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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."
He explained his reasons for opposing KDE. As you even said in your summation, it had nothing to do with who was in charge and everything to do with the license. The license has since changed, so there is no more need to oppose KDE.
People who assume his attack on the license was an attack on the people who chose to use that license are the ones who come off as ideologues.
Nope, no sig
Flamewars like the Gnome/KDE one have always been a side-effect on free projects that have the same final purpose (and on free projects in general ;), but it's true that the rivality between developpers of such important components has to disappear. The idea is good, and given its originator it may have a considerable impact on future GUI development aims.
;)
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But I'm not quite sure if a compatible theme engine is the way to go... Many people still consider themed desktops as a waste of time and space, and sometimes you can find really awful things on themes.org
Another direction may be the component object model itself. There has been, IIRC, at least one attempt to start an uniform interface between ORBIT and the KDE object model, and others may be under way.
IMHO, this would be a much better challenge for Gnome/KDE integrators, and provide a broader signal to the GUI community.
Microsoft has made COM first, then made XP skinnable. Of course, the Linux themes.org effect was not present then (IIRC), and maybe it was sheer luck. It worked for them anyway.
But I'll sure fancy some skinnable icons while drag/dropping objects between Gnome and KDE apps
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
RMS didn't like KDE because it was not "free" -- and in fact, in his opinion, it's position was threatening Free Software in general (it undermined the GPL, it took people away from developing Free alternatives, etc). So he argued against KDE, in favor of GNOME, a truely Free alternative.
KDE is now Free, in part because of serious amounts of lobbying by the Free Software Community, including RMS. KDE is no longer the bad guy, RMS no longer has a beef with KDE.
Now that the "Free KDE" battle is over, RMS is now saying "Um guys... we won -- ALL of us (KDE and GNOME) won, last year. It's time, past time, to stop sabre-rattling at each other". Since Qt became GPL-compatable, I haven't seen RMS stoking the GNOME v. KDE fires. Now he's trying to quench the GNOME v. KDE fires, because leaving them smouldering is bad for Free Software in general.
Think about it. Compare to 'windows' in its simplicity if you like. We want to create a unified GNU/Linux desktop operating system and not play around with fancy names. (Designed for X Windows, anyone? :-)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Why?
Nobody is suggesting anyone be locked into these. Nobody is suggesting these be graven into stone never to become v.2 as progress marches on.
What this would do would be provide a common basis for new folks, a baseline for support folks, a universal look for screen-shots and documentation. If along the way some solid UI design were applied, usability testing done and minimal esthetics incorporated then so much the better.
Tweak away, replace, bend, fold, spindle, mutilate. But at least folks who are bewildered and lost could go to a common default and see something reasonable and trivially relate it to the documention or support folks. A simple menu option of "Default" would do wonders and all the better that it be consistant across toolkits.
Of course the next question is "What?" Here's where I think a good process of involving folks who are knowledgable in this area along with things like testing and feedback and skills in UI-standards-making would be incredibly valuable. Nothing against the coders but frankly, and many would agree, many desktops today are bad Windows reimplementations, wannabe-MacOS X looks or terrible pistaches of any number of good-ideas-running-into-eachother. A committee of KDE and Gnome AND others working on a timeline with a budget and a set of goals and opportunity for community feedback would be ideal, something with conflict-resolution built in from the beginning.
And if it stinks up the place it gets ignored. Or fixed in v.2. But at least we'll have taken the chance of a basic common UI gtting a shot and possibly accruing the benefits that would accrue from such. As for those looking to use something different, more innovative, more complex, more suited to them - go right ahead.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.