Price starts at €999 and releases in April, and will come with Plasma 6.
The KDE Plasma 6 open-source desktop environment
Makes me wonder, are there closed-source desktop environments for Linux?
You got me curious. I found this.
“An example includes CDE (Common Desktop Environment), which was proprietary until 2012 before it was open-sourced. CDE was used in commercial UNIX versions like Solaris (before it became open source as OpenSolaris) and HP-UX.”
Android? It’s not wholly closed source similar to RedHat they’ve got closed source elements while using open source elements.
Linux and its kernel are based on GPL and so to distribute something using it would require a compatible license. That means a full distro can’t be anything but open source and actually be distributed in free or paid versions. That doesn’t mean there aren’t closed source interfaces being used personally or undistributed.
MaXX Desktop. A (authorized) clone of SGI’s desktop environment, the developer is trying to make it open-sourced but due to some contractual agreement he has to talk with HPE (which currently holds SGI assets and rights) first and make a new contract, at least this is what he said AFAIK.
It’s a good question. I don’t think there are any widely used ones, but I’d bet there are a few running around for internal use.
I think that due to the nature of Linux in general the only ways to have a successful proprietary software package is by being a hardware vendor, owning a whole format that is widely used and needs to be licensed, or having pretty serious multiplatform support. Desktop environments don’t really fall under these.
But I could be way the hell off the mark. I’m just a rambling drunk.
