Deep Inside the K Desktop Environment

Lemmingue writes "Ars Technica published a very good article about the KDE architecture. It's a essential read for anyone wondering how Konqueror can open documents in the same window or just understand the license issues regarding the Qt use. The article describes most of the technologies behind the KDE (Qt, KParts) and how the project is organized. The article is full of links, screenshots and diagrams."

Comments

Re:Dependencies

[codemachine]

I imagine it'll soon be possible to build native KDE applications using GTK. Things like QtGtk theme engine and the library that merges the event loops, when stable, will allow a very nearly native KDE application written in GTK. See here for more details.

The problem from a licensing perspective is that even if the theme and event loop code are LGPL, they probably link back to other KDE libraries which then link back to QT. Even though the integration libraries and much of KDE itself are LGPL, you wouldn't be saved from the link back to QT by writing KDE applications in GTK. Though I do feel it is a real stretch to say a GTK application is a "derivative" of QT. The vaugeness of the GPL in defining derivative work make this a difficult issue.

At least that is how I understand the current situation. One possible way around this might be to have all the integration technology sitting outside KDE, like D-BUS will be doing. QtGtk could be rewritten to be a common component for both desktops to use.

Disclaimer: I haven't looked at the code or the licenses of the integration components. If you developers can offer any corrections or comments, please do so.