Over the last few weeks I have addressed licensing and usability issues with GNU/Linux desktops. One of the points raised against my arguments had to do with the need for companies providing Free Software to make money, namely, the need for Trolltech to make money. It is with the greatest irony that I now find myself discussing one of the new features in KDE 3.5 (although not exclusive to KDE) intended squarely at preventing some from receiving their dues.
Last week I promised to demonstrate why I am not a GNOME zealot simply looking to try to give KDE a hard time. In actuality, I don't use GNOME much at all, these days. Or KDE. I do keep up with them, but my actual desktop home is elsewhere. “Hey, Clippit! Stop staring at me.”
How did we get in this mess? How have we come to the place where a relatively small group of rogue Internet users are on the verge of bringing the whole thing to a grinding halt because of their short-sighted greed?
I knew when I mentioned something negative about the GNU Project's General Public License (GPL), in my column last week, I would inevitably be accused of arguing the GPL was a bad license. I knew this would happen despite my qualification to the argument that I had released code under the GPL myself. What did not fit into that piece shall now be dealt with: is the GPL a bad license?
It started out as a simple project: with the prospect that I'd be away from my desktop computer for a few weeks, I wanted to beef up my laptop's meager 256 megs of RAM. Having purchased my 12” PowerBook one release cycle before Apple boosted the RAM to the 512 megs it really should have had to begin with, it was long past time I embarked on opening up the case and upgrading. One thing was stopping me: I couldn't open it.
We've all had this nightmare. You turn on your functioning Windows/Linux PC, and all you get is a blank screen, or a message telling you that certain files are missing, or the kernel has panicked for some obscure reason. Nothing works, and you need the data on your machine. Yes, now's the time to whip out that trusty backup disk, and heave a sigh of relief that all the important stuff is backed up, right? Well, think again.
With all of the attention on dual core processors lately, it has been real easy to overlook the one application that might benefit more from multiple cores than any other; Linux. OK, so technically Linux isn't an application, but the kernel has supported SMP for nine years almost to the date. The road to SMP has not been an easy one for Linux, but in the last nine years, and particularly since 1999, Linux has received quite the attention as a 2-8 processor core operating system. If you need a reference, just look at how many Linux machines hold SPEC benchmark records in web serving and number crunching.
Novell Inc.'s SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 desktop gives not only other leading Linux desktop distributions like Xandros a run for their money, but also enterprise desktops such as Windows XP Pro.
Motorola announced a new step this week in its plan to remake most of its mobile phone line with Linux, expanding use of the open-source operating system to midrange phones.
Thinking on the issue of licensing and KDE, an old hymn came to mind. “As it was in the beginning, is now, And ever shall be…” Yes, the issue of licensing has been a perennial problem for the Free/Open Source desktop and I would suggest its biggest licensing issue remains: the GPL.