Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 01, 2006 11:57 PM
Tom,
You are a gentleman and I hope that this initiative succeeds.
However, two historical things need to be remebered:
1) The gnome project was started because KDE's development toolkit wasn't under the GPL. Now that it is, Gnome advocates say that that is bad too because, get this, proprietary software development houses would have to subsidize the building of free software by paying for the toolkit when they want to sell proprietary software. Go figure, huh?
2) Much of the acrimony between the projects is the direct result of the many falsehoods spread by the ximian monkeys. I personally have attended two talks in which Miguel de Icaza spent over 45 minutes demonizing the KDE desktop and its developers. Spreading falsehoods and innuendo helps no one.
In summary, it is nice to see that cooler heads seem to be prevailing as a new generation replaces the tired old-guard and it is great to see efforts such as this one. I just hope that we do not ever have to hear or see some of the dirty tricks and propaganda that we have witnessed before.
I don't claim that KDE is guilt-free either. I am sure that there have been bad apples in that project too, but my experience with KDE people has been that they have a healthier attitude of the free desktop, one which is not based on a zero-sum understanding of the free desktop game.
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A historical note
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 01, 2006 11:57 PMYou are a gentleman and I hope that this initiative succeeds.
However, two historical things need to be remebered:
1) The gnome project was started because KDE's development toolkit wasn't under the GPL. Now that it is, Gnome advocates say that that is bad too because, get this, proprietary software development houses would have to subsidize the building of free software by paying for the toolkit when they want to sell proprietary software. Go figure, huh?
2) Much of the acrimony between the projects is the direct result of the many falsehoods spread by the ximian monkeys. I personally have attended two talks in which Miguel de Icaza spent over 45 minutes demonizing the KDE desktop and its developers. Spreading falsehoods and innuendo helps no one.
In summary, it is nice to see that cooler heads seem to be prevailing as a new generation replaces the tired old-guard and it is great to see efforts such as this one. I just hope that we do not ever have to hear or see some of the dirty tricks and propaganda that we have witnessed before.
I don't claim that KDE is guilt-free either. I am sure that there have been bad apples in that project too, but my experience with KDE people has been that they have a healthier attitude of the free desktop, one which is not based on a zero-sum understanding of the free desktop game.
Good day
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