Learn About Ximian and Gnome From Nat Friedman 204
This week's interview guest is Nat Friedman, co-founder and vice president of product development for Ximian. Nat is also co-chair of The Gnome Foundation, and an all-around nice guy. Post your questions (one per post, please) for Nat below. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him, and will post his answers (verbatim except for HTML formatting) within the next week.
Gnome & KDE (Score:5, Interesting)
When? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, I would love to know, "When will we see OpenOffice and Mozilla integrated into Gnome more effectively?"
Mono & Miguel (Score:5, Interesting)
What are your feelings regarding Miguel's stated preferences for future integration of Mono and Gnome? Since you're a major part of Ximian, does it automatically follow that you're in agreement?
How do you resolve the potential conflicts of interest over issues such as this one between your role at Ximian and your position with the Gnome foundation?
First (and most obvious) Question! (Score:5, Interesting)
my question (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea for this question came with that article about Lindows and not releasing their source. I ask this here because of the hard core community that seems to side so staunchly on this KDE vs Gnome idea.
Future Plans for Ximian and Gnome (Score:5, Interesting)
How does Ximian intend to leverage the Open Source movement for continued economic growth?
Exchange Like Product (Score:5, Interesting)
gnome and mono (Score:1, Interesting)
My question: MS Licensing Plan Version 6.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you looking forward to an increase in private-sector uptake as Microsoft makes its licensing arguably less attractive, or do you feel there are still 'holes to fill' WRT the feasibility of Linux desktop usage in business?
Nautilus (Score:3, Interesting)
Future of gnumeric? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mono and Windows compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
My Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft and Mono? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you gotten a sense of how Microsoft views the existence of an open source alternative to
Core Gnome technologies (Score:5, Interesting)
Useability research (Score:5, Interesting)
Conflict of Philosophies (Score:5, Interesting)
What is your take on the apparent paradox resulting from:
1. the goal of uniformity on the Linux desktop, and
2. the many, many, groups who have this as their own special goal?
Mandrake and RedHat work toward this on the OS level, and Gnome and KDE battle it out on the desktop integration level, and many others espouse some sort of a "grand unification theory" of Linux.
Do you subscribe to the theory that less is more, or that multiple groups with a common goal will result in the goal's earlier acheivement?
As a buisness (Score:5, Interesting)
Co-existance of Red-Carpet and up2date/RHN (Score:5, Interesting)
An example being (till now, RPM 4.0.4) is not available via the Redhat 7.2 channel. Is Ximian going to ever make a policy statement as to what is the maximum duration their userbase will be diverged from receiving the latest updates of their respective distributions.
If there are specific packages which are likely not to be made available via red-carpet, can their be an official statement on this so that users are aware of the pros/cons of using multiple update mechanisms
The Future of Gnome (Score:5, Interesting)
Also if I can squeeze another one in; With MONO being cooked and simmered in the pot how do you see the usefulness of the Compiler and
Re:Mono and Windows compatibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Personal feelings (Score:3, Interesting)
People reading this: I am a GNOME user, and I love it. I understand that you may prefer KDE and that it does do somethings better than GNOME. It's just that GNOME suits my needs better.
I only ask as I personally don't deal with these sorts of things well.
nic
Red Hat 7.3 - Remove Ximian (Score:5, Interesting)
Usability (Score:5, Interesting)
Gnome does have a usability project. What is your opinion on its actual impact on Gnome? Do you feel the open-source movement can attract non-programmers -- like usability experts -- with the same intensity it attracts programmers?
Lack of documentation for GNOME internals (Score:5, Interesting)
.net Integration (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks
External Compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, do you think it's practical to implement Xaw as a front-end to GTK? That would get OpenOffice integration real fast, among others. What about a unified theme format with KDE? Or a common protocol for copy/paste?
It seems like this sort of stuff would be really helpful -- what's actually in the works?
embedded gnome? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there any plans to make a Gnome lite or an embedded Gnome? something that would work on minimal hardware (P133 as a target)? Having available a "desktop" that is very similar to the workstation desktop on embedded or small devices would be a huge advantage for linux in general (look at winCE and PocketPC os or whatever microsoft calls it today)
Is it possible to release a mini-gnome?
Re:Future of gnumeric? (Score:5, Interesting)
Open Office is an integrated office suite, so that does help a lot in terms of a unified office suite to deploy to people. To move more people away from Microsoft Office and into an Open Source/Free Software product, I am encouraging people to use OpenOffice.
That being said, Gnumeric has a beautiful code base, and will likely be a nice testing ground for new technologies (as it has always been).
Gnumeric is better suited for people who want to do build a spreadsheets for PDAs which are compatible with Excel, for a works-like scenario, or as a reusable engine. Open Office is a lot harder to hack on currently.
So I see both existing. I am in love with both products.
Miguel.
Why subscribe? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ximian & support (Score:4, Interesting)
Gnome sans-X? (Score:5, Interesting)
The KDE project is attempting to develop a version of KDE/Qt that does not require X.
They've been at this for awhile, and I don't know their status, but have you any thoughts on similar work?
Gnu ROPE question (Score:5, Interesting)
Integration with distributions (Score:2, Interesting)
I like Ximian but it is only GNOME Desktop distribution. It "sits on" some Linux distribution. Unfortunately the integration with the leading distros is poor (I explain it later).
So the qestion is: Are you going to cooperate with some Linux distro more?
Explanation what concerns me (I currently use Debian, RedHat, Mandrake on different comps for different purposes -- all with Ximian desktop):
With Ximian I have basicaly two sets of config tool -- one from distro (in distro menus) the second one from GNOME/Ximian (in Ximian menus) -- neither of these sets is complete. This is the main Ximian stopper for me.
Two different menu systems. Some application are accesed from distro menus another from Ximian menus.
It seems to me it would be logical if RedHat and Ximian cooperate. (but I'm gonna to change distro if Ximan chooses somebody else :)
Methodology (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, are there any suggestions you could give towards getting smaller projects to bridge the gap and grow to optimal sizes?
Thanks
Ale
Assbarn? (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks!
What are your favorite apps? (Score:3, Interesting)
Release schedules for distros? (Score:4, Interesting)
Evolution (Score:2, Interesting)
Are there any plans to produce a win32 Evolution build?
How to pay for good UI (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think that there's any question that Ximian has the vision and talent necessary to produce excellent, extremely user-friendly tools for Linux and Gnome. However, there's no question that such an undertaking is expensive
In three parts:
1. How successful has the Red Carpet Subscription been in funding Ximian development, or at least itself?
2. What other ideas do you have to make people want to pay for Ximian software?
3. Where do you think that you can use the resources of the Open Source community to reduce costs?
I ask because, as a member of the OpenOffice.org project, we are looking to become more independant of Sun/StarOffice and need to answer these questions ourselves.
-Josh Berkus
OpenOffice.org