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Richard Stallman On KDE/GNOME Cooperation
Karma Sucks writes: "For the first time that I remember, RMS is encouraging collaboration between the GNOME and KDE projects. He offers a concrete idea: Unifying the themes between KDE and GNOME. Matthias Ettrich once went far enough to propose a default unified 'Linux' theme that both Qt and GTK+ could support."
I think there are flying pigs somewhere. Hell has definitely become a ski resort. RMS conceding a point. Wow. Will wonders never cease?
Joe Carnes
From RMS's message:
The ill feelings that linger between GNOME developers and KDE developers are not good for the community, and it is very useful to help calm the antagonism.
The only reason there are ill feelings is because of RMS's jihad. He's right in that they are bad, yet he continues to provoke them, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Anything that's not GPVed is fair game for RMS's blind, unfeeling hatred.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
When Qt didn't use my specific licence, KDE was a danger to the community.
He could have at least read the previous licences that were not the GPL, but that would have been a waste of his time - anything that he isn't in control of is a danger. Now at least he can focus on real problems instead of inventing a bogeyman.
I admire his effort to reconcile the emnity that he helped to stir up (and has almost entirely disappeared anyway), but I don't admire the way he tries to justify what he did in the same message - he has to point out that they were a danger and he saved the world from a bunch of guys from Norway that would let you look at and change their source code. This "we won, lets work with KDE" message may have been appropriate within a year or two of Qt going GPL, but now it just looks like he's trying to remind the world of a personal victory (athough I'm sure other less stubborn people were the ones that convinced Troll that they could GPL Qt and still get enough money to eat).
This is an opinion. He wrote what he wrote and he knows why, I can only assume and point out my assumptions, and I'll keep doing it for as long as he wants to be in charge of other peoples projects. Perhaps Gnome and KDE should work together on some things, but I think they should both remain indepenant in their core projects. I don't think a monoculture is the way to go, or even identical look and feel (the suggestion by RMS of compatable themes).
Why does everyone quote Stallan? He's a hothead who would rather quibble than write code. The best thing would be to ignore this man. I think free software under the GPL license is a good idea and has many proper applications, but why do we care about Stallman's latest petty outburst?
Admire people not for their big mouths, but for their merits.
Okay, use Windows :)