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."

Comments

Forget Themes: Make the Clipboards compatible

[rjamestaylor]

I use KDE but prefer Mozilla. I am *sick* of the incompatible clipboards that KDE/GTK use. As a matter of fact, I just complained to my co-worker about this and said, "This is why a monopoly is a good thing: someone to declare 'clipboard functions work this way or no way'". Damn I hate this.

Re:Forget Themes: Make the Clipboards compatible

[forgoil]

You have pinpointed the absolutely biggest strength with Windows. You will always have the same controls, things will be where you assume them to be, the clipboard will work, COM works, DirectX works, there is one win32(64) etc etc etc.

So how come diversity is bad in this case? Because it's confusing and counterproductive. It uses a lot of development time that could have been better spent on one better solution that is taken to a mature state.

If KDE/Gnome wants to make certain protocols etc comming, that's nice as long as nobody is left out. But I would never accept two desktopsystems on my computer. I'd rather see more work on KDE/QT.

If you want Linux to be sold with home computers, this is what you need:

1. One desktop with a good set of standard applications and tools
2. A good office suite
3. Good support 24/7 that you can trust
4. A much better packaged product
5. All subsystems should have the same release proceedueres as KDE, this more than anything includes the kernel. It absolutely has to be stable and be as free from bugs and holes as possible at each release point. The system won't be updated if it requires compiling the kernel and configing it.
6. A dead simple upgrade/patch system. Use Konqi, have a little blinking thing on the screen saying "new stuff" and make everything upgradable.
7. Kill off all diversity in formats for configuration files, add a reposatory (done the right way, think of it as a database. And put everything in files instead of one huge one, it forced me to reinstall my XP, pissed me off to no ends) and make it simply to configure. If I know what I want to change I shouldn't have to read the help.
8. Write help files for everything in the system. And that includes everything from "how do I set the keyboard to Swedish" to "I want to know what this obscure error message from g++ means".

There you go, there you have a list. A lot of the ground work is done, and some of the work is being done as I sit here and wriet. But now it just requires more work, people disagreeing, people agreeing and much much more work (see why we don't want five more GUI systems etc etc).

See it as a MacOS X killer if you want to ^_^ Heck, I wished I had time to do this myself. Guess you should mail me if you can muster a 1,000 coders, including the kernel and KDE people. Should sell it (and support people) to Compaq, HP, Dell, etc to include in their new spiffy computers. Including a DVD with all the binaries and source (eat that M$!).

Re:Forget Themes: Make the Clipboards compatible

[grungeKid]

Actually, the X has a fairly sophisticated clipboard
model, maybe a little bit too sophisticated. Hence it has traditionally been poorly understood and badly implemented in apps and toolkit.

Gnome does the Right Thing with respect to clipboards, while QT2/KDE2 uses a more limited clipboard model. The good news is that QT3 and thereby KDE3 will do the Right Think and therefore interoperate a lot better with Gnome (as well as properly written X apps such as XEmacs)

These comments are somewhat enlighening: http://dot.kde.org/1013076354/

Also read this for a backgrounder about clipboard and X: http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html

Re:Forget Themes: Make the Clipboards compatible

[Mandelbrute]

Gnome does the Right Thing with respect to clipboards,

Yes, it's a nice copy of the way MS used to do things. Other people have other ideas and implement them in other ways - the right thing is usually just what the author thinks is the right thing. Until there is an ISO standard, there isn't going to be a "right thing", and even then extensions are good. Ultimately, the right thing in X is to support the X clipboard - everything else is an extension.

Indeed a good idea but

[Anonymous Coward]

what is needed more is interopability of the component and document models, heck both desktops can't even handle non x clipboards in a compatible way. The first thing a normal desktop user who uses Linux for the first time would ask, why he can't drag a file from konqueror into evolution and why he cant paste his gimp picture into kword over the clipboard!
Heck even e copy from a galeon the copy paste menu way would never generate a paste in kedit!
I'm sure a user would care less about a common L&F than about a precise and normed app interoperability, which should be possible!

I want a single desktop anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think KDE and GNOME should chuck it all in and start to work together on a unified desktop taking the best elements from both and combining them.

KDE is so much nicer to develop for than GNOME imho but I prefer to use GNOME, I'm sure that others have differing opinions about what they like and hate about each environment, but working together to provide maybe the ultimate desktop experiance would be brilliant!

I know this opinion is a little radical and not likely to happen, but if I had my eutopia, that would be it!

Yay!

[Frag-A-Muffin]

This is good news! What's next? An abstraction of the widget sets so that programmers can code to a neutral API that can be deployed on both GTK and QT (Or Gnome and KDE) at once?!?! When are we going to see that? :)

Re:To Hell with RMS

[Error27]

>>All he's offering is an email for crying out loud, he's not offering any thing substansive at all, unless you count his blessings as substansive.

Yeah... I was really surprised when I clicked on the link to mail.gnome.org and saw an email.

A lot of times when you read email then there are cool videos and 3-d graphics. One time I found a live goat!

I guess open source email lists just aren't up to the standards Microsoft users are accustomed to. I mean *sheesh* email on an email list??? How old fashioned!

Well...

[Microlith]

I don't know about anyone else, but I always thought it was funny how the Open Source community yelled about "standards," yet we have so many damn standards that there aren't any.

Now that license issues are cleared up, RMS has a chance and he's gonna take it. Eliminate two, create one. This isn't a bad thing, since you STILL have the source.

We have options for customization, and a lot of freedom, but what we lack is any real consolidation (IE eliminating redundant standards), thus creating a plethora of pitfalls for software developers.

This is one thing I think the Linux Standards Base should cover. More than just one boring, rather useless "base," it should cover MANY bases, and specify standard APIs, installations, and specifications for systems/software. Hell make Linux Standard Base certification like that damn Made for Windows XX logo.

Theory:

LSB defines a desktop base, a server base, and an embedded base.

On the desktop base you have modules (not necessarily compatible), say Gaming Module which includes all necessary packages and auto-detection and config info, a Network client module that automatically loads remote config utilities and any necessary client software, and a workstation module that adds it's required things.

Same for server and embedded.

Also have the LSB supply standard definitions for the GUI APIs. Standard Themes, fonts, what have you.

If you can build a solid foundation for your system and get it under control (community control, it's still ours), then you'll attract users. I think that's a bit of what RMS is trying to do here.

Why RMS applied to GNOME board

[sl956]

Back in November 2001, when RMS was candidate to the GNOME Board of Directors, there was a discussion on /. about the reasons why he applied.
Just a couple days before, he had said during a conference in Paris that his primary reason to apply to the board was to support cooperation between GNOME and KDE (see my post), eventhough it wasn't clearly stated in his answers to the GNOME board candidacy questionnaire.
I'm really happy to see that it was not only electoral bulls**t.
Maybe he is the last person you could have think of for such a task (especially knowing his position toward the KDE team in the old days of the QPL), but here he comes with this simple (as in not heavily political) practical (as in usefull) first step... so let's try !

Re:Wow

[zhensel]

Actually, there's a pretty simple argument against this. Standardizing the desktop stagnates innovation. With a standard "Linux" desktop, all distributions for a good amount of time will have to follow that standard or face alienating their users. Look at how little the MacOS interface changed before OSX and how only with Windows XP has Windows had a major interface revision - and even now it is still heavily rooted in the framework of prior revisions.

Personally, I agree with you and think a standard would be a good idea. Taking a step away from rapid developement and making a single stable interface would do wonders for acceptance. Besides, you can always have easily accessible information on configuring your interface how you like it. Still though, the arguement against this is pretty obvious.

I'd probably say that the best idea would be for some group to go and dedictate a year or so to making the be-all-end-all of interfaces. Not some wierd hybrid of previous interfaces like most distros ship now, but something that is simple, elegent, etc. Other people have said it, and I'll repeat - like the OSX interface. I'm not saying it's the most efficient, but it consistently does what you intuitively expect it to do. That's what a defacto Linux "theme" would need to do. The only other option, I suppose, is just to copy Windows or OSX or another highly developed/researched interface. There simply exists nothing right now that would make sense to call the default desktop.

Better C++!

[Otter]

To my mind, the single most important thing RMS could do to help out KDE is to push for better C++ support in GNU. Advantages are:

• It will address what's generally felt to be KDE's biggest drawback.
• Do the same for Mozilla and every other C++ project, free and non-free, running on GNU systems.
• Point up the importance of the GNU contribution to what's generally referred to as Linux. (Not that I'm thrilled to see him getting more ammunition to pester us on that score, but it's not until I was cursing out the FSF for making C++ apps run so slow that I realized he's actually got a good point.)

Besides, it's something he's in a position to actually do, and which doesn't require anyone to sacrifice existing work.

(Poor guy -- he's like Alan Greenspan, where every public utterance is turned into a grand policy question.)

Re:Sounds like a good idea

[mattdm]

I'm going to say "no". There's huge architectural differences between KDE and GNOME -- it's not just that they're interchangable faces. In fact, there's also huge conceptual differences in the way the widget libraries work -- qt's slots/sockets mechanism, for example. There's no way to do a 1-1 mapping at any level beyond the most simplistic.

Why do you write code?

[GileadGreene]

Even more interesting than the KDE/GNOME thing is what you find when you dive down a couple of follow-ups in the email chain. Here's an RMS response to a part of a post explaining why the poster thought that the KDE/GNOME cooperation thing wouldn't happen:

Uraeus linuxrising org:
> And as the free software saying goes,
> a itch that don't itch a developer,
> doesn't get scratched.

RMS:
That was said by Eric Raymond who belongs to another movement, and it reflects the spirit of that movement. The spirit of the free software movement is to do projects because they are important for the community and for our freedom. They don't have to "scratch an itch".

Is this really an accurate portrayal of (one of) the differences between "open source" and FSF sanctioned free software? Open source developers are out to do what's best for themselves (and maybe helping out others as a by-product by releasing their code), while free software developers are motivated only by love of their fellow (hu)man. I'm not really heavily involved in either development community, and didn't realize that there was such a sharp divide (if it actually exists outside of RMS head). Can some free software/open source developer types weigh in on this? Why do you write code?

We Had To

[cluge]

"....we had to attack it [KDE] to make people aware of the threat"

The attacks were vehement, nasty and for the most part unwarranted. I never saw KDE as a "threat" and considering it a threat did nothing but waste a lot of energy (IMHO). Especially considering where the software was headed and the fact that EVERYONE KNEW that QT would have an open source license eventually.

While I endorse the idea of some interoperability I tend to take a step back and look for other motives. Members of the KDE team have long tried to get some interoperability between the 2 desktops and were repeatedly rebuffed. It's a nice idea, but considering some of the mudslinging thats gone on over the past few years, I'm with holding judgment.

Hopefully the axe is buried, considering there are some admin's out there running open relays because it was the right thing to do in 1990, I expect to see it dug up a few more times. That's the problem with religious wars where you unfairly vilify the enemy it makes it hard to work with them when they are on your side. I'm glad some people are starting to consider the big picture.