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

[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

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.)