Canonical Becomes a Patron of KDE e.V.

[acheron]

https://dot.kde.org/2016/08/18/canon...-patron-kde-ev

<snip>

Canonical will be working with the KDE community to keep making the latest KDE technology available to Ubuntu and Kubuntu users, and expanding that into making Snap packages of KDE frameworks and applications that are easily installable by users of any Linux desktop. We will benefit from sharing knowledge, experience and code around Qt and Qt packaging, pushing the advancement of QML and increasing its adoption in Unity and Ubuntu native applications alongside KDE's own work towards convergence.

</snip>

[GreyGeek]

Canonical will join KDE e.V.'s other Patrons The Qt Company, SuSE, Google and Blue Systems to continue to support Free Software and KDE development through the KDE e.V.

If you can't whip'm then join them?

More than a decade ago, after several years of hostility created by Michael de Icaza, Gnome and KDE dev teams got together to create compatibility layers for their respective desktops so that a user of Gnome could run KDE apps and KDE users could run Gnome apps. In other words, apps built by either GTK+ or the QT API would run on either platform because each had the necessary libraries to do so. Detente worked great for a while, then Canonical came on the scene and his millions Shuttlesworth created a distro which dominated the others. Distros based on Ubuntu rose up and the SABDFL "adopted" some of them by offering financial and physical support. After half a dozen good years HE decided to replace Gnome with his own, in house creation, Unity. At the same time he partially dis-owned the step kids he had once adopted and supported, making life tough and future existence questionable for Kubuntu, Lbuntu, etc... for a while. For Kubuntu, Blue Systems picked up the slack, for which Kubuntu users are thankful and grateful.

The SABDFL has to turn a profit to keep Canonical afloat, or continue supporting Canonical at his own expense. Making a profit is a good thing, depending on how it is done. I am wondering if the SA(B?)DFL has plans to switch to QT as the basis for Unity? Does that explain his current move?

[acheron]

Unity 8 is Qt

[GreyGeek]

Unity 8 is Qt

That's interesting. I've never used Ubuntu's Unity and haven't kept up on it or Ubuntu. The last I heard when Ubuntu switched from Gnome to Unity they built on top of Xorg using a bunch of python and other tools. A couple years ago I heard that they were planning to move to Mir. Now I am wondering why Canonical is joining KDE e.v at all, since Ubuntu is not using the KDE desktop. What would be his point and what kind of code could Ubuntu developers ship upstream to KDE? Patches to QML or Qt's modules or other tools?

[clivejo]

The news does make me raise an eyebrow!

Feels like a bit of a U turn by Canonical TBH. Not the first and probably wont be the last, but I do agree with acheron it might have something to do with Unity **shivers** and Qt.

[MoonRise]

I say watch it. Canonical already buddied up with M$ claiming to bring BASH to windows when CYGWIN already does that, IMO.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in interoperability but when you have one partnered with another that has always sought to extinguish competition and keeps the guise of being otherwise is suspect in intentions. In turn that suspicion extends to the other.

[GreyGeek]

I say watch it. Canonical already buddied up with M$ claiming to bring BASH to windows when CYGWIN already does that, IMO.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in interoperability but when you have one partnered with another that has always sought to extinguish competition and keeps the guise of being otherwise is suspect in intentions. In turn that suspicion extends to the other.

I'd forgotten about that. As I understand it the bash shell Canonical supplied Win10 users will be able to run most Linux apps, even those with GUIs, from the CLI. It would not take a genius to write a shell script that would run a GUI app and then create a menu a/o desktop shortcut to run it. Viola! The ability to run Linux user apps without the Linux kernel, or any distro at all! Purpose? To slow down or stop the mass migration away from Windows that started with Vista and picked up speed with Win8 and Win10. All of it riding on top of Windows and controlled by Microsoft. A perfect walled garden entrapping Linux. Thank you, SABDFL, for nothing.

[MoonRise]

Just keep note that KDE already tried to extend their QT to Windows. Due to issues with closed M$ that never came to full fruition. Although QT can run on Windows there were those "tidbits" M$ hid that hindered this. Now Canonical wants to buddy up with KDE and has partnered with M$. Add it up.

[GreyGeek]

I spent the last five years of my career writing client-server apps using the commercial QT API on Windows. Actually, I found writing the apps on SuSE Linux using the GPL version to be more than twice as fast because of the speed of the g++ compiler, so I wrote and tested on SuSE against PostgreSQL, copied the source to Windows and compiled it against Oracle, using compiler defines to test the environment and select the appropriate SQL command logic. So, yes, QT apps can be developed and run on Windows, even the GPL version source, but the "tidbit$" was the Tolltech commercial license, at $750/yr, IIRC, but I had no complaints about that. A company needs to turn a profit to stay afloat.

However, like you, I question SABDFL's motives. Is he secretly fronting for Microsoft? When Novell bought Trolltech after their betrayal of Linux it was, to me, an obvious attempt by Microsoft to gain control of KDE and extinguish it. Embrace, extend, extinguish.

[MoonRise]

I question SABDFL's motives. Is he representing secretly fronting for Microsoft? When Novell bought Trolltech after their betrayal of Linux it was, to me an obvious attempt by Microsoft to gain control of KDE and extinguish it. Embrace, extend, extinguish.

BINGO!! Yep. +1!