arb writes "The Age has an interview with Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com where he discusses such issues as RedHat's focus on Gnome and the relegation of KDE 'to second best', other Gnome vs KDE issues, distributions including proprietary bits and so on."
Embedded/Zaurus software
by
aldjiblah
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Your software for Zaurus/Qtopia has made my Zaurus infinitely more usable, especially tkcAddressbook, tkcCalendar and most of all tkcJabber (nice!). How is the business side of the Zaurus application development - how are sales?
-- sig sig sputnik
Re:Embedded/Zaurus software
by
tweek
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I disagree. I'm a Kapital customer and even on Christmas eve, Shawn was responding to messages on the mailing list from users who had questions about Kapital.
He has consistantly listened to ideas from his customers and has discussed the feasability of each option.
There was a nice healthy discussion regarding distributing Kapital as a statically linked application recently. While I didn't like his answer or agree with the end result, he DID participate and give his reasoning in a clear manner and with extreme consideration to the customer.
-- "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!"
"Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Second best?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Why? I am fairly new to Linux, but I have to say that I always preferred KDE in RedHat 6.x and 7.x. When I upgraded to 8, I tried out Bluecurve or whatever they called their new desktop and hated it. It was slow, ugly, and just not up to the standard of KDE I was used to, so I bew it away and went back to KDE . I am much happier now...
So, my question is, why is KDE considered second best? Are there technical reasons, or political, or what?
Re:Second best?
by
IamTheRealMike
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· Score: 4, Informative
So, my question is, why is KDE considered second best? Are there technical reasons, or political, or what?
[sigh] It's not. Look, I'll try and tell it like it is, but nobody is entirely neutral in this debate OK?
Basically, with Mandrake looking like it's going down the tubes, there are 2 major commercial Linux desktop distros left, Redhat and SuSE. There are others like Xandros of course, but they are more focussed on providing an "appliance" style OS, rather than staying level with the current cutting edge in Linux development.
RedHat are popular in the states, and are "biased" towards Gnome, that is they have more Gnome hackers with experience than KDE hackers. As such, their distro focusses on Gnome more than KDE. SuSE is similar but opposite, they focus more on KDE than Gnome and afaik don't have any Gnome hackers on the team.
When Redhat 8 came out, as I'm sure you noticed, they attempted to equalize the desktops somewhat. BlueCurve was an attempt to give Redhat a distinctive brand on the desktop and it worked tremendously well. Nonetheless, some people involved with KDE got a bit upset, because KDE has its own brand (as does gnome) and Bluecurve changed that.
Today the desktops are basically equal, although they are stronger in different areas. So, GNOME has better usability IMHO, but KDE has more features. I should think theKompany likes KDE/Qt as a developer platform more because Qt is commercially supported, has professional docs and is more cross platform, so (if they pay) they can sell their apps on Windows and MacOS as well. Of course he has hackers with KDE/Qt experience which also tips him. On the other hand, GTK is more Linux specific, but has some cooler features. Some people will tell you that GTK is harder to program for, but in reality that's not the case, if C++ is your thing then both Qt and GTKmm are excellent.
I think you're exaggurating when you say KDE is slower and uglier on redhat. I think the BlueCurve artwork is great, but you can always retheme it easily, and it should be no slower.
Re:Second best?
by
sydneyfong
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· Score: 3, Informative
Political. KDE relies on a library, QT, that is GPL'ed, which means that all KDE applications must be GPL'd, and by default, is hard to sell directly for cash.
There IS an option not to GPL the application, but that requires paying licence fees to Trolltech, the company that made QT.
Commericial companies get wary of these issues, since they would always like to preserve the option of selling the software, or at least reserving their rights from their code.
Sun, from their evaluation report, seemed to have chosen GNOME as their future desktop mainly because of the licensing issues, but not of technical merits
-- Don't quote me on this.
Re:Second best?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Insightful
> Today the desktops are basically equal, although they are > stronger in different areas. So, GNOME has better usability > IMHO, but KDE has more features.
This is a shortsighted opinion of yours and doesn't reflect the reality and obviously show that you never tried KDE for longer than 5 minutes. I know both Desktops on it's best using GNOME CVS HEAD and KDE CVS HEAD here. In my opinion GNOME hangs behind KDE in many ways. I don't want to make GNOME look bad now but I want to give you a fair objective view of the facts.
There are a lot of issues within GNOME such as integration, usability, consitency over the dialogs etc.
GNOME is not as integrated as KDE is. Have you ever dealt with KDE and seen how all the apps are playing together ?
Usability, have you seen what happened recently to GNOME's interface it toally alienate GNOME from the rest of available applications that work and require X with any toolkit.
Consistency. We all know that with the ongoing versions of GNOME the developers are trying to get consistency into the applications but yet all dialogs are still looking differently. There is no real pixel exact layout of the dialogs, menus and windows because many GNOME applications are written either with the GUI hardcoded, or Glade or Bonobo therefore all UI's are looking differently and makes it hard for the UI reviewer to get a structure inside.
On the otherhand KDE's ui are mostly external in separate *.ui files which makes it easier for the UI reviewers to concentrate on the UI and pixel exact layouts.
That's only a minor point of the whole mountain. KParts for example, every new written app follows a strict rule of KDE and embedds itself seamingless into the whole desktop. It has a Webbrowser embedded in a Filemanager and both of them are really usable and and and..
I could write half a day and name more and more features and pros which makes imo KDE far superior. KDE as is right now are milies if not lightyears ahead of GNOME but it's understandable that GNOME people don't want to have their desktop look bad but face it as is GNOME has a hard and long way to go to at least keep up with a little bit of KDE's features. Keeping up with KDE itself is a lost battle.
"Race KDE cannot win"
by
ultrabot
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I think there might be a grain of truth in the fact that KDE has very hard time winning the desktop. Gnome has the huge advantage of licensing (LGPL vs. GPL). It doesn't matter how much smoother or better the technology underlying KDE or KDE applications is.
KDE people also have the weird habit of producing their own versions of various pieces of software. Surely a conservative decisionmaker will choose a desktop-agnostic Mozilla or OpenOffice over the KDE-specific versions. KDE applications might do better by just dropping the K from their names, thus competing on their own terms (snappines and other virtues associated with Qt).
Note that I have been KDE user in the past (alternating with less popular lightweight wm's), but Gnome seems to finally have gotten their stuff together with gnome2.
-- Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Re:"Race KDE cannot win"
by
nick255
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· Score: 4, Informative
> Surely a conservative decisionmaker will choose > a desktop-agnostic Mozilla or OpenOffice over > the KDE-specific versions.
You mean like those people at Apple who chose KHTML for Safari?
Re:"Race KDE cannot win"
by
scorp1us
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· Score: 3, Insightful
As s developer, I dispise GNOME. It's a PITA to program in, where as under Qt/KDE it is very easy. Lets face it, C is not well suited for window environments. Sure it can be done, but it's not a Good Thing. Don't beleive me? Look at Windows. MFC is just C++ classes aound C stuff. It is horrid and I hate using it. Having complex the functions organized in self-managing classes is a dream.
I love KDE, but loath the license. I think all GNOME people are fans of KDE, they just won't come out of the closet because they are scared of the license.
What that the License gets you though, is the ability to ship the same high-grade apps on Windows as on Linux, Mac OS X, and whatever other platform you want. This could singlehandedly be the missing element to bring Linux to the masses. If they use cross-platform apps (Kapital for windows), then switching out the OS is small potatoes (Kapital for Linux) because there are no file-format lock-in issues.
I blame several people. KDE, and GNOME are all to blame. If GNOME people worked on Harmony, they'd be set Free, and there'd be no lisensing issues. KDE was foolish for choosing a toolkit with such a license (but it is a GREAT product, regardless).
Qt are the big winners, yet they have an excellent product and deserve to be commended.
BRING BACK HARMONY. Ironically, that will bring harmony to the Linux world. (Harmony is a GPL replacement toolkit that as started then stopped when the Qt license got more OSS friendly)
-- Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Re:"Race KDE cannot win"
by
IamTheRealMike
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· Score: 4, Informative
KDE people also have the weird habit of producing their own versions of various pieces of software.
I agree with the basic thrust of the post, but in fairness this occurs with Gnome as well. Gnome seems less centralised to me, for instance they don't produce their own media player as such but RhythmBox is a Gnome app, they don't produce their own email app but there is Balsa and Evolution, etc.
There is way too much duplication, I agree. The projects are starting to work together a lot more now though, largely thanks to the work at freedesktop.org. Not just there though, for instance KDE was considering using GStreamer for its multimedia architecture at one point (I think they decided to wait for it to mature, which is fair enough).
Some KDE projects seem rather dead though, I think the more decentralised approach gnome takes (or rather, doesn't take) is a bit better. AbiWord isn't a Gnome app but you'd never know, it integrates nicely etc and is a good deal more active than KWord seems to be. Ditto for Gnumeric and KSpread. Noatun is just a joke, really, but it's kind of the "official" KDE media player.
Note that I have been KDE user in the past (alternating with less popular lightweight wm's), but Gnome seems to finally have gotten their stuff together with gnome2.
Agreed, at least in terms of desktop experience. It's not all there yet, but it shows great potential. KDE still leads in terms of developer platform though imho, their documentation is much better (though to be fair to gnome, they don't have a company like trolltech maintaining it for them). Also some Gnome technologies like Bonobo tend to be a bit confusing, especially in the more advanced usage. On the other hand, the KDE usability effort seems to be going nowhere quickly:(
Re:"Race KDE cannot win"
by
IamTheRealMike
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Lets face it, C is not well suited for window environments.
This FUD should have been dispelled a long time ago. The C++ bindings for GTK/GNOME are excellent, in fact they are mor C++ish than Qt, as they make proper use of the standard library, as opposed to Qt that reinvents a lot of it (QString et al) for portability to ancient platforms and needs stuff like a preprocessor for its object model. Check it out before you bash gnome again.
If you like C++, use it! Nobody is forcing you to use C. The fact that a lot of Gnome software is written in C is because the coders prefer C, that's it. No, really. They do. C++ is a hard, amazingly complex language that isn't to everybodies taste.
Look at Windows. MFC is just C++ classes aound C stuff.
The MFC is a good example of how NOT to make bindings, don't write off all language bindings because you had a bad experience with one.
What that the License gets you though, is the ability to ship the same high-grade apps on Windows as on Linux, Mac OS X, and whatever other platform you want.
Only if you stick to Qt of course, and pay up (a LOT of money) for each developer. If you want to use the KDE classes, not all of them are available on Windows or MacOS, so....
This could singlehandedly be the missing element to bring Linux to the masses.
Actually GTK apps are ported to Windows far more often, because you don't have to pay to do so. Try again.
BRING BACK HARMONY.
Oh yeah, that's nice. Why not, and destroy TrollTech at the same time. Do you have any idea how much effort would be required to recreate Qt? A widget toolkit is often many millions of lines of code, and Qt doesn't just do widgets, it does strings, threads and lots more.
The solution is to make GTK and Qt interoperate better, share theming engines and so on, then you can choose which toolkit you prefer. GTKmm and Qt are basically very similar anyway.
Re:"Race KDE cannot win"
by
marm
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· Score: 3, Informative
AbiWord isn't a Gnome app but you'd never know, it integrates nicely etc and is a good deal more active than KWord seems to be. Ditto for Gnumeric and KSpread. Noatun is just a joke, really, but it's kind of the "official" KDE media player.
You read in the article about there being something of a cultural difference between the two camps: USA vs. Europe, noisy vs. getting on with it. Well, this is the perfect example. You think AbiWord is far more active than KWord. It has more developers, more mailing list messages, more CVS commits, more releases. But look at the current in-development versions of both of them, and compare them with what they were like a year ago. I think you'll find the comparison doesn't come out in AbiWord's favour. Partly this is architectural - there's FAR more code sharing and reuse in KOffice/KDE/Qt than in AbiWord/GTK, partly because the balance of talking about it/doing it is further towards the doing it end with KWord than with AbiWord. I guess this also explains why Slashdot appears to have a tendency towards GNOME whilst the Linux community as a whole seems to prefer KDE.
And don't diss Noatun: you might not like it but from my point of view it's far nicer than anything else available. It plays all my music, has a good equalizer, does effects, the interface looks and works like everything else on my desktop (although it doesn't have to), and most important of all, happily hides itself down in the system tray when I want it out of the way and stays there. The KDE 3.1 version embeds Xine to play video: now it's the only media player I use. I love it.
On the other hand, the KDE usability effort seems to be going nowhere quickly
I take it you've not used KDE 3.1 yet then? There's some good improvements in there.
And let's face it, GNOME usability still has a long long way to go *cough*GTK+ file dialog*cough*
Interesting company concept
by
sboyko
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Never mind the KDE/Gnome discussion, I found it fascinating to read how TheKompany.com is made up of people who have not all met face-to-face. The founder has only met one of his employees ever.
His employees were all basically referred and the traditional face-to-face interviews were obviously never done.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
-- SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
Re:Interesting company concept
by
x0n
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· Score: 5, Funny
...
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
Nonsense! hitmen, crack dealers and major crimelords have worked this way for years!
- Oisin
--
PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
Re:Interesting company concept
by
pubjames
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Never mind the KDE/Gnome discussion, I found it fascinating to read how TheKompany.com is made up of people who have not all met face-to-face. The founder has only met one of his employees ever.
His employees were all basically referred and the traditional face-to-face interviews were obviously never done.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
Exactly what I thought when I read the article. I have often toyed with the idea of employing someone over the net, but I've never had the balls to actually do it. It seems to me it must be a very efficient way to run a business.
I'd be interested on what kind of contracts he uses. Does he employ these people full-time, or by project? Another issue - getting stuff delivered on time. I guess if you make products like theKompany.com, it doesn't matter if you slip. But working for clients, you have to deliver when you promised to, or you'll quickly go out of business. Is it practical to run a business this way if you need to deliver to clients with tight deadlines?
"... focus on Gnome and the relegation of KDE 'to second best', other Gnome vs KDE issues..."
With Mandrake focusing its attention on finances -- it is time for a leader such as RedHat to do what my father used to say to my brothers and I when we'd be squabbling over this-n-that "I don't care who's fault it is, I'll knock both your heads together -- now play nice!"
So long as we have these pissing battles between Gnome and KDE -- Windows will continue to enjoy its top of the heap status.
Competition is what we need
by
Max+Romantschuk
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· Score: 4, Insightful
As I see it, both KDE and Gnome are good, and no matter which is better neither is revolutionary.
But the most important thing is that the competitive enviroment is maintained. If one get's to dominate too much, there's no real need to really invent stuff. Just look at what happened to Windows I haven't really noticed much of a difference since NT 4...
Support QT.....
by
oliverthered
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Companies often use GTK because it's the non-cost closed source option.
With QT it's either open up you code under GPL, or pay us. Which I think is by far the best option.
Also QT runs on hand helds and the like and it's C++
-- thank God the internet isn't a human right.
He's lucky [was Re:Interesting company concept]
by
Christianfreak
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I worked for a company that tried this. We had IRC chats, phone conversations and later on even did have face to face meetings from time to time (we were all in the US).
It was a nightmare, communication was horrible. Sure a lot of problems boiled down to mis-management but it was certainly compounded by the fact that we were far apart, and people could basically do whatever they wanted and get paid for it. There was tons of turn over, they kept hiring incompetent people and firing them. Almost sort of an expensive trial and error.
Where have you been for the last two years?
by
PeterClark
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· Score: 3, Insightful
What's wrong with KDE's (and QT's) GPL license? Or are we going to get into that silly "LGPL is better than GPL" argument? It's possible (because of QT's dual license) to produce closed-source software, which is what theKompany has done. Or have I been trolled?
:Peter
Re:Where have you been for the last two years?
by
IamTheRealMike
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· Score: 3, Informative
What's wrong with KDE's (and QT's) GPL license?
Two major problems:
1) It means you can only write GPLd software with it. Apple were pretty keen not to let Safari be open sourced, though god knows why, it's hardly a cutting edge browser so they actually had to produce Qt wrappers and de-Qt parts to prevent it becoming GPL software.
2) It's only free software when using X11. That means KDE software can't be ported to Windows or MacOS and use the native graphics layer on each, they have to use an X server. Also, if one day (unlikely but possible) we all decide to move away from X, unless Trolltech update the license KDE is kind of shafted. Obviously that's the least likely of all scenarios, and anyway I expect Trolltech would just update the license, but you get the idea.
Of course you can write commercial or portable software with Qt, but have you seen the prices? It's $1500 per developer for the professional edition, meaning unless you are a rich company you have to make your software GPLd and X specific (which is what they intended, but hey).
In contrast, GTK can be used for commercial and portable apps, and really it's quite a good toolkit these days. Hence the flamewars.
This is the beauty of using an open system. I've used KDE, I'm using Gnome. Switching between them is pretty much painless (as is switching between KDE/Gnome and Windows). That there are two systems for window management likely means that both will get better faster. Gnome sees a great innovation in KDE and implements it. KDE sees that Gnome is running faster and works to make KDE run faster. And back and forth.
The problem with Windows has been that there was no real competition. That problem is being solved. I know that there are folks out there who are devoted to Debian and hate what Red Hat has done with 8.0, but regardless, I could hand the Red Hat discs to any of my family members and they could install it on their computer without wiping out the Windows install. This is one thing the Linux community has been shooting for. Are there problems with RH 8.0 and BlueCurve? Sure, but it's something that compares well with XP.
I like having KDE and Gnome to choose from and, at this point, I don't know enough to choose one over the other forever and ever amen. Right now, though, I have the choice and that's what brought me to the party in the first place.
-- Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Outdated opinion (was: Re:"Race KDE cannot win")
by
Reinout
·
· Score: 4, Informative
... there'd be no lisensing issues. KDE was foolish for choosing a toolkit with such a license
BRING BACK HARMONY. (....) Harmony is a GPL replacement toolkit....
I'm getting the feeling that the poster doesn't know that QT now comes under the GPL license (instead of their original non-GPL one). The poster loves KDE, but loaths it's licence. The license is GPL! Nothing wrong with that (as the poster likes linux).
Funny (or not) thing is that RMS is basically backing gnome (LGPL) while at the same time advising everyone to stay clear of the LGPL because it is an inferior language. GPL is preferred. KDE&QT is GPL, so it would be better to put the FSF's weight more (and more openly) behind KDE. By "better" I mean from a purely FSF-political standpoint.
There's a lot of misinformation about KDE.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Let's face it, most of the people out there bashing KDE all tht time are just misinformed and have never really spent much time with it and are still playing politics to this day because of personal biases.
With regard to Red Hat and Bluecurve... Those of use who use KDE do not think that everything was well in Red Hat 8. I'm a longtime Red Hat user. I installed Red Hat 8 and tried to make their KDE work. I gave up. I ended up going to ftp.kde.org to see if there was an "official" distribution of KDE and Qt for Red Hat 8 that would repair the obvious rendering bugs, have working fonts, either function with standard KDE icon themes or use a non-broken set of Bluecurve icons, and would actually use KDE applications for app-to-app functionality instead of GNOME ones.
But no dice, apparently the official KDE packages for Red Hat 8 are made by Red Hat, so the KDE I downloaded was essentially the same (and essentially as broken) as the KDE on the Red Hat 8 CDs. I switched back to Red Hat 7.
And what's with all the license complaining still? Qt is dual-licensed, GPL or commercial with paid development. This should be enough to keep the GPL zealots happy and the "GPL sucks for companies" people happy... but apparently some people will not rest until an inferior product, GNOME, has been declared the winner by the 800-lb gorillas of the Linux world and KDE has been marginalized.
The fact that KDE is still as good as it is and is still as popular as it is demonstrates just what a great product it can be (notice I said "can be" because we all now know just how much depends on distributors).
Slashdot Mirror
Your software for Zaurus/Qtopia has made my Zaurus infinitely more usable, especially tkcAddressbook, tkcCalendar and most of all tkcJabber (nice!). How is the business side of the Zaurus application development - how are sales?
sig sig sputnik
Why? I am fairly new to Linux, but I have to say that I always preferred KDE in RedHat 6.x and 7.x. When I upgraded to 8, I tried out Bluecurve or whatever they called their new desktop and hated it. It was slow, ugly, and just not up to the standard of KDE I was used to, so I bew it away and went back to KDE . I am much happier now...
So, my question is, why is KDE considered second best? Are there technical reasons, or political, or what?
I think there might be a grain of truth in the fact that KDE has very hard time winning the desktop. Gnome has the huge advantage of licensing (LGPL vs. GPL). It doesn't matter how much smoother or better the technology underlying KDE or KDE applications is.
KDE people also have the weird habit of producing their own versions of various pieces of software. Surely a conservative decisionmaker will choose a desktop-agnostic Mozilla or OpenOffice over the KDE-specific versions. KDE applications might do better by just dropping the K from their names, thus competing on their own terms (snappines and other virtues associated with Qt).
Note that I have been KDE user in the past (alternating with less popular lightweight wm's), but Gnome seems to finally have gotten their stuff together with gnome2.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Never mind the KDE/Gnome discussion, I found it fascinating to read how TheKompany.com is made up of people who have not all met face-to-face. The founder has only met one of his employees ever.
His employees were all basically referred and the traditional face-to-face interviews were obviously never done.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
Here's the real problem:
"... focus on Gnome and the relegation of KDE 'to second best', other Gnome vs KDE issues
With Mandrake focusing its attention on finances -- it is time for a leader such as RedHat to do what my father used to say to my brothers and I when we'd be squabbling over this-n-that "I don't care who's fault it is, I'll knock both your heads together -- now play nice!"
So long as we have these pissing battles between Gnome and KDE -- Windows will continue to enjoy its top of the heap status.
--- have you healed your church website?
As I see it, both KDE and Gnome are good, and no matter which is better neither is revolutionary.
But the most important thing is that the competitive enviroment is maintained. If one get's to dominate too much, there's no real need to really invent stuff. Just look at what happened to Windows I haven't really noticed much of a difference since NT 4...
.: Max Romantschuk
Companies often use GTK because it's the non-cost closed source option.
With QT it's either open up you code under GPL, or pay us. Which I think is by far the best option.
Also QT runs on hand helds and the like and it's C++
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I worked for a company that tried this. We had IRC chats, phone conversations and later on even did have face to face meetings from time to time (we were all in the US).
It was a nightmare, communication was horrible. Sure a lot of problems boiled down to mis-management but it was certainly compounded by the fact that we were far apart, and people could basically do whatever they wanted and get paid for it. There was tons of turn over, they kept hiring incompetent people and firing them. Almost sort of an expensive trial and error.
The Anti-Blog
What's wrong with KDE's (and QT's) GPL license? Or are we going to get into that silly "LGPL is better than GPL" argument? It's possible (because of QT's dual license) to produce closed-source software, which is what theKompany has done. Or have I been trolled?
:Peter
This is the beauty of using an open system. I've used KDE, I'm using Gnome. Switching between them is pretty much painless (as is switching between KDE/Gnome and Windows). That there are two systems for window management likely means that both will get better faster. Gnome sees a great innovation in KDE and implements it. KDE sees that Gnome is running faster and works to make KDE run faster. And back and forth.
The problem with Windows has been that there was no real competition. That problem is being solved. I know that there are folks out there who are devoted to Debian and hate what Red Hat has done with 8.0, but regardless, I could hand the Red Hat discs to any of my family members and they could install it on their computer without wiping out the Windows install. This is one thing the Linux community has been shooting for. Are there problems with RH 8.0 and BlueCurve? Sure, but it's something that compares well with XP.
I like having KDE and Gnome to choose from and, at this point, I don't know enough to choose one over the other forever and ever amen. Right now, though, I have the choice and that's what brought me to the party in the first place.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
BRING BACK HARMONY. (....) Harmony is a GPL replacement toolkit ....
I'm getting the feeling that the poster doesn't know that QT now comes under the GPL license (instead of their original non-GPL one). The poster loves KDE, but loaths it's licence. The license is GPL! Nothing wrong with that (as the poster likes linux).
Funny (or not) thing is that RMS is basically backing gnome (LGPL) while at the same time advising everyone to stay clear of the LGPL because it is an inferior language. GPL is preferred. KDE&QT is GPL, so it would be better to put the FSF's weight more (and more openly) behind KDE. By "better" I mean from a purely FSF-political standpoint.
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
Let's face it, most of the people out there bashing KDE all tht time are just misinformed and have never really spent much time with it and are still playing politics to this day because of personal biases.
With regard to Red Hat and Bluecurve... Those of use who use KDE do not think that everything was well in Red Hat 8. I'm a longtime Red Hat user. I installed Red Hat 8 and tried to make their KDE work. I gave up. I ended up going to ftp.kde.org to see if there was an "official" distribution of KDE and Qt for Red Hat 8 that would repair the obvious rendering bugs, have working fonts, either function with standard KDE icon themes or use a non-broken set of Bluecurve icons, and would actually use KDE applications for app-to-app functionality instead of GNOME ones.
But no dice, apparently the official KDE packages for Red Hat 8 are made by Red Hat, so the KDE I downloaded was essentially the same (and essentially as broken) as the KDE on the Red Hat 8 CDs. I switched back to Red Hat 7.
And what's with all the license complaining still? Qt is dual-licensed, GPL or commercial with paid development. This should be enough to keep the GPL zealots happy and the "GPL sucks for companies" people happy... but apparently some people will not rest until an inferior product, GNOME, has been declared the winner by the 800-lb gorillas of the Linux world and KDE has been marginalized.
The fact that KDE is still as good as it is and is still as popular as it is demonstrates just what a great product it can be (notice I said "can be" because we all now know just how much depends on distributors).