Questions Continue About The KDE League

OrangeSpyderMan writes "Here is a further piece by Dennis E. Powell ("DEP"), the other is an editorial, submitted simply by "staff". They make interesting reading, and add a lot of info to the story previously reported Of particular insterest is an apparent clarification of the tax status of the league, which, if anything, serves to complicate a little further the true role of the league, as the editorial goes on to explain. Basically the "staff" appear to wonder if it wouldn't have been more productive to give the $170,000 that the League appears to have collected (or be owed) directly to the KDE project."

Comments

How did they get the money?

[joyoflinux]

How did the KDE League come up with $170,000? Donations? Something else?

Re:How did they get the money?

[Ctrl-Z]

Did you actually read the article?

Oh, wait, this is Slashdot.

They don't actually have $170 000. That was their budget for last year. The story that is linked is about their reinstatement as a corporation, and then rambles all over the map talking about money and non-profit vs. not-for-profit, and some pondering on what exactly the KDE League has done for KDE e.V.

I'm a little bit confused about why they are using such old data in a current story.

Black Eye....

[Tsali]

People might misread this and think lump KDE with this corporation. Not good.

Fortunately, I don't think this will hit the mainstream media for a number of reasons - a) $170,000 is nothing compared to other companies and b) KDE/Gnome are largely unknown by the common Windows-using public.

Hopefully this will just be an ugly incident that gets resolved and forgotten.

It sounds like the KDE league needs to fess up and give back to the community.

Re:Yeah, so what else is new?

[ray-auch]

Why reply to a troll, ah what the hell:

The whole point of the articles is that KDE League folks != KDE (actual developer doing the work type) folks.

So it's not "half-dozen lazy Europeans who know C++" running the corp, it's some other (mostly undisclosed) US folks (residency normally a requirement for at least some directors?) running it and taking the money, while the "lazy Europeans" continue to produce the goods without the benefit of the cash.

Re:Nice move, dep

[back_pages]

But I'm not a KDE enthusiast. I used Gnome exclusively until I installed RH8.0, at which point I switched to KDE just to see how it had changed since I used it last. It's not bad, but to be honest, I'd just as soon use Gnome if KDE annoyed me twice.

I couldn't really care about the KDE League, and it's quite possible that LinuxandMain have a perfectly valid point. But hey, maybe some KKK members had some really good economic policies. If you're going to reach an audience and expect to be taken seriously, you're going to have a tough time if it appears that extreme political views are your motivation. That's exactly how this scenario looks at this point.

If MSNBC ran a story about KDE League's finances, I'd think, "Sure, they might be biased toward Microsoft for business reasons, but the story might check out." Instead, we get LinuxandMain, a few mailing list posts, and I'm left thinking that LinuxandMain have some extreme middle east political agenda against the KDE League.

To be blunt, I'd rather hear Microsoft blast the KDE League because I expect them to. The bias is a result of the market. I distrust anybody who blasts anything software related potentially because of the political opinions of the members. I distrust Diskeeper because it is developed strictly by Scientologists; I distrust LinuxandMain's articles because of the political undercurrent.

And if LinuxandMain is proud of this publicity, and stands behind this guy, it reflects on the whole organization.