Joe User writes: "Harri Porten is one of the most active KDE developers, working on mostly on Konqueror, while he is also a TrollTech employee, the QT creators. Harri talks to OSNews in an interview about KDE, QT 3, licensing and more."

Bingo Foo asks: "The paradigm of movable, overlapping windows on the desktop has been around, and indeed dominant, for a long time. The original motivation for this was to mimic sheets of paper on a desktop. This is a useful metaphor, but may be a bit limiting given the capacity a computer has for automation of the layout and display of "desktop" objects. Lately, I have been pleased to see an increase in 'framing,' 'docking,' 'stacking,' and 'tabbing' being used, starting most conspicuously with frames in the web. More significantly, it has shown up as an application workspace paradigm that improved previously crappy MDI implementations in programs like Visual Studio and KDevelop. In my opinion, the most promising experimental application, even if still immature, is one of the neatest window managers around, ion. Does anyone else see a time when movable, tear-off docking and automated full-time tiling completely take over from the free-floating manually arranged desktops of today?"

Nick writes "We all remember OS/2, such a fine operating system that was once much heralded in certain circles and had alot of promise. What most people don't know is that it still is alive and kicking. Many of you may even know its history. What gets me, however, is how its popularity dropped off solely on marketing even though OS/2's performance outweights any version of Windows I've ever used (unfortunately OS/2 is no longer cool and elite like the many unix-like operating systems out there). So how many of us Slashdotters still run and use OS/2?" Every so often, I still pine for the WPS, but KDE makes things almost as easy, so life is good. I remember OS/2 was always more popular over in Europe. Is it still in use there, or has its use faded as it has here in the US?

Once in awhile a story comes along that warrants mention just so that people know to be careful. Mosfet is a KDE coder (who has had tension with KDE in the past and left some ill will over there). He was hired by Future Technology to continue work on his Liquid KDE style and theme (my personal favorite). But they never paid him, so he removed their name and mentioned it in the Changelog. Now FT is threatening legal action to get the Changelog off the net. But it's more bizarre because MandrakeSoft is the host, and the site remains up. Keep reading if you're interested in a few more bits.

Dre writes: "Richard Dale recently announced that he has committed C bindings for the KDE3/Qt3 libraries to KDE's CVS. According to him, "The bindings wrap about 800 classes [and] 13,000 methods, with 200k [lines of code] of C/C++ generated." The same tool used to generate these C bindings can also generate Objective C and Java bindings, and Richard hopes to be able to consolidate the generation of these various KDE bindings (Java/Objective C/C) with one tool. In addition, pending the resolution of a dynamic linking problem with the Objective C bindings, both C and Objective C bindings for KDE 2.2.x/Qt 2.3.x will also be available from KDE CVS."

Welcome to Slashback for 20011018 -- read below for an update on Code Red (is Red Dead?), RAND patents in Web standards (some semi-good news on that front), the sad death of some MIDI software, and an upgrade for Thailand.

Dr. Sp0ng writes: "TrollTech released Qt 3.0 today. Among the new features are platform- and database-independent data-access features, data-aware GUI widgets, a much-updated Qt Designer, and much better internationalization and font handling features. It breaks binary compatibility but keeps almost complete source compatibility with Qt 2.x. The KDE team has already begun work on KDE 3.0, which will use the new toolkit."

Jacek Fedorynski writes: "Looks like KDE is five years old. Five years seems like a lot of time but just look how much they've achieved in this time." I think the hard part is just beginning - KDE has got all the basics down, and now they have to resist adding too much more crap.

Tetard asks: "Long live the pipe! Since the `|' was invented by Doug McIlroy in 1973, has there ever been a more effective way of reusing tools and connecting data ? The mouse is a device of the Beatles era; Rather than try and provoke nostalgia in the older ones among us, I'm asking myself, as are others: when we don't try to reinvent the wheel, or at least improve it, why must we try and copy it every time ? Xerox PARC exposed us to WIMPs and we haven't done better: some innovation, some plastic surgery -- but no "paradigm shift" -- where's the creative destruction that will take us further ? Graphical component programming is turning us into click-happy bonobos^H^H^Hchimpanzees, as we fail to find new ways to manage and connect richer data streams. My web designer friends are damaged for life because of mice, and yet we persist... Where do we go from here ? If we ever invent the graphical pipe, let if have keyboard shortcuts." Yes, you've probably seen a similar question to this run by Ask Slashdot before, but this time I'm wondering if maybe we need new input devices before the WIMP paradigm is replaced with something better. Might any of you have ideas on what form these input devices might take?

Dre writes: "Just a few weeks after the release of the rock-solid KDE 2.2.1, the KDE Project today announced the release of KDE 3.0 Alpha1. Targeted at developers who want to get a head start on porting or writing applications to KDE 3, the release is pretty much a straight port of the KDE 2.2 branch to Qt 3. However, for developers this brings an impressive array of new features to KDE, including new database classes, new data-aware widgets, improved RAD development with a much-enhanced Qt Designer, a new powerful regular expression class (with full Unicode support), improved internationalization support (including the ability to mix different character sets in the same text), bi-directional language support (for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew), multi-monitor (Xinerama and multi-screen) support, better integration of pure Qt applications into KDE, and hardware-accelerated alpha blending. With the Qt port out of the way, the KDE developers can now focus on the planned KDE improvements. Read the full announcement here, or go straight to the source (alternative link)."

friday2k writes "There is a nice Article on Newsforge describing how the German Government moves ahead on looking into Free Software solutions for government agencies. And you need a standard, secure, email client for this." Basically, they are funding some good secure e-mail - but making sure that it works with stuff like Kmail.

jdfox writes: "According to this press release from SuSE, they have just received another 15 million Euros (about 14 million $US) venture capital, with some big names listed in the consortium's membership. They have also announced that a quarter of their 500 staff will be let go, following on from similar recent cuts. This excellent distro deserves to succeed: I hope this move will see them through the current slowdown." The upcoming release (needs babelfishing from German) of SuSE's version 7.3 promised for October 13th is loaded with a ton of goodies, too -- Kernel 2.4.10, KDE 2.2.1 and GNOME 1.4.1 beta2, among other things.

JoFo writes: "Eric Yang, creator of several Aqua-like themes and skins for GTK+, KDE, Mozilla, gkrellm, and others, was forced by Apple to take down all Aqua-related projects on his web site. It appears they went to his employer as a way to strong-arm him. He writes on his web site 'I went to Apple to test cocoa for Mac OS X 10.1, and found a drag and drop problem with NSPopUpButtonCell. They didn't even pay me for my effort, yet they try to shut down my project. Isn't that ironic?'" Apple seems at least to be consistent in objecting to nearly any non-Apple project that reminds the company of Aqua, so maybe this was just a matter of time.

Loke and several others wrote in with notes about Mandrake Linux 8.1. Release notes are available, or download an .iso, or just order it. Looks like it includes KDE 2.2.1, which is pretty impressive...

Igloo Boy writes: "The most excellent KDE developers have made KDE 2.2.1 available for download. Please check the mirrors before you flood ftp.kde.org. I will now crawl back into my igloo and warm up next to my Athlon. It gets really hot from all this compiling." Or you could just call out those 3 little letters that make ya feel so good ... a-p-t. I'm installing now. Hope you guys fixed all the bugs I reported!

Stephanie Black contributes this review of a book which might be nice to have around if someone suggests that Open Source is "not for business use." Managing Open Source Projects is one of a class of books that will probably expand hugely in the next few years.

Spotted over at dot.kde.org -- this review of KOffice. The review isn't overwhelmingly positive or negative -- seems like a rather balanced picture of both what's up to par, and what's still missing, for mainstream acceptance in the Normal Workplaces of the world.

Philippe Fremy writes: "I have written a small article to demonstrate how much KPart, the KDE component technology, is easy to use." Interesting to note how few lines of code certain things take -- just 600 lines for the koshell? Wow.

Not long ago you asked Kurt Skauen about his AtheOS, a GPL'd OS with an integrated GUI and notable commonalities and differences from certain other GPL'd OSes. Kurt responded at length on everything from choice of programming languages to whether you'll see a version of AtheOS soon for the PPC. He also talks about dealing with interoperability (with Windows and with *NIX), why he chose the GPL, and what might drive him to change the AtheOS licensing.

JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an exclusive interview with the Konqueror team, KDE's integrated filemanager, image/document viewer and web browser. Dirk Mueller, Waldo Bastian, Carsten Pfeiffer and Simon Hausmann are answering questions regarding the future of Konqueror, its portability and the integration with KDE3 and QT3. And speaking about KDE3, OSNews is reporting what's new in the new version: KDE 3 will be based on QT 3.0 and will also feature educational and other apps (like Kompare and KWinTV) as part of the default installation, support for extremely large files, new versions for KNode and KMail, email templates in KMail, advanced Web Shortcuts, S/MIME support, plugins for the KMenu, a graphical Regular Expression app (KRegExpEditor) and much more. A (very early) alpha version is already available."