact that KDE 
neither has a "dictator" nor is bureaucracy driven shows that there is a 
third and imho superiour way. Actually I once met ESR and he wanted to know 
how KDE is possible even though we dont have this dictatorship.


> branch like KDE_3_1_BRANCH and work from there. Otherwise, if you need

Yes, this is what the Kroupware project did while trying to help to get the 
stuff ported in parallel to KDE HEAD.

Regards,
-- martin

Dipl.-Phys. Martin Konold
e r f r a k o n
Erlewein, Frank, Konold & Partner - Beratende Ingenieure und Physiker
Nobelstrasse 15, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
fon: 0711 67400963, fax: 0711 67400959
email: martin.konold at erfrakon.de