Ad Terras Per Aspera

Max Howell recently wrote in his blog asking if amaroK (the popular KDE music player) was complex. It is.

I come from the school of Winamp-type players, which includes XMMS. amaroK started it’s life as the same thing, except then it added on an iTunes-type interface for library. The problem is, the two different schools of thoughts don’t mix. Either you have a minimalistic user interface, with an optional straight playlist panel; or you have a complex UI that allows you to manage your library, and puts actual playing of music second.

amaroK, sadly, tries to do both, and becomes a usability nightmare in the process. Winamp-style players are out, and iTunes-style players are in. amaroK infact already beats iTunes at it’s own game and does it far better; all it needs to do is get rid of the XMMS-esk window and the playlist.

Instead, I should be able to play by individual song, album, entire library, artist, or genre just by using a well thought out UI. I should be able to list similar songs, even those that aren’t in my library (amaroK can already do this, but the way it lists the information is funky). The library management functionality should be put first.

Also, amaroK currently has “Your Favorite Tracks”, “Your Newest Tracks”, and “Least Played Tracks” all on one tab, in a scrollable field. This is very hard to use, you have to scroll instead of just going to it. Instead, this should be a set of tabs, (and now that we have more room thanks to getting rid of the playlist) we can move stuff about this song into that space, and have tabs for “Current” and “Lyrics” there instead of cluttering the left side.

The left side, of course, is reserved for managing your entire library. So, the left side has dedicated tabs for “Favorite”, “Newest”, and “Least Played”, and it would also have the “Collection” tab, and the “Files” tab. Since I’m suggesting dropping the playlist altogether, the “Playlists” tab needs to be transformed into something more useful, maybe something just called “Radio”.

And that’s my thoughts on it.

I just had an hour discussion with some KDE developers on #kde-devel about TrollTech‘s dual-licensing of Qt on Windows (see the press release) and for Qtopia (press release). This means it uses the GNU Public License (GPL) for free apps, and Pay-for-it Commercial for closed source-apps.

My personal view is that TrollTech did the right thing. It promotes Free and Open Source (FOSS) applications on Windows and PDAs, but it also allows TT to make money. This money in turn allows TT to hire more coders, and generally produce better code. TT serves as an inroad for money in the FOSS community, and it also serves as inroad for commercial developers on Linux (because Qt is a multi-platform framework and UI toolkit).

Now, the GNOME camp is the competitor to the Qt/K Desktop Environment (KDE) camp. GNOME, and the UI toolkit it uses, GTK use the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL). According to the Free Software Foundation, the GPL is considered “more free” than the LGPL.

The GNOME camp’s biggest gripe against KDE is that it depended on a non-free library, Qt. But thanks to TrollTech, the GNOME camp’s biggest gripe against KDE now is that KDE uses an “even more free” library. (Which puts GNOME in a weird position, since GNOME is the FSF’s poster boy for a free desktop).

Continuing on with my personal view, dual-licensing is the correct way to do things if you’re a business. On one hand, it protects the FOSS community because it is GPL; on the other hand it protects the business model by using the GPL to turn into free source of public relations material and it forces people who actually have money to buy up Qt licenses.

During this discussion, we figured out (within our own opinions, at least), what the most important aspects of the commercial half of the dual-license should be. For our example, lets say Company XYZ owns TheProduct, and Company ABC wants to buy TheProduct. Company ABC is building a closed-source application. Those important aspects go something like this:

1) ABC will have to be restricted from reselling TheProduct, otherwise XYZ doesn’t make money.

2a) ABC will have to be restricted from shipping modified version of TheProduct (seeing as they have the source, they could do this, we just have to license them into a corner so they don’t); restricting them from that prevents them from shipping a botched version of the library, which reflects badly on XYZ. It also prevents ABC from shooting themselves in the foot, which makes them happy, and turns them into a repeat customer.

2b) ABC will be allowed to ship a modified version if they release modifications under the GPL and revert ownership of said changes to XYZ, but also clearly mark said changes to have originated from ABC and not XYZ. XYZ reserves the right to merge said changes, but also reserves the right to not merge said changes.

3) XYZ will provide cryptographically signed binaries of the libraries to ship with the product. Failure to ship product with said binaries is considered a breach of the license. In the event of 2b, XYZ will build and sign new binaries on request.

4) Its probably a good idea to charge ABC by the number of shipped copies.

Now, the reason number 4 is so important is because it prevents large companies (such as Microsoft) from abusing the spirit of the dual-licensing scheme. The more money they stand to make, the more money we stand to make, simple as that.

Lets say Microsoft gets their foot in the door with the FOSS community by releasing Microsoft Word on the Linux desktop. And in this warped reality, they sell millions of copies. That is millions of licenses we’ve sold in addition to Word on Windows and Word on OSX (because TheProduct, as you probably have noticed, is really just a thinly veiled stand-in for Qt). TheProduct would not only be raking in the money, but thanks to Microsoft, it would be used by millions on multiple platforms. Instant inroad for cash into the FOSS community.

Microsoft could, in turn, make a whole desktop out of Qt-based components just from this one application. Your first instinct tells you that this couldn’t happen, but as Bobby Rockers said, “Why not, GNOME made a whole desktop based on an image manipulation program.”

Someone passed me this blog entry about someone trying to use Google Maps to view Area 51. The quality ultimately sucks (as shown here) because Google Maps doesn’t have high resolution shots of this area.

Now, Space Imaging has high quality shots of the area using 1 meter imagery, but they aren’t in color. So, I whipped out Gimp, and rotated, skewed, and stretched the Google Map data so it would fit over the Space Imaging data to show the difference in resolution visually.

Click for full resolution versions.

Craig Baracco over at Craigorian Chant has an article up about the NPR story covering the guilty plea of serial bomber Eric Rudolph in front of the federal court. He brings up an important point,

What struck me about this when listening to an NPR story about Rudolph this weekend is the fact that the coverage of this story does not include the word “terrorist”.

My question for the readers of The Chant, is when should a criminal be described a terrorist? Obviously the term is appropriately applied to members of Al-qaeda, but what about the insurgent forces within Iraq? What about the insurgent forces within Ireland? Do radical Christians deserve the same label as radical Muslims? What about eco-terrorists and drug dealers?

I personally think they all should be considered terrorists. Anyone who kills to instills fear in people who oppose him/her or his/her views is a terrorist. Rudolph clearly did this, and he is correctly labeled as a terrorist. Back during the Atlanta Olympics bombing incident, I clearly remember the media labeling him as a terrorist, and the only reason they aren’t now is because the US government doesn’t want our current image of terrorists (IE, the stereotypical Al-qaeda camel-riding rag-head) diluted.

The White House has spent the last 5 years trying to convince America (and whoever else will listen) that there is only one kind of terrorist, and they all look like the rejects in the Team America movie; they don’t want us to remember that sometimes terrorists are also our fellow Americans, and come in many forms such as the Rudolphs of the world, and CEOs of major corporations, or are elected President.

To quote Apple’s OS X website (specifically, the yellow “New in Tiger” box on the right): “Remappable Modifier Keys: Remap modifiers such as control and caps lock to be super elite.” And one of the screenshots has a transparent terminal.

I’m waiting for the eventual announcement: “New for 10.5: We’ve ported Enlightenment, and are using this as our window manager! Ooh shiney!” Crackrock ahoy!