KDE Founder Receives Highest German Honor 142
Jiilik Oiolosse writes "KDE founder Matthias Ettrich was decorated today with the German Federal Cross of Merit for his contributions to Free Software. The Federal Cross of Merit is both the most prestigious as well as the only general decoration awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is awarded by the Federal President for outstanding achievements in the political, economic, cultural, and other fields. Matthias was awarded the medal in recognition of his work spurring innovation and spreading knowledge for the common good."
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Re:Ha (Score:5, Insightful)
Take THAT gnome!
Except if it wasn't for GNOME Qt would still be proprietary. It's easy to neglect the impacts OSS projects have on eachother, even if they don't share one single row of code.
Re:Ha (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ha (Score:5, Funny)
Will Gnome 3 link to Mono? (Score:4, Insightful)
and we have all seen what happened to that GNU created hero (!) after he went to Novell. Do you really want to raise this "proprietary" crap for sure? Even GNU Debian Linux (there is a reason for that name) got infected by his wannabe framework (!) because of some trivial note taking application.
Now multi billion mobile/services giant Nokia, who doesn't need money like poor Trolltech has made the project free/GPL. I don't see any "Qt is proprietary" trolls cheering. It was so wrong to ask for money while companies making millions/billions with your full fledged framework isn't it? For example, Google, Adobe, Last.fm doesn't need to pay?
GNU's biggest mistake was making that trojan guy a hero while he didn't deserve it. He was just another person, a MS reject who did 1000th clone of Norton Commander, that is all.
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> Except if it wasn't for GNOME Qt would still be proprietary.
Speculation. It might have happened anyways. It might even have happened sooner if GNOME wasn't around to steal the Linux desktop spotlight. Or someone might have built a Free clone of the Qt API.
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You mean the Harmony Project? Which probably was the cause of QT eventually going GPL? (not LGPL..)
IMHO, KDE depending on QT was a bad decision. It ignored the fatal flaws in the licensing, until the eventual cooperation of TrollTech. It led to the creation of Mandrake (because Redhat wouldn't touch QT), the fracturing of the Linux desktop (Debian wouldn't touch QT either) and may very well have set back the Linux Desktop long enough that it will never be relevant.
It's a long and messy history. It w
Re:Ha (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, Miguel de Icaza has already received one of the highest American honors: a corporate vice-presidency.
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He also got the Golden Wall and Fence medal from Ballmare. For supporting windows and gates.
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Except US Corporate titles (except CEO) are not worth the paper they are printed on.
Mercy (Score:2)
Gnome doesn't need any more beating while that MS employee is still in the project itself.
His name is Mark Owen methinks ... (Score:2)
Kongratulations! (Score:5, Funny)
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All the kommedians out of work, and you had to start.
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Still no KDE User Network Tool...
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Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Posted from Konqueror.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
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Well it's Bundesverdienstkreuz [wikipedia.org]
Runner up (Score:5, Funny)
He deserves it more than Obama / Gore do. (Score:2)
And, I'm not saying that just because I happen to be a Republican...
I'm saying that, as, a practical matter of bringing about world peace, its awfully hard to hate the Germans when they've done such a wonderful job through the years with KDE and KDevelop. There's a world peace argument to be made for that. How many hundreds of thousands of people use KDE?
Now, can they finish KDevelop 4, PLEASE. :-)
Re:He deserves it more than Obama / Gore do. (Score:4, Insightful)
And, I'm not saying that just because I happen to be a Republican...
This is true. Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize was an absolute farce, and you could tell that he knew that himself.
I don't view Obama as a monster, but he is no saviour, and no Messiah either.
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Or because they gave it to him with the idea to put some kind of pressure on him to actually do something?
I fully agree that it was questionable. But hopefully it'll work out for a greater good.
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Wait... state the obvious club is room 206?
...
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no you mean : Konsole-ation.
It stands to reason (Score:1, Insightful)
If this is the only general award given by the German government that it is also the least prestigious, too?
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If this is the only general award given by the German government that it is also the least prestigious, too?
Yes, it is.
There are, however, six different classes, so there is an "most" and "least" prestigious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Cross_of_Merit
3k to 5k decorations given each year, a total of 240k from 1951 (wikipedia).
Nonetheless: Kongrats to him!!
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It seems like he got the Verdienstmedaille (Medal of Merit), not one of the Crosses.
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you can see on the photo that he is wearing this one: http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Bundes-Verdienstmedaille.JPG&filetimestamp=20090210164105 [wikipedia.org]
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No, the Germans named all their awards the same and make a difference just by the level. The Federal Cross of Merit thus has nine levels. (I am still trying to find out which level he got.)
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Typically, he would get the Verdienstkreuz am Bande [wikipedia.org], which is the second lowest level.
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Scratch that. As another commenter mentioned, judging by the photo it looks like the Verdienstmedaille.
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KDE KBE (Score:1)
If only he were from a Commonwealth country, then he could be made a KBE.
- RG>
Well, there ARE different classes of the Cross (Score:1, Insightful)
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I guess the highest level of honour goes to people like Tim Berners-Lee.
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According to the article in the German Wikipedia, first-time receivers *never* receive a higher rank than the second-lowest one, except of heads of states. So it's still quite an achievement.
Wait, what? (Score:4, Funny)
The Federal Cross of Merit is both the most prestigious as well as the only general decoration awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany.
Wouldn't that also make it the least prestigious general decoration?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't that also make it the least prestigious general decoration?
Better than a coat of paint.
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It is the least prestigious.. (Score:5, Informative)
There are several classes of the Cross of Merit [wikipedia.org] and from the picture it looks like he was awarded the "Medal of Merit", i.e. the lowest one.
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There is a lie in every slashdot summary, its like its a natural law or something.
Re:It is the least prestigious.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it is the "least prestigious" form of the "most prestigious" decoration. There are several classes of the Cross of Merit [wikipedia.org] and from the picture it looks like he was awarded the "Medal of Merit", i.e. the lowest one.
It is the lowest class - but the lower classes are way more prestigious, since the highest classes are only awarded to politicians and their personal friends (rather than people of merit)...
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The Federal Cross of Merit is both the most prestigious as well as the only general decoration awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany.
Wouldn't that also make it the least prestigious general decoration?
Yeah, that's worded weirdly.
It is the only federal award, making it the most prestigious amongst all (federal + non-federal - there's lots of those) official German state awards.
It has multiple classes however, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Cross_of_Merit [wikipedia.org] I can't find any reference to which
one was awarded to Mr. Ettrich - I'd suspect it to be one of the not-so-high ones however.
He, and many others, deserve it (Score:3, Insightful)
Good (Score:2)
Good - What a nice recognition for hard work in public service.
The bad news (Score:3, Funny)
He received it as a plasmoid and it crashed his desktop. But it looks nice.
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And just as most plasmoids, it's a completely useless piece of decoration.
But at least the UI is simple. And that is all that counts, right? ;)
On the other side of the fence (Score:4, Funny)
On other unrelated news, Miguel de Icaza was given the Golden Windows medal by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, for his outstanding job at undermining Free Software principles, and destroying Linux from within.
Congratulations Matthias (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot humor aside for a moment, it's truly a great honour to be recognized by one's country, and Matthias ought to be proud of the accomplishments of himself and the KDE community.
Keep up the good work Matthias and all the KDE folks. You deserve this, and your efforts are appreciated (though sorry, slashdot doesn't give out Crosses of Merit, yet)
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Wow, the culture must be very different from U.S. (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of ironic, given, umm, World War II and stuff, which country seems more free now.
But that represents such a freer mindset than exists in the USA. I can't imagine in my wildest dreams the highest national medal of the US going to a libre software person. It would take Linus Torvalds being elected our President ... and even then, he'd have no way to push this past Congress.
Shh! Don't mention the flamewar! (Score:1, Funny)
I know mailservers that died in the great flamewar of '98. I think they are still a bit sensitive about it.
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Don't get too comfortable with that Idea, we just finished 11 years of governments that brought us the RFID chip in the passport, finger prints in passports, a half year of storing of all connection data, and who tried to bring us the infamous "stop" sign for censoring the Internet.
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> Kind of ironic, given, umm, World War II and stuff, which country seems more free now.
World War II has been discussed to death, and it gets boring. It's just 12 damn years out of 1200 of German history. Besides of the fact that we will (because of these 12 years) never allow Austrians to make politics here again, I find the Weimar Republic, the imperial period and the troublesome centuries that led to them much more interesting in regards to how we attained our freedom oriented mindset. These were the
For me, there are no Big *Two.* (Score:4, Informative)
Although I don't normally use the Big Two, when I have, the only positive experiences I've ever had, have been with KDE.
Despite its' bloat, the system is absolutely gorgeous visually, and to my mind has been ahead of XP in that department almost since its' inception. Konqueror is also the single most versatile and powerful file manager that I've ever used. Local file management and remote web browsing in two panes of the same window are awesome, but it is still more versatile than IE as well, in terms of the number of different modes, and the integration with Konsole that it allows.
Although it isn't much, KDE is also closer in design terms to the UNIX philosophy as well; the different parts are more cleanly encapsulated than GNOME, and it's more self-contained, as well.
It isn't the more popular of the two major DEs, presumably due to not being Stallman-approved for the entirety of its' history...but it is overwhelmingly the better one.
Re:For me, there are no Big *Two.* (Score:4, Interesting)
Although it isn't much, KDE is also closer in design terms to the UNIX philosophy as well; the different parts are more cleanly encapsulated than GNOME, and it's more self-contained, as well.
On the other hand, if you look at it from a developer's side, GTKMM [gtkmm.org] (the C++ interface of GTK) might be closer to the UNIX philosophy of "do one thing only, and do that right". While Qt reinvents the wheel so many times, by using its own classes for many things, like QString or QThread, or by implementing its own slot & signal system with a C++ preprocessor, GTKMM uses standard and existing libraries wherever possible.
Qt: QString, QList, QVector
GTKMM: std::string, std::list, std::vector
Qt: Signal handling with macros and its own custom C++ preprocessor
GTKMM: libsigc++, template-based signal handling
Of course that's just one way of looking at it but I wouldn't call any of the two less close to the UNIX philosophy. On the end user's side, both have an abstract VFS to file management on remote resources, etc...
That said, kongratulations, Matthias! I hope this award encourages others to dedicate their time for the greater good.
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Re:For me, there are no Big *Two.* (Score:5, Informative)
> While Qt reinvents the wheel so many times, by using its own classes
> for many things, like QString or QThread, or by implementing its own
> slot & signal system with a C++ preprocessor
They started writing Qt in 1991. I don't know about you, but I was writing C++ on Linux/Unix throughout the 90's, and if you weren't reinventing the wheel and writing your own class libraries, you were either paying a lot of cash for someone else's toolkit or you weren't writing portable code.
I'm sure the situation has improved immensely, but old habits like that...
c.
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KDE 4 has limited the usefulness of Konqueror in favour of Dolphin. KDE being open source, this will certainly improve over time, but I am running 4.3.2 and some pills are still hard to swallow.
Fwiw, my gf and my work boxes run 3.5.10 and will unfortunately continue to do so for some time.
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Fwiw, my gf and my work boxes run 3.5.10
Dude. You just referred to your computer as your girlfriend. In public. That's too geeky, even by my standards.
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That, or you misunderstood what I said on purpose, disregarding both context and the options the English grammar gives me.
That's too geeky, even by my standards.
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If I had points, you'd get +1, Funny; although the GP would probably think you deserve -1, Troll. ;)
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No, I got the joke. Seems he didn't get/like my counter, though :p
which accent? (Score:2)
I wonder if he used his British accent to accept this award?
Germany's Greatest Honor (Score:2)
I thought Germany's greatest honor was meeting David Hasselhoff.
How prestigious can the award be? (Score:2)
Wouldn't Obama be more deserving? He did speak in Berlin once.
Thank you ... (Score:3)
Mattias
Thank you and the entire KDE team for a nice desktop environment. Your vision and dedication deserves this award.
My desktop has been KDE for a several years, and I always like it. The early KDE4 in Kubuntu 9.04 was fragile and broken in many ways. I almost gave up on it, but decided to give it a shot in the one week old Kubuntu 9.10 (karmic) which has KDE 4.3.2. I can say it is usable again, and I am exploring the new features and liking them.
Thanks (Score:1)
After reading many comments on here, I've got to wonder if some will complain just for the sake of complaining. Blah, blah, blah, KDE wasn't totally free, Blah, blah, blah, KDE didn't do this or that ..... who cares already that's the past, how about focusing on what KDE is nowadays. The most recent version is very usable, and I would rate it as one of the best desktops to use.
Maybe AmaroK can be fixed now :-) (Score:2)
Congrats.
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There was a real choice of FOSS toolkits back then?
There was wxWidgets, plus several other ones.
But he shouldn't have picked C++ in the first place.
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"I think KDE and Gnome together really screwed the community by picking such bad languages and platforms"
Are you a fucking retard? C and C++ are bad languages??
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pls dun feed th trolls ty hth hand
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Well, one of them is. (It's the one with the OO strap-on, of course.) High-level programming needn't necessarily be LISP, but can at least be less sucky than C++.
C, OTOH, is a perfectly good systems language; I'm with you there. He is a fucking retard.
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Are you a fucking retard? C and C++ are bad languages??
Only from an engineering and systems design point of view. Otherwise they're fine.
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And KDE's pick of a non-FOSS toolkit to build on was a grave error that could have done enormous damage.
Its' lack of Stallman's approval has enormously harmed KDE's degree of uptake and use, yes.
I continue to pray for the end of the Free Software Foundation. If Stallman and its' other members truly wanted to help their fellow man at this point, they would voluntarily dissolve the organisation, and withdraw into anonymity.
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Because the FSF causes a lot of division. I've suggested BSD licensed software in different forms here before, and any posts which do so immediately get modded down.
Stallman's followers are paranoid about ensuring that nobody uses any FOSS under any license other than the GPL. Bradley Kuhn has said that he thinks the GPL is the only FOSS license that should exist.
Stallman has exceptionally narrow ideas about the way things should be, and anyone who disagrees with said ideas, gets shouted down, harassed, c
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KDE was founded by open sourcers, not free software evangelists, as such, it was founded on a pragmatic base. Qt was one of the best GUI toolkits at the time and KDE got a free-as-in-beer deal to use it, the devs acknowledged that the whole wasn't open but (shock, horror) they thought producing a working Desktop Environment to be more important then rewriting Qt from scratch (that was on a roadmap I believe, but it was low priority). GNOME came into existence by the Free Software people who couldn't bare ha
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People always bitch about C++ but that language is ultimately as messy or clean as you make it (Don't do stupid crap, use simpler constructs when they're good enough)
This is what it comes down to with any language that doesn't deliberately limit the coder with enforced abstraction. Just do not do retarded stuff. And don't let terrible programmers use languages that give them low-level control. Even better - don't let terrible programmers write programs.
On the topic of the Mr Ettritch, well I think that's pretty cool. Nice to hear a story about someone dedicating years of effort to something constructive and getting recognition from authorities outside his field. I us
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This is what it comes down to with any language that doesn't deliberately limit the coder with enforced abstraction. Just do not do retarded stuff. And don't let terrible programmers use languages that give them low-level control. Even better - don't let terrible programmers write programs.
Ok, so now we're down to about me and 99 other programmers being allowed to program. What shall we do now? What's that? Raise our rates??? Wellll ok then!
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This is what it comes down to with any language that doesn't deliberately limit the coder with enforced abstraction.
Nonsense. The problem with C++ is not that it provides access to unsafe features (lots of languages do that), it's that it doesn't separate unsafe from safe features.
Even better - don't let terrible programmers write programs.
Anybody who thinks they can handle C/C++ is a terrible programmer.
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KDE was founded by open sourcers, not free software evangelists, as such, it was founded on a pragmatic base. Qt was one of the best GUI toolkits at the time and KDE got a free-as-in-beer deal to use it,
There was also wxWidgets (wxWindows), it was quite usable and IIRC LGPL and with Lyx Mr Ettritch, also choose the non-free XForms toolkit. In that sense it's quite ironic that he gets a medal for his contribution to free software. That aside and although I don't use it, KDE is certainly a nice piece of work and nowadays, with all the licensing issues resolved, there's nothing more to complain about. Congratulations to Mr. Ettritch!
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KDE was founded by open sourcers, not free software evangelists, as such, it was founded on a pragmatic baseGNOME came into existence by the Free Software people who couldn't bare having proprietary code touching their hardware, not exactly the most compelling reason to start a DE project.
Choosing a QPL-licensed toolkit wasn't pragmatic, it was idiotic. The QPL/GPL dual license meant that developing commercial Linux desktop apps cost a lot of money, while developing for Microsoft and Macintosh was nearly f
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Riviera [wikipedia.org]
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I didn't even read what I was pasting there. Shows you how relevant the Simpsons are the me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Hutz [wikipedia.org]
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Ah , Godwin's Law
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Arschloch.
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Heil Hitler
Heil ihn doch selbst!
(German joke)
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Ugh, you forgot the verb, the period and captitalization of two words.
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Several old features are missing on the desktop, but there have been no major features removed from Konqueror (maybe you are missing a specific kpart/view?). Just replace dolphin with konqueror for webbrowsing (using the File Management profile of course), and you will avoid the "tuna bait". On the other hand Dolphin is just a specialized konqueror for file management, and uses the same KParts as Konqueror.