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GNOME 2.12 Previewed
An anonymous reader writes "Davyd Madeley has completed his Prerelease Tour of GNOME 2.12. Scheduled for release on September 7th, 2005, GNOME 2.12 has picked up a new theme, some features popularised by Apple's System 7, some new multimedia tools and plenty of bug-fixes."
Does KDE and Gnome have the same goals, or are they very different?
<flamebait>
KDE's goal was to build a robust, high-quality, open-source desktop environment for UNIX workstations.
Stallman didn't like the fact that they were using a non-Free library (the Qt toolkit), so a competing desktop environment was started.
Qt changed its license to the GPL (according to Stallman, much better than the LGPL for libraries).
The GNOME project continued their efforts because they didn't like the fact that the Qt toolkit was GPLed because those nasty, proprietary... er, I mean nice, friendly corporations couldn't use it to build non-Free software without paying for a special license. Apparently, the LGPL is a much better license for libraries, according to the GNOME guys. Even though Stallman says otherwise, and it was his philosophy that led them to starting the project in the first place.
</flamebait>
Okay, so it's flamebait, but isn't that essentially the problem? The GNOME guys insisted Qt wasn't good enough because it was non-Free, then Qt was released exactly how Stallman recommends, and now Qt isn't good enough because it's too Free?