Re: QT non-free but becoming compatible to debian? (was Re: Qt license change)
>>>>> "John" == John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.arizona.edu> writes:
John> I get the feeling that people only pay attention to RedHat.
John> I doubt that what Debian does influences people much. Maybe
John> I am a little too pessimistic with that, however.
I think you are. It was very interesting to see that RedHat never
even brought KDE/Qt into its distribution, and that Debian's stance
(dubbed more sensible by many) seems to be the one that brought the
change about. Then again, it could have been due to some very
eloquent writing and explanation in that "official stance" press
release earlier.
Nevertheless, I think many unconciously think of Debian as the
"reference" distribution, and its stated policies as "official" Linux
(or perhaps GNU) policies. They may (mistakenly) think of RedHat as
more packaged and/or userfriendly, but Debian as the "guardian" of
what Linux is about. (SuSE and Caldera fall into the RedHat category
here; Slackware is ambigious).
John> It is clear that the wind was gone from KDE's sails,
John> however.
I beg to differ. It just got revitalized, and it is still much
further along than Gnome. Technically it includes things that are
seemingly not on Gnome's horizon ('kdm' replacement/addon for 'xdm',
among other things); StarOffice uses the Qt Drag&Drop protocol (though
in the long run Qt and GTK will be using the same protocol).
Given that Gnome was started as a free KDE alternative, I'd be more
worried about _its_ future, now that it may lose its political clout.
I am not a GUI developer, but if I were, I'd probably contribute to
KDE (and associated apps) before Gnome, for the single reason that it
would be further enhancing the best GUI out there rather than wasting
time at playing catch-up.
John> On second thought, "precipitated" may be a good word,
John> because it had a big symbolic effect, even if Debian does
John> not have "market share" .
Exactly.
-tor
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