[kde-solaris] Re: KDE on Solaris Companion CD

[Eva Brucherseifer]

On Tuesday 25 February 2003 09:25, Peter Weiss, Sun Microsystems, Germany 
wrote:
> >>>>> "Bart" == Bart Whiteley <whiteley2@llnl.gov> writes:
>
> Bart> [...]
> Bart> I can't.  I would be very interested in hearing Sun's reasons for
> this Bart> decision, however.
> Bart> [...]
>
>
> Hello Bart,
>
> I think there are lots of reasons for a software developer such as Sun
> Microsystems to make Gnome the first choice:
>
> o Using QPL would result in high costs per user

QPL only results in costs per developer. You can ship if freely to your users.
And compared to other toolkits its a rather low price (about 1.500$ per 
developer). 

> o Linking 3rd party applications against C++ libs is allways a nightmare
>   as it requires the same compiler the lib was build with

Sun could provide libraries for the most common compilers on their platform, 
so that developers can rely on their existance. 

> o Everything that is linked against the qt lib must be provided
>   by source

Not, if you use the commercial QPL part. As an example, Suse is developing 
their administration tool YaST using QT and they of course don't have to 
share the sources. Since it's coded in QT, YaST perfectly integrates into 
KDE's control center. 

> o I think it was a bad choice by Trolltech to use the GPL for the qt lib
>   instead a licence like freebsd uses

Well, as SUN they are a company and need to pay their developers... I think, 
it's quite fair that way. 

> o And regarding the development state Gnome is about to reach the KDE's

Also in terms of usability, workflow, design? And what do your users say about 
Gnome/KDE?

Anyways, I am not asking SUN to switch completely from GNOME to KDE (though 
I'd really love to see that ;-). I am asking for a better support for KDE in 
terms of packages and regular updates. 
It's not that difficult to build packages and we are not asking SUN to develop 
accessibility frameworks or other components for KDE, which would request to 
have several developers employed. 

Greetings,
eva

>
> See also:
>
> http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/faq/generalfaq.html#4q0
> http://wwws.sun.com/software/whitepapers/index.html#4
>
>
> Peter