>
> GNOME at the forum
>
> Miguel de Icaza: Bill Gates's worst nightmare?
>
> Summary
> In Joe Barr's second dispatch from the Open Source Forum in Austin,
> TX, LinuxWorld's controversial columnist reports on GNOME's efforts
> to provide flicker-free desktops to the worldwide Linux community.
> (700 words)
>
> By [21]Joe Barr
> B ill Gates used to work his troops up into a frenzy by talking about
> the kid who was "out there coding in his garage," writing a
> Windows-killer. Mister Gates, meet Miguel de Icaza. He may be the
> bogeyman who's been giving you those nightmares.
>
> [miguel_sml.jpg]
> Miguel de Icaza
>
> Miguel is the coordinator of the GNOME (GNU network object model
> environment) Project, an ambitious undertaking to bring the best of
> object-oriented design and development to Linux. Quite frankly, he
> looks too young for the task -- but if you spend a little time
> listening to him, you'll come away convinced that he is just right for
> the job. At a technical track session at the ZD Open Source Forum
> Thursday afternoon, a roomful of people who listened to his
> presentation on GNOME walked off with just that feeling.
>
> de Icaza is an entertaining, high-energy speaker -- his quickness of
> mind and good humor both lend themselves to public speaking. Despite
> the usual minor problems and technical glitches, de Icaza kept the
> presentation moving.
>
> He seemed to feel like he was the only dweeb in a roomful of suits and
> managers, and that he was surrounded by Windows users. In order to
> accommodate this perceived audience, he gave a two-minute executive
> summary at the start ("It's free and it makes Linux easy to use"), and
> then told everyone they were free to leave. Of course no one did.
>
> The next few minutes were given over to an explanation of the Free
> Software Foundation's GNU project in particular, and free software in
> general. His talk started to warm up as he began to explain a little
> about CORBA and its implementation in GNOME. The further he moved away
> from a business case or politically correct licensing, the more
> animated and enthusiastic he became.
>
> This obviously very bright young man leads a group of about 300
> developers around the world who are working on GNOME. Red Hat provides
> seven full-time programmers (Miguel explained that the volunteers get
> to code the fun bits, and the paid staff has to do all the boring
> coding that nobody else wants to do) and a server for the source code
> at its headquarters in Raleigh. Miguel stresses, however, that he does
> not work for Red Hat. He is an employee of the Instituto de Ciencias
> Nucleares (Institute for Nuclear Sciences) at the Universidad Nacional
> Aut�noma de M�xico.
>
> Miguel was a Linux hacker (hacker being a complimentary term in this
> context) involved in porting Linux to SPARC before he started working
> on GNOME. Unlike many of his fellow hackers -- especially those in the
> Linux community -- Miguel has his own opinions about Microsoft, and
> they aren't wholly negative.
>
> He feels that Microsoft has done a lot of things right in Active X and
> DCOM. It's done a lot stupid things, as well, but he isn't concerned
> with them. He just wants to bring the best there is out there to
> GNOME, and if that means copying some of what Microsoft has done with
> component and embedded component technology, then that's fine with
> him.
>
> As he showed off some of his work, such as the GNUmeric spreadsheet,
> his pride in what has been accomplished was evident. "Our spreadsheet
> doesn't flicker," he said. "Excel has some flicker." He had admitted
> prior to the presentation that he copied Excel functionality in
> building GNUmeric. But he obviously enjoys the fact that his product
> is flicker-free while Excel isn't. Mr. Gates might recognize this as a
> demonstration of his own "embrace and extend" methodology.
>
> Miguel told a brief story about a friend of his who had once talked
> with Bill Gates as the Microsoft head proudly described the enormous
> amount of money and effort his company was putting into the
> internationlization of Windows. Miguel then explained that GNOME was
> doing the same thing. For free. And usually overnight.
>
> The allocated time for the session ran out before Miguel's
> presentation did, and he could have easily gone on for another hour.
> But after a very brisk round of applause as he closed, there was a cry
> of, "Oh, my God! I forgot to show you this!" What followed was a
> demonstration of some of the antialiased graphics currently under
> development, which completely wowed the crowd. Oohs and ahs broke out
> all over the room.
>
> Keep an eye on Miguel and the whole GNOME team. You can bet your
> bottom dollar that Bill Gates is. [dingbat.gif]
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