At what point did we not see this comming?
Microsoft copy something apple did? No?!
I think Microsoft should just stick to ripping ideas from the open source group. That way it's less obivious when they do take something (ie. files are shown as a graphical preview 'kde/gnome')
First off, I think you may be too quickly forgetting were GNU/Linux et al have come from. Does the Linux (BSD and so on) desktop environments suffer from too many cooks in the kitchen? Well, of course. The big thing to remember is that even thought we have hundreds of developers, all with different ideas, working together there still is cohesive production coming from them.
Microsoft has it easy. Someone says, "We're going in this direction." Then, they go in that direction, easy (of course from a broad perspective.) While in the Linux world good ideas have to be wisely chosen and followed through or nothing would get done. There might be eighty different widget abstraction toolkits and only one can be picked from. Who makes that call? How do you compare one to the other? What makes a good widget toolkit? Those are some tough questions when you have eighty plus people yelling about their toolkits.
But let's set all that aside.
First off, both Firefox and OpenOffice.org render their widgets in native GTK+ last I checked. Hell there's even a port of OpenOffice.org to the QT widget set for your KDE pleasure.
Secondly, there is much work going on to try to bring some standardization to the Linux desktop (see: freedesktop.org). This isn't a small task as all the projects that you speak of have had a lot of time to separate (basically that period of time before the developers of the projects realized that anyone would take them serious.)
Finally, forked projects are only as popular as people make them. Notice how RedHat seemingly forgets to ship the -mm kernel with their standard distro (sarcasm.) Just because a project is forked doesn't mean a whole new branch to support. The branch only gets support if it seems it provides something better than the orignial. A while back some Gnome users broke off and made GoneME. Do vendors support it? Do people actually package it for use in major repositories? That answer is a resounding, no. That's because the forked project adds no value that can not be obtained via the original project. Forked projects die, I know how hard that is to believe. Some of the projects that die off, I wish they didn't. But, ah-ha! If I missed the project so badly I could just be come the maintainer. If WordPerfect suddenly ended and no future versions were to come, guess you have a lot of converting to another document format to do tonight.
Yes there is some parallel development going on in the Open Source world. But it's not just a Linux thing. Microsoft offers CD-writing software built into the OS, why not use that? Answer, because it sucks wet toad. Thus you go in search of a better CD-writing program, maybe nero, maybe one of those other guys.
Making a point about widget sets is just looking at one side of the house. Regardless of widget set, most people will just use the programs given to them. More likely the confusion will come from if to use Koffice or OpenOffice.org, use Mozilla or Firefox or Konqueror, use XCdRoast or GnomeToaster or K3B? I just don't picture many people sitting down saying, "Oh well I like the KDE DCOP messaging bus because it uses an object approach to signal callback functions. Therfore, I think I'll use KDE based on that." (Nah, it might happen. Ha ha.)
Development isn't stagnated in the Linux desktop world. That would indicate that everyone just gave up and nothing is being done about it. It's just that a different set of problems exist for the Linux desktop developer (developer, not end user.) Those problems are, unlike Microsoft, being worked on and fixed so we don't have to cross this bridge again, all at the same time while producing products like KDE and Gnome. I think the developers of these project have a lot on their plate. More than most people would like on their plate, yet they take on this freely and in their spare time (again, something Microsoft employees would never do.)
So I believe that your remark is slightly unfounded.
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At what point did we not see this comming? Microsoft copy something apple did? No?! I think Microsoft should just stick to ripping ideas from the open source group. That way it's less obivious when they do take something (ie. files are shown as a graphical preview 'kde/gnome')
You're right. We all have Xerox to thank. Oddly they never produced any type of GUI OS. Go figure.
First off, I think you may be too quickly forgetting were GNU/Linux et al have come from. Does the Linux (BSD and so on) desktop environments suffer from too many cooks in the kitchen? Well, of course. The big thing to remember is that even thought we have hundreds of developers, all with different ideas, working together there still is cohesive production coming from them.
Microsoft has it easy. Someone says, "We're going in this direction." Then, they go in that direction, easy (of course from a broad perspective.) While in the Linux world good ideas have to be wisely chosen and followed through or nothing would get done. There might be eighty different widget abstraction toolkits and only one can be picked from. Who makes that call? How do you compare one to the other? What makes a good widget toolkit? Those are some tough questions when you have eighty plus people yelling about their toolkits.
But let's set all that aside.
First off, both Firefox and OpenOffice.org render their widgets in native GTK+ last I checked. Hell there's even a port of OpenOffice.org to the QT widget set for your KDE pleasure.
Secondly, there is much work going on to try to bring some standardization to the Linux desktop (see: freedesktop.org). This isn't a small task as all the projects that you speak of have had a lot of time to separate (basically that period of time before the developers of the projects realized that anyone would take them serious.)
Finally, forked projects are only as popular as people make them. Notice how RedHat seemingly forgets to ship the -mm kernel with their standard distro (sarcasm.) Just because a project is forked doesn't mean a whole new branch to support. The branch only gets support if it seems it provides something better than the orignial. A while back some Gnome users broke off and made GoneME. Do vendors support it? Do people actually package it for use in major repositories? That answer is a resounding, no. That's because the forked project adds no value that can not be obtained via the original project. Forked projects die, I know how hard that is to believe. Some of the projects that die off, I wish they didn't. But, ah-ha! If I missed the project so badly I could just be come the maintainer. If WordPerfect suddenly ended and no future versions were to come, guess you have a lot of converting to another document format to do tonight.
Yes there is some parallel development going on in the Open Source world. But it's not just a Linux thing. Microsoft offers CD-writing software built into the OS, why not use that? Answer, because it sucks wet toad. Thus you go in search of a better CD-writing program, maybe nero, maybe one of those other guys.
Making a point about widget sets is just looking at one side of the house. Regardless of widget set, most people will just use the programs given to them. More likely the confusion will come from if to use Koffice or OpenOffice.org, use Mozilla or Firefox or Konqueror, use XCdRoast or GnomeToaster or K3B? I just don't picture many people sitting down saying, "Oh well I like the KDE DCOP messaging bus because it uses an object approach to signal callback functions. Therfore, I think I'll use KDE based on that." (Nah, it might happen. Ha ha.)
Development isn't stagnated in the Linux desktop world. That would indicate that everyone just gave up and nothing is being done about it. It's just that a different set of problems exist for the Linux desktop developer (developer, not end user.) Those problems are, unlike Microsoft, being worked on and fixed so we don't have to cross this bridge again, all at the same time while producing products like KDE and Gnome. I think the developers of these project have a lot on their plate. More than most people would like on their plate, yet they take on this freely and in their spare time (again, something Microsoft employees would never do.)
So I believe that your remark is slightly unfounded.
Is there parallel de