{"id":1297,"date":"2007-05-06T17:39:54","date_gmt":"2007-05-06T15:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/on-desktop-wars\/"},"modified":"2007-05-06T17:39:54","modified_gmt":"2007-05-06T15:39:54","slug":"on-desktop-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/on-desktop-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"On Desktop Wars."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t\tYesterday, after arriving at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Sevilla,<br \/>\n\t\tI had three people in a row claiming one<br \/>\n\t\tof the following: &#8220;You&#8217;re a KDE guy, I&#8217;m GNOME guy, so we should be fighting<br \/>\n\t\t(rather than drinking beer together)&#8221;, &#8220;KDE? Sorry, I&#8217;m a GNOME user.&#8221; or &#8220;&#8230;<br \/>\n\t\t(silence)&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n\t\tApart from that being serious or not, I&#8217;ll take it as an invitation to state my<br \/>\n\t\tstance about the relationship between KDE and GNOME:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Uptake of one is positive for the other. It&#8217;s easier to switch from KDE to<br \/>\n\t\t\tGNOME and the other way round than it is to switch from Windows or Mac to Linux,<br \/>\n\t\t\tBSD OpenSolaris or one of the other Free platforms supported.<\/li>\n<li> If it&#8217;s either KDE or GNOME (or Windows or Mac for that matter), in the<br \/>\n\t\tend that sounds like we&#8217;re heading from one monopoly into another. That is<br \/>\n\t\tsomething we&#8217;re actively fighting at the moment. Priorities should be: &#8220;Free<br \/>\n\t\tSoftware&#8221; <strong>and<\/strong> provide choice to the user. KDE and GNOME need<br \/>\n\t\teach other.<\/li>\n<li>How much sense does it make to put energy in competing with 2 &#8211; 3% of<br \/>\n\t\tthe market when 90%+ is still running a non-free desktop? (Hint: Zero) Instead<br \/>\n\t\tthe energy should be put into increasing the market share of the Free Desktop<br \/>\n\t\tand then having the user choose. Healthy competition might exist, it might even<br \/>\n\t\tmake sense, but I&#8217;m getting tired of this KDE vs. GNOME stuff. It&#8217;s showing a<br \/>\n\t\tdeep lack of understanding and vision.<\/li>\n<li>Emerging technologies (in this case desktop operating system, and yes,<br \/>\n\t\tthis clearly is not a mature market yet) always start in a monopoly-like situation. A<br \/>\n\t\tstable market&#8217;s characteristic is that there are a couple of different offerings<br \/>\n\t\tand that the user has choice. Maturing the market means:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A good portion of the market for the Free Desktop (wild<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\testimation: 30%+ for the Free Desktop as soon as the market<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tis matured.<\/li>\n<li>Various offerings that operate together well.<\/li>\n<li>Raising awareness of choice for the user. (How many people know<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tthat there&#8217;s something beyond Windows to run on a computer?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\t\tSo it might be easy for KDE and GNOME to pick on each other, but it doesn&#8217;t make<br \/>\n\t\tsense at all. Maturing the platform and the market is what we should aim for,<br \/>\n\t\tthat strategy will give us a broader userbase than we expect.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n\t\tMaybe 10&#215;10 isn&#8217;t realistic because people failed to see that. Maybe<br \/>\n\t\tinteroperability would already be better if people had understood that earlier.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n\t\tPersonally, being at the Ubuntu Summit in Sevilla at the moment gives me the<br \/>\n\t\tunique opportunity to work on that. Some weeks ago, Michael Vogt and<br \/>\n\t\tSebastian Henlein<br \/>\n\t\tsent me a note that they&#8217;re working on a GTK-based UI for <a\n\t\thref=\"http:\/\/www.simonzone.com\/software\/guidance\">displayconfig<\/a>. We&#8217;ll sit<br \/>\n\t\ttogether this week and think about how we can make configuration of X on the<br \/>\n\t\tFree Desktop easier and more reliable for the user.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n\t\t<strong>That<\/strong> is <em>Doing The Right Thing<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, after arriving at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Sevilla, I had three people in a row claiming one of the following: &#8220;You&#8217;re a KDE guy, I&#8217;m GNOME guy, so we should be fighting (rather than drinking beer together)&#8221;, &#8220;KDE? Sorry, I&#8217;m a GNOME user.&#8221; or &#8220;&#8230; (silence)&#8221;. Apart from that being serious or not,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/on-desktop-wars\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">On Desktop Wars.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}