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Five Years of KDE

Posted by michael on from the birthdays-for-everyone dept.

Jacek Fedorynski writes: "Looks like KDE is five years old. Five years seems like a lot of time but just look how much they've achieved in this time." I think the hard part is just beginning - KDE has got all the basics down, and now they have to resist adding too much more crap.

1 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. A great example of an RMS witch-hunt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is not a flame, not a troll, just the sad truth.

    A point that needs to be raised is that all this was achieved in the face of possibly the nastiest episode in the history of free software; the FUD spread by GPL fanatics about the QT licence.

    Gnome was founded by said fanatics for one reason and one reason only - to squash KDE, the best thing that had ever happened to desktop Linux. Microsoft must have been laughing their heads off...

    And let's not forget that when Trolltech finally GPL'd the QT library RMS in one of the most arrogant pieces I've ever seen graciously granted "forgiveness" to the KDE team for unspecified breaches of the GPL that *may* have happened and then ended with "Go Gnome!.

    Five years on KDE continues to bring out with almost military precision new releases. Despite vastly greater resources thrown at, Gnome 2.0x is as far off as ever, and Gnome remains a pretty but unstable desktop with some poorly-integrated GTK apps that have been retrospectively given the Gnome imprimateur.

    Ironic, innit, that the only reason Gnome is still going is because the US suits who back it prefer LGPL to GPL - ie our noble FSF clacque who dumped on KDE using the GPL are quite happy to use a less free licence.

    Anyway, as a usable desktop KDE is way out of front. Gnome is there for wannabe hackers who can't stomach the discipline of C++ and ideological fanatics. And those who want to stay in the perfection of eternal beta-land.

    KDE shows what can be done with limited resources and a proper design and project plan

    GNOME shows what happens when large amounts of resources are pissed up against the wall to make up for lack of said design and project planning.

    KDE = Konqueror
    GNOME = Mozilla

    KDE = results
    GNOME = vapourware