“KDE wants to prevent fragmentation of the Linux Desktop market,” stated Olaf Schmidt, a KDE representative in the LSB Workgroup. “Collaboration is currently one of the hot topics in the KDE community, and this is why our participation in the LSB makes a lot of sense.” Other efforts supported by KDE include the OSDL Portland project, which aims to make it easier for applications to integrate well into all Linux distributions and desktops, and freedesktop.org, where KDE cooperates with other open source projects on common, open interfaces.
“KDE has always been a strong supporter of open standards”, Schmidt added. “Our KOffice developers have made key contributions to the OpenDocument standard. Code from Konqueror, our standards compliant web browser, has been adopted by Apple and Nokia. We are also active in the Accessibility Workgroup of the Free Standards Group, where we make Linux more accessible to users both with and without disabilities.”
The LSB Desktop standard ensures that KDE is supported through the inclusion of its foundation library Qt in the specification. Trolltech and KDE are both represented in the LSB Workgroup and will continue to work with the Workgroup to ensure that future products including, but not limited to, KDE itself will meet the requirements for inclusion in subsequent LSB specifications.
“The LSB workgroup is pleased to see the participation in and support for LSB 3.1 from the KDE project,” said Ian Murdock, chief technology officer of the Free Standards Group. “Since our new standard now includes support for desktop libraries, it’s crucial that KDE and other desktop projects participate in the process. We are all working toward the same goal: expansion of applications on the Linux desktop and continued success for Linux. This release is testament that we are well on our way of achieving that goal.”
