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TheKompany's Shawn Gordon Responds In Full
from the what's-good-for-thekompany dept.
1) Increasing user base
by truthsearch
"Your company's methods of licensing software seems very sound. Core components are open source while the end apps are closed for profit. That gives back to the community and allows outside developers to potentially create other apps with the same foundation as your own.
My question is simple: How do you plan on continually increasing your user base? Obviously there are many GNU/Linux users thirsty for solid end-user applications such as Kapital. But how do you plan on getting to current Windows users? Do you plan future ports of your apps? Or do you have an idea of how to get more Microsoft customers to move to Linux and use your apps (possibly a model others can follow)?"
Shawn Gordon: When we started 2 years ago we had one product in mind and a very specific goal. Since that time our products have expanded dramatically and so have our goals. Basically we are trying to provide developer software and desktop software on Linux, specifically using KDE. The idea is that you can't have critical mass for users on the desktop without there being some core software available, and you can't necessarily attract developers for specialized software and vertical market applications without there being a critical mass of users. By addressing these two ends of the spectrum we hope to get people on the platform.
Now something like our Kapital product doesn't initially make sense on a platform other than Linux because Quicken and Microsoft already have Windows and the Mac sewn up. However it is a way to entice people if it is running on multiple systems and they get all the systems for one price, it protects their investment more, but Kapital is currently KDE only and is likely to stay that way for a while but it does provide for another method of attracting customers.
When we started Kapital we were going to have Gnome support and even built the infrastructure to handle making it native for Gnome with a minimum amount of code; it's also one of the reasons the application has the transaction logic and UI code totally partitioned.
Now other tools and products like our database-oriented software DataArchitect and Rekall are written directly to Qt and will be packaged specifically for Windows and Linux in a single box, and when Qt3 is final we will also add Mac support in the same box. We are almost done with our Qt version of Kivio (which was how it was originally developed). Now Kivio is similar to Visio from Microsoft, and originally we hesitated to do the Windows support, but our price point is so much lower and by adding Mac support it becomes a compelling item for the end user. We will do a boxed version of Kivio, but Kivio itself is free (as in cost) so we are charging for the stencils and packaging in this case. We've had a tremendous amount of interest in something like this.
With developer software like KDE Studio Gold, which was always oriented towards KDE, a multi-platform version doesn't make much sense, but now that we've added the ability to build any type of C or C++ application, we might just do it. BlackAdder as a GUI IDE however makes perfect sense as a multi-platform environment (which it is) because you are developing Python and Ruby applications which are also multi-platform.
So the net result of all this is that we are trying to provide things that make sense that are multi-platform so people can say "Hey, this Windows upgrade blows, but my favorite software works on Linux too, so why don't I use that," and then also address the people who are already here and just looking for applications to do their work.
2) Question...
by American AC in Paris (toZIGm@snZIGowploZIGw.oZIGrg)
"Mr Gordon, Kould you komment on the klearly komplikated task of selekting produkt names that konform to kurrent konventions?
Kordially,
AAiP"
SG: Coming up with names is a brutal and terrible experience. We've had accidental names and well thought out names and names we thought were just funny. BlackAdder is the ultimate inside joke (well not that inside) since it was designed for Python and Python was named for Monty Python, but is also a snake, and BlackAdder was another British comedy and is also a snake (Phil Thompson, the author of PyQt and primary engineer on BlackAdder is British). Sometimes we use "k"s gratuitously, but that is mostly a holdover from when we first started. I agree that the 'k' and 'g' stuff for KDE and Gnome has really gone over the top now and we are just looking for product names from now on.
Our company name was a joke too. I was chatting on the phone with ne of my first employees about what we should call the company and I said "we should just call it 'The Kompany' with a K because we are doing KDE" and it turned out I was able to incorporate it. The upside is that everyone always remembers the name.
3) Why are you always talking about Ximian ?
by an Anonymous Coward
"In the past interviews I've read from you it seems to me like you always end up talking about Ximian. Do you see Ximian as a direct competitor of the Kompany? Are you concerned about Ximian's market share and strategy?"
SG: I've talked about them once or twice, ever since that Google ad debacle where Ximian bought our company name and some of our product names to point to their company, they've left a bad impression with me because of that. Prior to that I really didn't have an impression of them, they were a company in a similar space but with no competing products. Now of course we have our Aethera project, which is similar to their Evolution project, other than that we continue to be very different companies. I actually haven't seen anyone clearly describe where their revenue is going to come from, and now I hear they are going to make an open source version of .NET in cooperation with Microsoft.
So the bottom line is, we sell software, Ximian currently sells nothing other than trinkets like t-shirts and stuffed monkeys, but I doubt they make money on it. theKompany and Ximian don't compete at all, and Ximian doesn't have a market share that affects me. We are also self funded and have gone along fairly well for a couple of years now unlike Ximian who has raised huge amounts of money but with yet no (publicly) clear method of generating revenue from that. There are no surprises with us, you buy it and you own it.
4) Business models
by s20451 (s20451_at_hot_mail_dot_com)
"Following the attacks on open source by agents of Microsoft, claiming it's anti-business, there's been quite a bit of discussion on this site concerning business models for companies dealing in open source.
I am interested that your company does both open- and closed-source programming. My question is: How does your business model balance the benefits of open-source programming with the requirement to be a profitable software business? In your opinion, is it possible for a for-profit company to work purely with open-source, and sell support (or whatever)?"
and
5) Why not Open Source?
by ktambascio (kmt@po.cwru.edu)
"What was the reason behind the decision to make products like Kapital closed-source? Was it to provide a way of generating revenue? Or do you plan on using product support as your main way to generate revenue?"
SG: My opinion is that the support-only model only works in the corporate arket, and there isn't yet a corporate market for Linux desktop applications. We sell support contracts currently and have probably made about $200 doing it, so it doesn't seem real viable yet. I can get a piece of software on the shelves of a thousand stores and have people walk in and buy it. To sell support requires making software that isn't easy to use and requires hand holding and then tracking down people and talking them into paying for the support which has a nebulous perceived benefit.
The model of paying an annual fee and receiving all updates free of charge should also work for individuals -- but I wouldn't call this support, just an alternative method of purchasing/upgrading. We offer this for a couple of our products now and we see about a 40% subscription rate, so we are looking at how to expand this to some of our other products.
Our philosophy has essentially been that if it's infrastructure like our projects KDE-DB, VeePee, Korelib, etc then we make it open source because it's in everyone's interest to have it available. Some applications we do like Aethera and Kivio that are free, but will rely on selling value added pieces like plug-ins and stencils.
6) Promoting Ease of Use
by pgpckt
"My question related to how the Kompany can make Linux an easier product to use. Attempts have been made to make the product more user friendly, but Linux is still a product that requires more effort to use then most people are willing to exert. To some extent, this is even promoted by the Linux community, some people of which take the attitude that if you can't figure it out you're just out of luck. Perhaps documentation/tutorials are the answer? How can we make the process of going to Linux easier, including ease of installing the Linux OS, helping users find programs that will be equivalent to those under windows, and the like? How can us end users of Linux be more responsive to people who express an interest in Linux without scaring them off?"
SG: Personally I give Caldera a lot of credit for creating Lizard. Before that installing was not near as slick, but Caldera raised the bar and everyone suddenly jumped on it, but there seems to be another lull waiting for someone else to raise the bar again. SuSE has become my personal favorite over the last 6 months but it's still not as easy as it should be for the standard Windows crowd.
The flip side to ease of installation is the ease of packaging. We have built an automated process on our packaging server that can build for up to 10 different distributions at a time, but the set up takes some time and this doesn't include Debian. Let me use for example our Beta3 release of BlackAdder that just came out. The three files that had to be packaged took 15 minutes on Windows. It was 2 full weeks of one and two engineers making spec files, testing, installing missing pieces of software, etc., before we could finally get it built on the Linux distributions. We go to a lot of effort to make our software available on all the major platforms as possible, but it is starting to reach a point of insanity very quickly.
There have been endless discussions in our company and on various news lists about installers, and none of it gets around the fact that you have to pre-compile for the base distribution and that still may not solve the problem. Depending on your distribution you've got KDE in /usr, /opt/kde, /opt/kde2 or god knows where. For packaging everyone decided to make a new name for the directory between /usr/src and /RPMS, you've got 'redhat', 'OpenLinux', 'RPM', 'rpm', 'packages' and those are just the ones I've noticed myself.
We are getting to the point that we are seriously considering not supporting distributions that don't support the LSB. I've been very encouraged by SuSE's work in this direction, and disappointed at how bad RedHat and Mandrake are.
7) A question
by CMcTortoise
"I congratulate you upon creation of several pieces of software for the Linux market, and you have successfully blended open and closed source software; however, do you think you can be profitable in a community that sometimes rejects closed source projects? Has the fascination with Free/free software hindered your business plans or has the creation of Free code libraries/bases kept good PR with Linux users while allowing profit to coexist?"
SG: Lets consider the community as 2 groups -- those that would avoid closed source apps on a point of principle, and those that would happily use a closed source app if it met their needs. Today, the 2nd group isn't big enough to generate huge revenues. But, as the Linux community grows we think that growth is going to (mainly) occur in the 2nd group rather then the first - because of where those new users are coming from.
The first group may take offence at us exploiting their work for our gain. We hope that, by also contributing our own open source code to the community, we are paying our dues. In general what we make use of is infrastructure, and the majority of the emails we get are fan letters. Usually when someone flames you they do it from behind the protection of an anonymous post in a talkback forum.
8) OS Target
by frankie_guasch
"Are you focusing only linux? or do you think there is a market for:
- Solaris
- Windows
- *BSD
- other ..."
SG: We've been taking a more Qt centric approach of late. It is an old argument that Linux has to have a Quicken/Word/Excel workalike before users will abandon Windows. Another way of approaching this is to deliver the Linux applications on Windows. It will be much easier to get a user to move to Kapital from Quicken if they don't have to move from Windows to Linux at the same time. Eventually the user realizes they can move to Linux just by changing the OS, without incurring any other costs (as, for example with BlackAdder and DataArchitect, when they buy the Linux version they also get the Windows version -- they don't pay again when moving OS).
We've also recently signed an agreement to provide some of our products for BSD. If this proves to be popular then we will make all of our products available on BSD. Another advantage of the Qt approach is that there is much less to worry about for installation thus making more platforms much easier to support.
I do want to say that our more Qt centric approach is not taking away from our KDE'ness. We are building some infrastructure so that our apps continue to look and behave properly under KDE when they are just Qt.
Can I take this opportunity to solicit for a debian packager expert? We would like to add debian to our automated build process and offer direct support but we just don't have anyone in house that knows debian at this time.
9) Competing with open source?
by FortKnox
"How do you plan on competing on the linux platform with open source projects? Basically, why would I buy Kapital if I can use GnuCash for free? And if it doesn't do everything I want, its opensource and I can add it. It seems like a very stiff competition. How is your company planning on attacking it?"
SG: Comes down to the business model that funds the development. If GnuCash meets your needs then use it, but the investors putting the money into GnuCash are going to expect a return from its users at some point, we are straight forward about it, you buy the product and you own it, no strings or surprises. If those investors don't get that return then they are not going to invest in an open source project again. Will the GnuCash users stand up and be counted when the time comes?
10) How you spend your time
by Laplace
"Hi Shawn, I am very impressed with how hard you are working towards commercial Linux applications while still supporting the ideas of free software. I've noticed you on several mailing lists, and you seem to offer advice as much as you seek it. How do you find the time to run a company, develop software, and participate in the community?"
SG: Well, I've got a wife and 2 young children and I've played in rock bands on guitar and keyboards since my early teens, and I spend way too much time on the computer as you've noticed, as well as writing and recording music (typically progressive) and then things with the family like camping, sports, outings and such. I love to read SciFi and go out in our cul-de-sac and drink beer and shoot basketball with the neighbors. Until recently I was writing 3 columns a month for various trade magazines and have around 200 published articles. Oh, and I also have a job as an international male super-model that pays the bills.
11) Project Status
by djoham
"Hi Shawn,
First, I would like to bestow a heartfelt "thanks" to you and your company for all the wonderful work you do. Too often, you've had to defend yourself against the trolls who don't get economics 101. It's not often enough that I see people thanking you for the contributions you have given us. Thank you.
My question lies in the status of your projects. I'm sure some people here on Slashdot don't know about all of the software that you're working on. It would be neat if you could give us a status report on your projects as well as a brief summary of what they do and what we can expect in the future.
I'm especially interested in the integration of your work with KOffice. I know that you donated the base version of Kivio to KOffice (again, thanks) and I was wondering if you had similar plans for Aethera, Kugar and/or Rekall.
Best regards, David"
SG: First, thank you for your kind words, they are always appreciated. Well this is going to be a long answer, so I'll address your last question first. We already donated Kugar to Koffice some time ago. We had thoughts of Aethera in there and Rekall, but I don't think it's going to happen anymore for various reasons.
We divide our work into Projects and Products. The Products are our commercial offerings and our Projects are our 'free' offerings. I'll cover Products first and I'll do it in alphabetical order.
BlackAdder: This is a GUI IDE for the Python and Ruby scripting languages that runs on Linux and Windows. It is whole based on Qt and uses a special version of Qt Designer that we licensed from Trolltech. It has everything you need for building multi-platform applications with Python or Ruby, either GUI or Console applications. It's at Beta 3 right now with prices reduced to $49.99 during the beta period for a Personal Edition. The price goes up to $79.99 once the beta is over, which should be this summer. You get all the betas and the final release as part of your purchase.
DataArchitect: This is brand new and is a final 1.0 release right now, and is jointly developed and promoted by theKompany.com and Code by Design. DataArchitect is a powerful database modelling tool for Linux and Windows operating systems. Graphically create, administer and design your databases while gaining insight into their structure with the Reverse Engineering capability. Prices start at $39.95. DataArchitect is Qt based and you get Linux and Windows as part of the single price as well as free upgrades up to and including version 2.0 which we expect in September and will also have support for the Mac.
DocBrowser: This is actually part of our KDE Studio Gold Pro software and is a really great tool for research while developing C and C++ applications. We've integrated and indexed the Qt, KDE, libc docs as well as the 'info', and 'man' pages and support for html. DocBrowser can run as a stand alone application or integrated with KDE Studio Gold. You can make use of it with things like KDevelop as well if you like. You can find any class and member quickly as well as filter for a quick find of class and members. In this case you can copy include the string for the current class to the clipboard to paste into your code. Copy member name for pasting into your header file. For any class you also have a list of all inheriting members. This is at version 3.0 and is shipping today as a final release at prices starting at $29.95. You also get free liftetime upgrades with your purchase.
Kapital: This is our answer to Quicken on Linux and KDE. Currently we are in the 3rd beta and work is progressing, although we are a bit behind schedule. We are extending our free updates through the end of the year now. Kapital is selling at a reduced price during the beta for $24.95
KDE Studio Gold: As of today we are at Release Candidate 1, RC2 should be out next week and then we should be shipping the final version. There are two version of KSG, one is 'standard' and does not include the DocBrowser (you can buy it separately later if you want), the other is the 'Pro' version that includes DocBrowser. The price ranges from $24.95 to $69.95 depending on the version you get. KSG is a GUI IDE for C++ development. It relies on KDE to run, but will build any type of C or C++ application you like, there are lots of neat features, with some even neater stuff coming soon. Like DocBrowser, you get free lifetime upgrades with your order.
Kivio: This is our answer to Visio on Linux and KDE and is also our greatest risk/experiment for an application. In this case the application is free and you can buy more stencils from us, these cost between $5 and $10 each, but we are thinking of making a subscription program for them so you can pay one price and get whatever we've got or come out with. We have a collection of about 25 sets of stencils right now, and our new 'Elite' style is just beautiful I must say. We are almost done with a new version that is written using Qt3 and is running on Linux and Windows and it shares the same stencils. What we are planning on is making a boxed set of this with all of our stencils for $99.95 with both Linux and Windows binaries.
PowerPlant: This is our first product and it has been out for over a year now. The idea is that it is what we call a 2nd tier linux distribution aimed at developers. It is a collection of about 200 packages with languages, IDE's, databases, libraries, commercial demos and games from Loki. The regular price is $49.95, but during July we are discounting it to $14.95 as a kind of 'thank you' for all the support we've gotten and to celebrate the release of so many new products.
Quanta Gold: This isn't on our web site yet, or available till about the end of summer, but the authors of the popular Quanta web design software came to us and wanted to work with us on making a multi-platform version of Quanta that theKompany would sell. There is a lack of high end tools available for PHP and web development and we are excited to be working with these members of the Quanta team. Initial pricing is going to be $49.95 and the product will run on Linux, Windows and Mac. There will be more specialized plug ins available for sale electronically as well. Look for this in September.
Now moving on to our Projects:
Aethera is our PIM application which meant to address the space that Outlook and Notes address for Windows. It can/will use all kinds of digital information and will sync data with Palms or share data in a Groupware environment. Currently Aethera can manage MAIL (all mail protocols, contact manager, filtering) , SCHEDULER (todo and appointments using a KOrganizer plug in), NOTES (sticky notes), Instant Messages (Jabber plug in). The Jabber and Palm sync plug ins are commercial and will be available for $5 each. The groupware server interface will also be commercial, but prices have not been decided. As a stand alone PIM Aethera is GPL and free of charge, only pay for the enhanced pieces that you want.
KDE-DB is a set of libraries that will ease the development of database applications for KDE. It leverages the power of KDE Plugins to access the wider range of available free and commercial DBMS. It also provides a set of built-in widgets and dialogs that will boost your productivity in developing database applications for KDE. This is in a nebulous state now because of the new DB stuff in Qt3, but it looks like pieces would still be desirable, we are just trying to figure out how best to compliment it all.
Kamera is an IO slave and a KControl panel module which allows you to access folders and images within any digital camera supported by the gPhoto2 libraries. We donated this to core KDE and it is being kept up to date by others now.
Korelib is a cross-platform C++ library for developing plugin-based applications. It provides a uniform and consistent cross-platform API for developing modular applications. We use this in several of our applications now. Again Qt3 has something similar in it but Korelib supports more platforms and is GPL.
Kugar is an XML based report generation and viewer tool for KDE. Applications generate data in XML and specify a template (also in XML) to be used to format the data. The resulting report may be viewed on screen or printed. Templates may be specified as a URL allowing businesses to establish a centralized template repository. Kugar's implementation as a KPart means that the production of business quality reports can be easily added to any KDE application, and that reports can be viewed using KDE's Konqueror browser. We donated this to Koffice a while back. It is stable and done and available for use.
PyQt/PyKDE is the standard set of Python bindings for Qt and KDE. PyQt and PyKDE can be used to develop large scale Qt and KDE applications, or can be used to develop rapid prototypes in Python that are converted to C++ at a later stage of development. PyQt includes support for Qt Designer so that the same GUI design can be used to generate either C++ or Python code.
Rekall is theKompany's database product. It is a front-end to existing SQL servers, such as MySQL and PostgreSQL; it does not itself have any "native" SQL engine (in the sense that Access uses the Jet database engine). Currently, Rekall interfaces to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and also to XBase format files via a basic SQL wrapper library. The possibility also exists to implement drivers for non-SQL data sources, for instance data stored by theKompany's Kapital product. Rekall provides both the environment in which to design a database front-end, and the environment in which the front-end is executed, and allows the user to design and access tables, forms and reports. Table design is intended to provide access to features which are present in all or most SQL servers (standard SQL column types, indexes and so forth), but does not explicitly handle server-specific extensions. Forms and reports are structured in the normal sort of way, for instance forms can have nested sub-forms (and sub-sub-forms, to arbitrary depth).
Currently, there is a basic set of controls (simple text field, choice fields, and so forth), however, Rekall is designed to be extensible so that additional, possibly third-party, controls can be dynamically added. Scripting is provided using the Python language, with the ability to hook various events (user moves to new row, button is clicked, etc). Rekall contains a generalized scripting interface, so that other languages such as Ruby could be used. Forms and reports are stored either in tables in the SQL server, or in the file system. They are defined in an XML format, so in principal it would be possible to write a script which constructed and then executed a form or report (in fact, much of the table data display functionality is implemented this way). We are anticipating have the 1.0 release candidate available for sale at the end of August for a reduced price and the final version the first part of October. Expected final price is $79.95.
VeePee is a framework that makes it easy for KDE and GNOME application developers to embed the Python scripting language in their applications, and provides users with a powerful and consistent scripting environment. It is our intention to make use of this throughout our products as a user scripting environment.
12) My question
by MSBob
"Is the Kompany profitable? If not, when do you expect it to be?"
SG: I saw someone make the comment that if everyone that read the interview bought one piece of software we would be profitable that day, and that is true actually (so go buy something :) ). Well, we are self funded and have survived on some contracting and product sales for the last 2 years since we were founded. This is in stark contract to companies we get compared to like Eazel and Ximian. We all know Eazel burnt through $13 Million in a year and barely got Nautilus out, and Ximian has raised around $18 Million if I recall correctly and also have no actual products or services to show for it that provide revenue.
That said, a little investment capital would allow us to accelerate our already blistering pace of development, but we have a lot of things we want to get done and would like to do it sooner rather than later, and when I say a little I mean like six figures (if you're an investor feel free to call me :) ). I fully expect to be profitable in the next year, we run a lean mean operation and don't blow money on unnecessary fluff.
13) Let's Have Some Fun
by n3rd
"If you had three (3) wishes, what would you use them for?"
- SG:
- That my family has long healthy lives (that includes my employees who are like family).
- . theKompany is successful beyond our wildest dreams.
- To have Superman's powers.
Re:Yeah.. good and well, but. (Score:2)
Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:2)
If they find that a product doesn't sell well, or doesn't sell at all for a PERIOD of time (that can take a long time you know - it takes people time to find software they need - they don't find or see every software release) - then they'll release it as GPL..
Lets take Frame Maker as an exmaple - it's not being sold any more for quite a long time. Do you see Adobe releases the source? I'm sure there are thousands of software packages which won't see the light of day even if the product is discontued or deprecated...
So they actually are doing a good thing with this..
Re:Gordon's comments about Ximian (Score:2)
Imagine that you have a company which makes a product call ABC. Now, a company which is not a direct competitor of your product decided to buy this ABC word in Google, so if I search for ABC in Google - I see their Ad, and suppose that I'm clicking on it. Your competitor of course doesn't have any product that competes with ABC, but they got an exposure ON MY ACCOUNT. In business terms it called "potentional sales loss" just because of this childhood from your competitors (in this case - Ximian).
Now lets look at Ximian and what do they do. They are making the Gnome desktop with other companies and volunteers, which is very good for the Linux community, and no one argues about that.
But lets look at their business plan (or should I say - guess it, because they don't publish zilch about it)..
They claim they give services... To whom?
*) To Sun Microsystems: Nop, Sun got their own engineering working on Gnome and they issue their own packages. Sun, if they really want to, can sponsor the entire Gnome project within few days if they want to - but they just take a roll by assisting building Gnome on their Solaris OS, and by giving advices on the mailing lists.
*) HP - same as Sun, they issue their own packages (as well as packages of KDE) and participating in the Gnome foundation and on the mailing lists.
Both companies really don't need any Ximian services. They could ask Ximian to do a contract job for a very small amount of money (few thousand dollars, nothing more), but I can hardly call this a revenue stream..
Who else Ximian can offer services to? Redhat? they got their own programmers. SuSE? same. Caldera? they don't give a damn about Gnome at all. Mandrake? same boat as Redhat. *BSD? their Gnome maintainer has Quit the Gnome foundation and ceased doing any Gnome work (thats according to what I heard anyway).
What else.. Mono perhaps as a future services revenue? nice idea. Good luck competing with Microsoft on implementing the
Red-Carpet? now here is an excellent tool for updating. I have played with it and I must say - I'm very impressed. Real good work Ximian. Now there is the big question - Will users will be happy to pay the $10-$30 a month for a subscription service for using it? with my experience with the Linux community - I doubt that many will jump on it.
If I were in Ximian management then I would recommend 2 things:
1. Offer KDE packages. KDE is not a cancer, people want it and people use it, along with other Gnome packages. Give it to the people (not just the distribution security updates).
2. Call theKompany - Shawn has told with his answers that although they do packaging, it's troublesome to keep up with all the distribution. Ximian got professional tools for dealing with it and with dependencies problems, as well as they need Debain packages, which Ximian already do - a business deal could be made here and I live it to both sides to fill the details if they are willing to..
I wish both companies Good Luck.
Re:Interesting formatting technique (Score:2)
Re:hurting free software development? (Score:3)
Why? There are many examples of rapidly-developed Free alternatives to commercial (or perceived "un-Free") software:
It becomes a matter of priorities. While there are some that swear by Free Software exclusively, most people just want something that works well. So the projects that tend to get the attention are those that provide some service that does not exist or that fix major shortcomings of closed alternatives. In either case, there has to be a large enough user base to push development forward. I can't explain gnumeric other than to note that it's a complex piece of software, but MySQL's scarcity of advanced features probably has more to do with the lack of need for such features for the average Linux user and the need for much more in serious server environments, which Oracle or DB/2 already provides, along with solid support and expertise.
--
Really works in the corporate market (Score:2)
Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:2)
Copyright can be interpreted very strictly.
Re:Really works in the corporate market (Score:2)
Seriously, though, what's "too small"? I'd think that one can't found a company with over 100 employees and offices in the US, France, Japan and elsewhere and find enough customers to sustain growth while selling to a market that's "too small"; if so, MontaVista serves as a working counterexample.
The embedded systems market is an excellent (and perhaps the primary) example of a deceptively large marketspace in which there is great interest in Linux, and the customers all have enough cash to pay for services if those services will save them money in the long run. As long as this remains true, there'll be money in free software.
Re:Really works in the corporate market (Score:2)
The thing is, this internally-created software largely overlaps. In the present market, everyone who wants a piece of software pays their own people the up-front cost to develop it and the continuing cost to maintain it. Where open source is used, only one company shoulders the up-front cost (which is a relatively small portion of development costs, such that this is not a serious competitive disadvantage) and all pay only a fraction of the maintenance cost, and get a better product. As a business model, it's a hands-down win.
Even better than this, though, is using open source and outsourcing it. Do this, and not only do you cut your costs dramatically over developing software in-house, but you no longer have to hire and keep onboard folks familiar with the software at hand. Furthermore, as opposed ot using closed-source 3rd-party vendors, there are several companies available you can outsource to, all familiar with the same products. Thus, you're freed from vendor lock-in.
While not all software has these characteristics, a very, very great amount does. Anyhow, I don't give a shit whether some "major economic shift" occurs. I'm happy as long as I can always find work writing free software.
Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:2)
Then give them the source code. Copyright law will allow them to fold, spindle, mutilate and otherwise experiment with the source code. They can reverse engineer it, make archival copies, modify for their own personal use, yada, yada, yada. But they will not have the rights to redistribute it.
This is not true. Copyright is the right to copy, it has nothing to do with redistribution. If you don't have the copyright, and the copyright owner doesn't grant you a special license, then you cannot make copies or derivative works, even if those copies are only used in-house. Just because you don't distribute it does not automatically make it fair use.
If you find a pamphlet in the street, take it home, and copy it in the privacy of your own home for your personal enjoyment, then you are breaking the law, because you don't have the copyright.
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Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:2)
To quote from the responses:
Our philosophy has essentially been that if it's infrastructure like our projects KDE-DB, VeePee, Korelib, etc then we make it open source because it's in everyone's interest to have it available
Checking over at their website [thekompany.com] to see what they mean when they say 'open source' reveals that Korelib and KDE-DB are released under the GPL.
So no, they don't seem to share RMS' view that ALL software should be free, but rather the more common notion that some software should definitely be free and others areas left open for competition between free and closed and/or payware apps.
They seem to draw the line for free or for money at whether it is 'infrastructure' or not, which seems to be a reasonable definition to go by if you ask me.
Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:2)
Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:2)
This is news to me. I can still buy it from Adobe, and it's still the sine qua non for serious tech writing (MS word + distiller is getting more popular, but its master document support is still primitive compared to frame)
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Re:Gordon's comments about Ximian (Score:2)
2 - He's lamenting over the lack of funds available to his company as opposed to Ximian who seems to have a broken business model.
3 - Ximian should thank him for pointing this out.
Don't get me wrong. I like what Ximian has done and I love the whole GNOME project but GNOME != a business model. That doesn't mean it's not a great project.
Yeah.. good and well, but. (Score:2)
Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:2)
Then give them the source code. Copyright law will allow them to fold, spindle, mutilate and otherwise experiment with the source code. They can reverse engineer it, make archival copies, modify for their own personal use, yada, yada, yada. But they will not have the rights to redistribute it.
IMHO, all proprietary software should be plain vanilla copyright, and all free software should likewise be plain vanilla copyright with the addition of a permission statement.
Re:I have said it a long time... (Score:2)
Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:2)
I checked (US) copyright law again. I will apologize for exaggeration. I was in error. However, the law does allow for copying for archival purposes. The law seems to suggest that only one such copy can be made, though there are a few references in the plural.
Re:KoreLib (Score:2)
The LGPL has a few niggly problems of its own, which smacked me right in the face the first time I tried to use an LGPL library for a commerical app on an embedded COFF system. Besides which, the LGPL has more ifs, elses, exeptions and caveats than most volumes of the Federal Register. We really need an LGPL like license that understandable by laymen.
Re:KoreLib (Score:2)
This is a good thing to hear. Often times the community forgets that there are other licenses than the GPL. I have some BSD licensed apps that I would dearly love to port to Qt-Embedded, but I cannot do it without purchasing the commercial version.
KoreLib (Score:4)
Re:KDE Studio Gold (Score:2)
I emailed them some suggestions for enhancements to Kapital awhile back, and Shawn responded to me also. Good guy. This is a company that listens to what it's users want. I expect that they will do well with their business model, the quality of their software is excellent and they are a pleasure to deal with.
Superman Powers (Score:3)
(Boy, that latter was a bitch. But, somehow, I'm more upset about John Henry Irons' death. I'm thinking that the Kent's will turn up somewhere, whereas Steel is done.)
Re:Toys are not the business model! (Score:2)
Interesting business model (Score:2)
I think the Kompany present an interesting business model (make the infrastructure free (the projects), pay for the software that uses the infrastructure (the products)). I'm sure that some free software zealots will throw their arms up and foam at the mouth
The comparison with Ximian is unfortunate in that it will probably cause a few trolls or flames, but it's an apt comparison - both companies are built around Linux software. It'll be interesting to see which of the two companies are around in the next 18 months (I hope it's both).
Re:hurting free software development? (Score:2)
As for whether software is or is not a hammer, I think the answer is "it depends".
I normally like to write in certainties, but my thoughts are a little muddled on this point, so I'll ramble, and the reader gets to Deal With It.
I have modified Open Source software before. On a number of occasions in my career, it has been necessary to make changes to software to make it do interesting things.
I've never promulgated these changes to a master source tree. Nature of the game. The changes were often too specialized (such as letting Sendmail know how to identify the ESMTP response string from a brain-damaged piece of NT email-to-fax software we had to integrate, and send mail addresses to said software in a form the software could cope with, in contradiction of RFC 822).
The benefits of open source software in a case like this is clear.
Zero-copy cost is something I look on with extreme skepticism. This is meaningful if you're hacking in your garage (not to kick on people who hack in their garages. Lots of cool stuff happens this way). In professional situations, where people are billing real money for their services, integration costs generally dwarf licensing costs. This I've found to even be true for insanely expensive software like Oracle.
Reusability (in your words, allowing the end user to share with those who have similar requirements) has a place. My gut feeling is the further up the feeding chain you are (i.e. in the libraries and/or OS code), the more benefit you'll get from reusability. I haven't seen a lot of this when hacking end-user, or even "middleware" applications. Sometimes you have to hack the code, but frequently the problem really is unique to your circumstance.
And this brings me back to the original point of the message. When choosing which software to use for the job, the question a professional systems integrator should be asking is "what is the most effective way to deliver a solution for my customer?" If commerical product X is going to require tons of ugly external glue code to fit the job requirements, it's a bad tool. If Open Source app Y is going to require lots of custom hacking to fit the reqs, and commercial product Z requires less, ask what's worth more: your money or your time. And, of course, think long-term. Is this a one-off? Will the customer come back needing 10 more licenses in the next two years? And of course, is the customer willing to pay the up-front money to let you explore now in exchange for lower total costs down the road?
A very concrete example of this. A friend of mine needed to get a bunch of machines in an office hooked to an ADSL line. I told him there were two obvious ways to solve this: An off-the-shelf Cable/DSL router, or a Linux (or NetBSD) box with two ethernet cards, IP forwarding, etc. etc.
I told him that if it was his own network at home, and he had time on his hands, get some used hardware and consider the Open Source solution. You'll get much more flexibility, and you'll learn a lot about how networks go together and how technologies like NAT and firewalls really work under the hood.
Conversely, I told him that if a customer was paying money to have this solution put in, don't ever dream of doing this. SOHO routers are cheap, your time is expensive, and if you're trying to do something a SOHO router can't do, you probably shouldn't be doing it on an ADSL line in the first place (at least not in a professional capacity).
In design, and philosophy, I think people have the luxury of choosing many paths to get to the same goal. In design, the asthetics of the viewer (a soft and mushy thing if ever there was one) play a part. In philosophy, one draws up broad (and frequently subjective) goals, and creates premises to get where one wants to go.
Re:hurting free software development? (Score:3)
I am not sure what to think about this...
There is a lot to be said for free software, obviously. However, insisting that your entire work platform be free (as in speech) hits me as being driven more by ideology than utitlity.
Let's take your example of databases. It is interesting to me from the viewpoint of intellectual curiosity to understand how the internals of a DBMS work. Although I haven't done so yet, I may find it useful one day to modify database code to have it do something Interesting.
However, when it's time to start creating product, I treat a database as being like a hammer. I don't care much how it was made, I don't care how it works. I don't even care (much) how it costs. I want it to drive nails into wood. If it does that, it's a good hammer. If it doesn't, nothing about the design process will make it into a good hammer. While a Free hammer could be re-engineered to work for my needs, I'm not in the toolmaking business. I just want my tools to work so I can do things which I'm good at and enjoy doing.
Conversely, there is no universal tool which handles all jobs. Oracle is a wonderful DBMS. If you're juggling hundreds of gigabytes or terabytes of data, there is simply no acceptable substitute. Oracle is also complex to install, fiendish to tune, a major resource hog even when it's been slimmed down, and the per-seat costs are stunning. I would never choose Oracle as the back-end for a message board or my at-home CD cataloging app, even if it was free (or Free).
j.
Re:Gordon's comments about Ximian (Score:2)
Maybe he's just a tad miffed at Ximian's boneheaded cheap shot of buying from Google the keywords KDE, theKompany, etc. for redirection to the Ximian site. Ximian drew first blood - but I think Shawn Gordon is having the last laugh. In Ximian's defense, however, they definitely produce a very fine stuffed monkey.
Re:A few questions about KDE Studio (Score:2)
Yes, I sent the updates to the webmaster a while ago and he didn't do it, and I sent it again this morning but he is in germany and was asleep.
Re:Respectable ideals but room for improvement.. (Score:2)
Here is my main problem. Using KDE Studio Gold as an example. Because it is GPL, I get countless emails from people demanding their 'free' copy because the GPL says that software wants to be 'free'. These people do not understand what the GPL means. It is an enormous burden dealing with these people, they become hostile, they try to attack our servers, they send nasty emails and all because we won't give them something for free. What bestowed upon them the god given right to get things for free? should they get a car, a house, groceries, for free? No they shouldn't. If it wasn't for the enormous type of similar reaction to GPL code we would use it much more often, but there is way too much of a misunderstanding and we don't have the bandwidth to fix it.
Re:KDE and Freedom? (Score:5)
Here is the bottom line, and I've said it before. I think that users *and* developers need to have their interests protected. Providing the source to a customer is fine, and I agree with that, but they shouldn't be able to redistribute it (in my opinion). We make totally free software, and closed software, and restricted free software. To us it's not an all or nothing thing, we do what works for the product, for us and for the user.
The KDE community in general seems to use the GPL, LGPL and BSD as far as I've seen. I don't speak for them and I don't represent them.
Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
Toys are not the business model! (Score:2)
People like the monkey. It's cute. It's a mascot. So we sell those, and t-shirts along with the CDs. Why do we sell them? Well, we gave out a few at LWE and COMDEX, and the next week got around a hundred mails a day asking "I didn't get one when I was there, can I have one now?" So we started selling them. It's not a big deal, it promotes our brand, and people like it.
Plush monkey sales are not, however, the business model. Our path to profitability involves consulting work and network services, and has already generated substantial revenue streams for Ximian. No, I'm not naming names, that would be impolite.
a.
Re:Stuffed Monkey (Score:2)
Re:Stuffed Monkey (Score:2)
Why superman? (Score:2)
I mean come on, superman even has a weakness, some of us don't.
KDE Studio Gold (Score:5)
I recently purchased the KDE Studio Gold from the Kompany. It is good, and users are kept in the know about the products status and encouraged to submit bugs encountered.
What impressed me the most however was when I ordered the product. Before I ordered I sent a message asking technical questions about distros supported, kernel versions, gcc etc. I expected an answer sometime the next day, as it was Sunday. I got a message back in about a half an hour, telling me what I needed to know. I then called the sales number, and guess who answered...Shawn Gordon. He seems like a cool guy, and we had a laugh about how the last time the Kompany was on Slashdot, how his servers slowed down, (didn't crash -- they are running Linux, remember :) ), and how he was on vacation at the time etc. He even let me know if I waited a week, I would get RC1, but also let me know that I am covered for upgrades forever (which I knew) when I bought.
They seem to have a *clue* about the community, and are pleasant to deal with. Just thought I should share the info...
Re:Stuffed Monkey (Score:2)
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hurting free software development? (Score:5)
Let me first say that I wish TheKompany the best of luck. I'll probably end up buying some of these apps.
Having said that: while I think it's great that they're producing these apps for Linux, I don't feel entirely comfortable with it. I believe in free software a lot more than I believe in Linux specifically. I'm concerned that the availability of high-quality commercial office applications for linux will impede the already-slow development of free software alternatives (e.g. gnumeric.)
The same thing has happened in (e.g.) the database market -- I bet that MySQL would have transaction support by now if DB2/Oracle hadn't been released for Linux. I'd be a lot happier buying a copy (CDROM/download) of software that gave me the four freedoms [gnu.org] once I've bought it. Or if there were some guarantee that while you've got to pay to get most current version, it will be made available under a GPL/Apache-style license a couple of years after its initial release. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I would rather support a business model that ensured a fair revenue stream for the developers AND ensured that the amount of available free software increased over time.
Let the flames begin.
A few questions about KDE Studio (Score:2)
From my understanding, KDE Studio used to be fully open source, but they stopped releasing that version with 2.0.
Now they have KDE Studio Gold, a commercial version at what seem to be reasonable prices. I have absolutely no problem with commericial software and commercial open source software. My question is, is KDE Studio Gold still open source? (not as in free FTP download but source included with purchase). From my understanding TheKompany has every right to take their old Open Source code, and since they own the copyright for everything, release it as a commercial product with no code available.
Can someone please tell me what it is they did?
Also, it would seem their web site needs a little work... the KDE Studio [thekompany.com] page talks about pre-ordering the software in February 2001.
Re:A few questions about KDE Studio (Score:2)
I must admit that I've been following the development of Kdevelop for some time, and it would seem that both projects share each other's code to some extent. Kdevelop, for example, is now looking to add the code completion code from KDE Studio. I would imagine that KDE Studio has benefited to some extent from Kdevelop code as well.
I'm going to check out the features of KDE Studio a little more closely, and if they are significantly better than that of Kdevelop, I will definately consider purchasing your product.
Has anyone used both and wants to give a little recommendation?
Re:hurting free software development? (Score:2)
You know this too, but software brings with it liabilities that hammers don't; in particular the twin burdens of maintenance and enhancement.
Conversely software has the advantage that it is essentially free to reproduce. Hammer's need to be made, each one individually, over and over again.
The benefits of Free Software to society are related to these differences; the differences between a hammer and a database system.
Firstly, the freedom to modify the code allows the end-user to accomplish the tasks of maintenance and enhancement in the way most commensurate with their personal goals. Note that by end user I am not necessarily referring to an individual, but perhaps to a company, or even an industry sector.
Secondly, the freedom to distribute the code, coupled with the zero copy cost, allows the end-user to share this overhead with those who have similar requirements.
This is the long view. This is the right way.
Re:hurting free software development? (Score:2)
Gordon's comments about Ximian (Score:5)
You know, I thought the rest of the article was a good read, but this sort of nonsense is totally unnecessary. These sorts of passive-aggressive digs at the competition really do nothing for the linux advocacy cause as a whole.
That's not even to say I disagree with him that Ximian's got to do more than just promote themselves as an entity. Still, if Ximian and theKompany don't even compete, why make fun of them? All you do is get to tally one next to your name on the flamage score sheet, all the while alienating the fans of Gnome who might otherwise have wanted products from theKompany that Ximian itself doesn't provide. It almost makes me want to stick it out with Gnome out of spite -- despite the fact that I'm undecided about commiting to it as a desktop in the future. Where will this condescending attitude go next? Gnumeric and GIMP? GTK+? C coders in general? Anyone who doesn't want KDE?
Attaboy, Gordon. You really presented yourself and theKompany well there.
Re:Good to see an OSS company with a workable biz (Score:2)
--CTH
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Good to see an OSS company with a workable biz pln (Score:5)
I have not had the oportunity to use any of the Kompany's products but I'll certainlty look to them now if I have need of a product in a space the sell in.
I expect we'll see a lot more hybrid companies like this in the furture. I'd actually be kind of halfway interested in Microsoft's (Mundy's) take on their successful use of both OSS and closed source in combination...
Their usage does seem to throw a lot of cold water on Mundie's arguments.
--CTH
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Superman Powers? (Score:5)
Re:The Kompany (Score:2)
[*] GNOME is planned to be used in Mono, but that does not make Mono part of the GNOME project.
Oh it isn't consuming resources over there at Ximian, keepers of the flame for Gnome...
From the mono contact page:
You can contact the Mono Team by sending e-mail to `mailto:mono-hackers@ximian.com'.
You can contact the general forum of discussion by sending e-mail to mono-list@ximian.com
You can contact me (Miguel de Icaza) by sending e-mail to miguel@ximian.com. My web page is http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel"
You can also reach Ximian [ximian.com].
Looks like it's going to consume some would-otherwise-be-working-on-Gnome resources to me.
The Kompany (Score:3)
Stuffed Monkey (Score:5)
___
Re:KDE Studio Gold (Score:4)
In other words: Serve the customer first, and the rest will follow. The services industry is huge right now, probably the fastest growing too. Open Source software is all about service first, which is why I'm liking it more everyday. Keep up the good work on KDE guys. After reading the above comments from Mr. Gordon, I'm already konsidering buying some of their software strictly for the support aspect of it all.