What Ever Happened To Tkc?

[koen]

and too many variants in distro.
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And behold the beauty of open source: the distro people can build $app for their distro.

[adf]

I owned 1 tkc app.   a video player . it was ok.  the free competitors ended up being better.  isn't that kinda the whole poi nt  in doing linux (oss)?  If i was simply dying to have commercial software developers associated with my device, I'd have bought an AXim.  
I honestly think tkc was outdone by  cacko, oz and pdaxrom, and commercial or non-commercial aside, they became something of a dinosaur on no basis other than the power of their applications versus the extant alternatives.

[nilch]

If i was simply dying to have commercial software developers associated with my device, I'd have bought an AXim. 
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I do have reservations about such blanket statement regarding OSS ?
Do you mean to say that the Zaurus, in that case, should be exclusive of commercial development and only have non-commercial dev activity (I didn't say open source) associated with it because it has Linux on it ? I would think it would be that it should have open sourced (in spirit) development going for it - be it commercial or non-commercial.

I mean, if we grudge the Axim, and other such closed devices for the reason that it only has paid-for commercial apps available and no (or very few) free apps (or even Open apps), then why do you think developers (commercial) would not have a grudge against the Zaurus as a platform if we only advocate free non-commercial apps (and hence also open) to be developed on it and no commercial dev activity at all to be associated in any way with it. Openness should not exclude commercial dev I believe, otherwise we never get a ecosystem to develop around it.

No wonder this mind-set pushes away the incentive for commercial developers to develop for such open devices. And as much as we fill in the vaccum with open source developers, it neverthless is a loss to the development ecosystem.

adf, now when you say "they became something of a dinosaur on no basis other than the power of their applications versus the extant alternatives" that maybe so and is righly said. If a commercial developer cannot live up to the standards set by the open source community, then so be it ...

[adf]

...but that is generally the theme in commercial software development: build it so it works kinda ok, milk it and charge for bugfixes and use a very restrictive license to try to charge for use as many times as possibe. the motive in commercial development is commerce, you see.....so the software has only to be good enough to sell.  in oss it seems that the motive is either experi.entation or a real interest in function.

this is not to say that there isn't good commercial software, or bad oss software--just that one model seems to me t have a discernable evolutionary advantage.
  Does this mean that I entirely disapproveof people getting paid for software work? of course not  (I even do donations on occasion)--but maybe the current commercial model for development and sale of software packages--the logical underpinnings of which are not and cannot be the sole property of the vendor--is headed the way of the guildhall and the roman legion: quaint, but obsolete.

in our current view of software in commerce--the ms view--we' have to pay a fee to the mason's guild for each stone byuilding we entered we entered.  But this is, of course, absurd. Why should this be an absurd view of a cathedral and a reasonale view of software?

edit:  and I bought the z because it ran linux (didn' know about the sharp software weirdness when I first got involved).  that meant gnu tools gpl and oss ( as well as free)   as far as I knew at the time.  If I had wanted commercial software I really would have bought something that ran windows.  doesn' that seem simple?  next I will buy a neo instaed of an iphone-- for exactly the same reason.  I'll be happy the neo devs were compensated and after i get oe to build my first neo package I'll send OE a dnation.

[Meanie]

...but that is generally the theme in commercial software development: build it so it works kinda ok, milk it and charge for bugfixes and use a very restrictive license to try to charge for use as many times as possibe. the motive in commercial development is commerce, you see.....so the software has only to be good enough to sell.  in oss it seems that the motive is either experi.entation or a real interest in function.

this is not to say that there isn't good commercial software, or bad oss software--just that one model seems to me t have a discernable evolutionary advantage.
  Does this mean that I entirely disapproveof people getting paid for software work? of course not  (I even do donations on occasion)--but maybe the current commercial model for development and sale of software packages--the logical underpinnings of which are not and cannot be the sole property of the vendor--is headed the way of the guildhall and the roman legion: quaint, but obsolete.

in our current view of software in commerce--the ms view--we' have to pay a fee to the mason's guild for each stone byuilding we entered we entered.  But this is, of course, absurd. Why should this be an absurd view of a cathedral and a reasonale view of software?

edit:  and I bought the z because it ran linux (didn' know about the sharp software weirdness when I first got involved).  that meant gnu tools gpl and oss ( as well as free)   as far as I knew at the time.  If I had wanted commercial software I really would have bought something that ran windows.  doesn' that seem simple?  next I will buy a neo instaed of an iphone-- for exactly the same reason.  I'll be happy the neo devs were compensated and after i get oe to build my first neo package I'll send OE a dnation.
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There are of course other models such as the ones used by Sun. One such model is, you get the use the software for free as long as you don't make profit out of it, but if you do, then you ought to pay a small percentage for the software depending on what you make/the size of your user base.  Alternatively, all software is free and opensource, but if you want support, then pay for support, otherwise, fix bugs yourself

[adf]

..and both of the models meanie decribed above are more able  (particularly the 2nd) to encourage rational, effectfive development.  (and keep programmers fed clothed housed, etc)

[harvell]

When I first bought my 5500 a couple of years back I looked at software options and how many companies were making software for it.  I was impressed by TKC's marketing however after buying 5 apps eg: Calendar, Kapitol, ToDo, Memo, and some other one that I don't use now.  Actually I don't use any now.  At the time these were better than the default sharp rom until KO/PI came out.  Now I like that better than Outlook.  

Commercial apps are great because you get a group of programmers that want to get paid and produce an app that is stable.  Usually they will work out bugs and patch bugs to make their product sell more.  A commercial app would also have to keep improving things in order to gain the interest of the public (something TKC never followed up with).  

Open source is great and visionary however the group of programmers always want to work on the latest coolest things and never want to solidify things.  Unless it's a huge project with a lot of resources most of the bugs get inherited to later versions.  Open source guys usually start off a project for two things: To have an app than supports their needs and for recognition.  Once in a while the vision would be so great that a lot of people tie into it and it explodes.  One thing that sucks with open source is that sometimes really great projects die because their is no financial interest tied with it (hopefully that's not what happened to the PI projects).

[Ragnorok]

At the time these were better than the default sharp rom until KO/PI came out.[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150843\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

- This is why I stopped using tkc ... it was better than Sharp, but significantly inferior to KDEPIM.  (shrug)  I sold my rights to the tkc products I own (calender, address, paint) with Cricket, not even knowing if they would run on Hiro, because I'd already stopped using them, anyway.
- Shawn was also very unresponsive to my queries about performance.  I had 700 entries in my address book and it took tckAddress nearly a full minute to load.  It had no way to apply categories to groups of entries ... each entry had to be edited individually, and each edit took nearly a full minute to save.  It was quite frankly so hideous that I'd already gone back to Sharp because it would at least load and run more responsively.
- KDEPIM solved all that.  It loads and responds just fine, and Hiro has enough RAM to fastload KOPI & KAPI and still be able to run two or three other apps.  I think tkc had a great idea, but its implementation was a bit far off the mark.

[harvell]

Hear... hear.... and I still use KO/PI