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Linux Business

Interview With Shawn Gordon of TheKompany 105

Posted by Hemos from the making-cash-money dept.
Gentu writes "OSNews features an interview with Shawn Gordon, president of TheKompany. Shawn talks about version 1.0 of Aethera and Kapital coming out in September, porting a lot of their Qt apps to MacOSX, the future of Linux on the desktop, how the embedded Linux market was surprisingly successful financially for them, as well as selling well their desktop apps. It is really encouraging to read that a desktop-oriented company actually made real money from Linux this year!"
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Interview With Shawn Gordon of TheKompany More

Interview With Shawn Gordon of TheKompany

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  • Remember that embedded linux is another way of saying' Linux that people don't know they're using'.

    Yea, it's cool that people are making money at it. But I don't think that it is as hope-generating as some people might first believe. Wide scale acceptance is where a stable market will come from, not 'sneaking it in when they're not looking'.

    • Re:embedded Linux (Score:2, Insightful)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      Who cares? The people you are talking about, the average user, is probably only dimly aware they are using Windows. It's not like they chose Windows, it's what their computer came with, it's what their apps run on. They would never do anything so radical as to change OS unless they a) had someone else to install it for them and b) had a compelling reason to change.

      Sneaking it in when they aren't looking is a pretty safe bet, it's what allowed MS to succeed.
    • Can someone explain to me why you guys actually *care* so much what OS other people are using? If windows is so shite and the people who use it such lusers, why don't you leave them to it?
    • But I don't think that it is as hope-generating as some people might first believe.

      Wrong. Just plain wrong. You're assuming (as a home user) that the only front Linux is fighting is on the desktop. It's a huge boon for the industry, that a freely-maintained, open operating system will run a lot of the tech average joe uses at home. Linux is (in most people's opinions) the next big thing® in embedded technology, why make blanket statements about it that only refer to the Desktop war?
    • Support for enbedded Linux is good for linux as a whole. It's putting money into the OS, and it might encourage companies to use linux as well if they see it being deployed successfully by other companies.

      The real issue with linux being accepted on a widescale is that it still is not user friendly enough for most people. I think it would be worth it if linux companies invested in some interface designers with real credentials, as it seems most open-source programmers don't know how to create programs that can be easily used by non computer oriented people. Mandrake and Corel linux have made inroads here (and of course many tech-oriented linux users complained that corel linux wasn't versatile enough, do you expect grandmothers to use slackware???)
    • Remember that embedded linux is another way of saying' Linux that people don't know they're using'.

      This would be an interesting comment if it weren't completely wrong.

      The majority of the "embedded" space from which the Kompany makes its license sales is the Zaurus 5x00 line of PDAs. I'd wager that over 99% of Zaurus users are aware they're running Linux, as it's touted all over the box.

      Gordon even mentions the 5500 by name, almost seeming to plug it.

      --A happy Zaurus user
  • One thing which does get left out in these kind of reviews/articles is about space/resources taken by that particular app. Lets say i'm running aethera (just an example) , I find that there are a lot of processes running in the background. What is the logic behind using something that's hogs down resources and shows nothing but "eye candy" ?. Will like to know people's view on this :), of course there are some tradeoffs but is it worth it (no hard feelings to the Kompany of course)

  • Good article; good news. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sirinek ( 41507 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @10:41AM (#4118550) Homepage Journal

    It is indeed refreshing to see that a Linux-based software company is making quality applications, and more importantly, making money.

    The other thing I enjoyed seeing is that they are starting to get their products into retail stores and that Linux and Windows versions are "one box, one price", allowing people to migrate between the two and keep the app they paid for. Nice! :)

    Hopefully they keep up the good work, come out with some very nice apps and make the transition to Linux that much easier.

    Maybe they should come up with a QT Office suite (KOffice?) with for-pay MS Word filters and then migrate people over to Linux cause their software will still run. :) It'd be cheaper than MS Office, and still read the documents they need to read *and* run on Linux! :)

    siri

  • This addresses one of my major gripes about switching to OS X; there are few apps to choose from, and they all cost an arm & a leg.

    I never knew The Kompany was selling OS X stuff so I am definitely going to have to go check them out. If this allows me to standardize on apps between Linux and OS X then I will be a happy man. Also if I get a good QuickBooks alternative (Lord, I hate how they nickle & dime you to death for simple stuff like emailing invoices to your clients) I would be able to permanently power down my sole remaining Windows box.

  • Is it too much to ask that the blurbs on Slashdot's frontpage should explain what a software package does, instead of just citing the name as if everyone should magically be familiar with them all?
    • If you have not heard of the packages, then you haven't investigated much into those sort of applications... and you probably don't care anyway. So why post?

      FWIW, Kapital is a personal finance manager. Aethera is PIM/groupware.

      • "If you have not heard of the packages, then you haven't investigated much into those sort of applications..." Absolutely true.

        "...and you probably don't care anyway. So why post?" Absolutely untrue. There are thousands of topics that interest me, that I haven't had time to investigate. Basic communication skills are about supplying the extra three words that bridge that gap.

        "FWIW, Kapital is a personal finance manager. Aethera is PIM/groupware." Bueno-- you got it now.

    • Google is your friend. When I don't know what something is, I put it into google.
      • "Google is your friend. When I don't know what something is, I put it into google."

        Let's analyse it in terms of economics:

        X% of Slashdot readers know what the names refer to. So (100-X)% don't. The X% that do can immediately decide if they want to click for more info. The (100-X)% have no way to decide, because all they see are the names, not what the packages do.

        So you're suggesting each one of those (100-X)% of Slashdotters visit Google (or click the links themselves, of course) to discover whether or not the topic is even of interest to them. I'm suggesting the blurb-authors add three words to each blurb to save those (100-X)% the effort.

        ...Who's lazy again?

  • QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connector!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by imac.usr ( 58845 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @10:52AM (#4118643) Homepage
    The lions share of requests have been for QuantaGold on OS X so far.


    The number one most useful product they could offer OS X users right now is a port of the Connector [ximian.com]!


    Microsoft has stonewalled on delivering a native Exchange client for Mac OS X. In fact, according to a recent posting on Macintouch [macintouch.com] (scroll down to the second or third message), their official recommendation is that you set up a separate PC and use the new Remote Desktop client [microsoft.com] to access it!


    Here at NIH, we want to move to OS X soon but the lack of a native Outlook client is really going to hurt us. If Evolution+Connector were available instead, we would likely take a serious look at spending some serious money on it.

    • Many PC users want a native version of OS X, but Apple hasn't delivered. Native ipod support would be good too, but Apple never delivered there either (although third parties have). Their official recomendation is that you buy yourself a mac in the color of your choice.

      Not much of a difference here, it's companies trying to push their own propreitary products (wether it be windows or mac hardware/software)
      • Many PC users want a native version of OS X, but Apple hasn't delivered. Native ipod support would be good too, but Apple never delivered there either (although third parties have). Their official recomendation is that you buy yourself a mac in the color of your choice.


        um,

        Apple's iPod site [apple.com]: Pod for Windows
        Good news for the millions of Windows users who own PCs with built-in FireWire (also known as i.LINK and IEEE1394): In response to insistent demand from PC users, the world's best MP3 player now does Windows. iPod fully integrated with the award-winning PC media player -- MUSICMATCH Jukebox Plus(TM). So every song you add or playlist you create will automatically transfer to your iPod.

        Go troll somewhere else with your "mac in the color of your choice" comments.

        -- james

    • Re:QuantaGold? DataArchitect? Give me the Connecto (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > The number one most useful product they could offer OS X users right now is a port of the Connector [ximian.com]!

      Nice idea, wrong company. Maybe you didn't notice, but Shawn Gordon works for TheKompany, not Ximian.
      • I was gonna say that.
        mod the Coward up.

        I wonder why Ximian does not do any cross platform software. I guess they are more of a consultancey than a retail business and they seem to be doing well enough at it.
        Maybe with the move to gtk2 they and other linux only projects will start to do both Gnome2 and GTK2 builds and offer applications for more platforms. (more likely is that people will just get Gnome to run on more platforms).

    • If you look at the amount of engineering Apple has been throwing at the PIMesque components of Jaguar (namely the substantially upgraded Mail.app, the new Address Book and iSync), I'd say the most likely point of origin for Outlook interopability is Apple themselves. They seem to be doing some of the backend work too, with the expansion of their directory services plugin stuff on at the infrastructure level.

  • A Long Hard Road (Score:2, Interesting)

    by XNuke ( 5231 )
    I was an early adopter of Kapital. Seems like over a year now, I am not sure. I had been using Linux exclusively since 1996 and only used windows for Quicken/TurboTax since it had all my financial data since 1993. The early beat versions of Kapital were very encouraging but the most amazing thing was the damn near heroic effort to get a program like Kapital to work on the ZILLIONS of different Linux distributions. Anyone who thinks Linux has a chance on the mainstream desktop needs to look at the mailing list logs for kapital, and the many replies from Shawn regarding difficulties in those areas. Simply amazing. Linux isn't going to Fork like the major Unices did in the 80's, it already HAS.

    • Can you say LSB?

    • I too am an early adopter. And the mailing list (especially recently since the push for 1.0) has really shown how hard the different distros make it for companies like TheKompany. According to them, Mandrake used KDE 3.0-rc instead of the final KDE 3.0 and it has caused some conflicts for them packaging it up. And as for myself, I use the source version of Kapital, but I haven't been able to test it because I can't get Korelib (one of their standard libs they use) to compile with gcc-3.1. So it is truly an Herculean effort to make things work on the Linux desktop.

      Pbur
    • Back then the goal was lock in. I haven't seen any distribution do stuff to try and lock users in. I think its fair to say: RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Suse... all consider each other "part of the family". They aren't all the same but they can take advantage of each other's work.

      Debian spends a great deal of time getting packages on GNU/Linux to work well. This results in better tar balls which result in better rpms.

      RedHat spends a great deal of time getting specific kernals to be very robust. This feeds into Mandrake directly and others indirectly.

      Mandrake worked hard on unifying interfaces (like getting the same menus to work) which has migrated to most distributions. They also help with KDE.

      I don't see forking I see choice. Supporting so many distributions is hard for software, NQA but this isn't 80's style forking. After all we all agree that "porting" between different versions of Linux is almost always at worst changes to the make files not changes to the C files.
  • Blackadder [thekompany.com] has been in the works for quite a while......... Still waiting to see how it'll do as a Ruby IDE.

  • Desktop Linux Viability Study (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think this is a good example of a company that has successfully brought products to Linux and has made money on the platform. It demonstrates that there is infact a market for commercial software on Linux and *hopefully* will cause other software companies such as Macromedia, Adobe, Intuit, etc al to invest the money necessary to port their applications to Linux.

  • Made money? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @10:59AM (#4118693)
    How do we know they made money? The article said nothing about profits, and it's not a publically treaded company.
  • The Aethera screenshots remind me of the dreaded Lotus Notes interface. I'm hoping it doesn't suck like Notes does from a UI/usability standpoint.
    • I'm a little nervous about it:

      The other way we differ is that we didn't set out to make an Outlook clone, as a matter of fact the UI designer has never even seen Outlook.

      That's great and all. But how can you be a decent UI designer if you have never seen some of the best examples of User Interfaces. Despite not wanting to make a clone of Outlook, there are wonderful UI elements MS created for Outlook and MS Office in general.

      You can't just read a book to develop excellent User Interfaces. You have to experience what is out there and build on that with your own and other's insight.

      • I tried Aethera, and it was totally unsuable for me. It was one of the ugliest pieces of software I've ever seen. I don't mean to stomp all over the poor guys work but you're right, he really should take a look at some other stuff first. Maybe things have improved for 1.0 though.
      • Just take a look at their notes: Somehow I'm not really sure if their designer really never saw Outlook...
    • Speaking of Aethera whatever happened to the open source competitor Magellan? The server for it doesn't seem to be up as I write this. Is this just one more unfinished project?
    • I thought the same thing when I saw it.
  • Is there a particular reason that *every* geek (including this guy) has to have a goatee, and most of them are overweight? Do all geeks want to look like clones of each other? Do they want everybody to know they're geeks? I can easily pick out geeks in public... overweight, goatees, no clothes style, and usually a phone worn externally. Also, it's got to be really hard to get laid looking like that.
  • ... how the embedded Linux market was surprisingly successful financially for them,

    I think it should be "how the embedded Linux market was a surprisingly financial success for them" maybe the author intended: "how the embedded Linux market was surprisingly financially successful for them". The latter just doesn't seem fluent.

    "... desktop-oriented company actually made real money from Linux this year!" I think it should be "real money with Linux this year".
  • Very nice and refreshing interview, I wish TheKompany the best. The only part that was really shocking to me was the following:

    The other way we differ [from Evolution] is that we didn't set out to make an Outlook clone, as a matter of fact the UI designer has never even seen Outlook

    He is talking about Aethera, and comparing it to Ximian's Evolution. It really strikes me that their User Interface designer has never seen Outlook, the most used email client. He should IMHO. I heartly agree on not having to clone Outlook, but you need to take a look at what people are used to, just as a reference. And a lot of the potential users of Aethera are now using Outlook.

    That said, I should probably add that I have never seen Outlook myself but I am not a UI designer for an email client ;-)

    • i serious question how good the usability can be if they failed to do a compartive study.
      maybe it will be usable for newbies, but if your target market is former outlook users (which they certainly are in Ximians case) then is a really bad idea not to have even looked at it.

      From my very limited use i hated the inteface to Outlook but it might have done a few clever things and if you study it carefully at least you can learn from their mistakes.

      But what do i know, i am not PIM user and am not likely to change my ways anytime soon.
  • In terms of comparing [Aethera] to Evolution, they both are at the heart email/PIM applications. We differ initially in the fact that ours will run on Linux and Windows

    So does he mean 'will' as in 'in the future' or 'it will run today' on Windows? Native version, or this one of those 'install Cygwin' things?
    • Qt is available for Windows natively. so if you code your GUI in QT it will run under Windows-GUI and not just X. I'd assume there is some work in porting anyway but probably not much.

  • Is spelling things wrong supposed to be cool? Becuase if it is, the Kash and Karry down the street is cooler than the Kiddie Kountry day care down the block.

    Enough spelling things wrong. It's not cool. It just looks stupid.

  • I tried to make a FreeBSD port of Aethera, and discovered, it is impossible.

    The Aethera's supposedly source tarball comes with a few binary libraries. At least one of them, according to the Kompany, is not "open-sourced". Since the binaries available are only for Linux/x86, all other platforms are left out...

  • Yeah, this is a day late, but I just downloaded the latest available Aethera, and it doesn't support IMAP. It's part of the configuration setup, but you can see messages in the command line area being passed back and "IMAP4::getMail() is not supported" is one of them (or something similar to that).

    This much-lauded email/PIM thing is about to become 1.0 - still mostly aimed at geeks - and doesn't support IMAP? I don't get it.

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