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Formation of the KDE League
Several folks noted that the KDE team has announced a collaboration
with industry, similiar to the GNOME foundation ... it's called the
KDE League. If only they can get Green Lantern and Aquagirl to join existing members like TrollTech, Corel, HP, IBM, MandrakeSoft,
and SuSE. (Noticably missing from the official press release
are names like Red Hat and VA Linux.)
The Gnome Foundation oversees Gnome development, whereas the KDE League is a single point of contact for marketing: it exists to "provide financial, moral and promotional support to KDE", to quote the PR, and promises to leave development as a freely-coordinated effort of the developers. Both groups are useful entities IMO, although ISTM a bit ironic that the one with reportedly larger market share on the desktop is launching a marketing initiative. :) I am curious as to how the League was formed: were there elections, as for Gnome Foundation and FreeBSD Core Team? There is, unfortunately, no further info on the KDE League's website just yet.
There are two possible ways to compete:
This one could go either way. Remember BSD vs System V, then System V vs OSF, and Open Look vs Motif? All these battles just about killed the Unix market in favor of Windows; fortunately Linux and BSD came along to put new life into Unix.
If the Gnome and KDE folks are interested in way #1, then they will put substantial energy in making sure that KDE apps work well on a Gnome desktop and vice versa, and they will avoid the nasty attacks on the other side we so commonly see Example: when the Gnome Foundation was created it was bitterly attacked by many KDE partisans as something terribly immoral, yet now we see the KDE League, a roughly identical operation. Now, there's nothing wrong with either one, so it was the attacks that were bogus.
Amazon.Com
And you say non-profit IPOs don't make sense!
The GNOME Foundation is governed by a community elected group, which makes decisions over GNOME's direction. The corporations form a separate advisory committee that has no power.
In the KDE League, the corps have equal power to the developers, but the League has no power over the development direction of KDE. It is more of a P.R. campaign, which is still a good idea considering all the questions that were raised by the appearance of all the corps lining up behind GNOME.
You are right, they are not alike at all, and neither are something to be concerned about. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding between the two camps. Some people in KDE circles spread a lot of FUD about the GNOME foundation, and I think it's going to come back to haunt them now.
One of the startup tips in KDE2 recommends trying out UDE. I thought that was pretty cool.
I highly doubt there will be a UDE Clan, though.
Speaking of that, anybody from SGI want to comment on why their best piece of software, their desktop environment, is still closed source? I'll do anything to get that on my Linux box!
Sure, more choice is generally a good thing, but the ongoing farce of GNOME vs. KDE (which is what they seem to be making it into) is a joke that makes Linux look rediculous. There is plenty of room out there for both desktops, yet they each spend as much time playing games of oneupmanship as they do promoting their own product.
/. - the core KDE Team (and the core GNOME Team) has mostly just quietly been hacking away, making the best desktop environment!
What farce are you talking about?
If there is a farce, then it has only been here on
This is not about making GNOME look silly - I bet it is more about promoting KDE to ex. Windows users and others. The more publishty Linux gets, the more KDE (and GNOME) will get - this will give the press a single place to go for information about KDE.
Greetings Joergen
God'damn... Can't you read what is said. The KDE League is NOT like the GNOME Foundation. The GNOME Foundation is a steering comittee that decides in which direction GNOME is going. The KDE League has NOTHING to do with KDE Development, that is clearly said in the press-release. The KDE League is for PR ONLY!!! Please do not fall into assumptions that this is the same as the GNOME Foundation... Could you please change your article?
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\ Christian A Strømmen