Why don't we finish some unfinished projects (Quanta)
Since you wrote "we" I assume that you could help finish it but didn't do it yet. As for the "why": Ask yourself why you didn't do it. KDE is a volunteer effort. No one there owes you anything.
Whatever they do regarding this issue, I just want to implore the KDE devs to please focus on stability and performance improvements for the next few point releases, rather than adding any more new features.
Stop spreading lies. Nokia takes lots of KDE to MeeGo and helps KDE a lot. KDE also uses GLib in many places. MeeGo IVI is not based on Clutter. It uses Qt. See http://meego.gitorious.com/meego-ivi-ux/ivihome/blobs/master/launcher.cpp MeeGo Netbook uses Clutter because it's just the continuation of the older Moblin GUI which was based on Clutter and Intel found it pointless to rewrite it.
Nokia is probably the biggest (at least one of the biggest) corporate sponsor of KDE -- for example Aaron Seigo in employed by Nokia just to work on KDE. Nokia brought KOffice to Maemo/MeeGo, sponsoring a smartphone GUI, improve file format converters, etc. MeeGo Handset will also use KCal for example.
Nobody at KDE is getting desperate. The "merger" is just an idea by a single guy and nothing KDE as a whole is actively pursuing. Considering how many of KDE are against that idea, I don't see how it could become reality. KDE is one of the healthiest FOSS projects of all. According to Wikipedia KDE is the 2nd largest FOSS project after the Linux kernel. KDE has no reason to be desperate. Even if MeeGo was only using Qt and no KDE code at all, GNOME still got the boot while a KDE-related technology (Qt) got in. Some back-end services remain but everything related to GUIs was deprecated. Even MeeGo Netbook uses "Mx" as its toolkit, not GTK (though some applications still use GTK). And now GNOME is in the middle of the Shell vs. Unity battle with the weird result that now even Canonical is a bigger contributor to KDE than GNOME even though their "GNOME distribution" is the premier one.
No, KDE is healthy and not at all desperate.
(PS: My post may seem anti-GNOME but it's not meant that way. GNOME is a large community that will survive current events and probably become even stronger after their platform was renovated with their 3.0 release.)
it feels like a RSS of a couple mailing lists (wine releases, linux kernel releases etc.) at times.
So? It's exactly what I like about Phoronix. Considering that I only follow a few mailing lists and those alone result in roughly 100 mails per day, I'm happy Phoronix filters mailing lists for me and I don't need to get 1000 mails per day.
"KDE" considers nothing. A few people from within the KDE community play mind games but nothing is an official consideration by the whole KDE community.
If you ignore Phoronix's stupid benchmarks and trolls in the forums, the site is quite good. Where else do you get info regarding exotic stuff like Wayland?
I take Phoronix (and ArsTechnica's Open Ended) any day over badly researched sites with moronic troll admins like OSNews.
If you read the mailing list threads, you'll see that many KDE people don't find that proposal convenient at all because it has the consequences of massive restructuring, different release cycles that don't match SC's, Nokia's currently lacking code submission process, etc.
Maybe and just maybe some select KDE components may end up in Qt but that can legally only happen if Nokia moves away from the currently mandatory "right to relicense" (not the same as copyright assignment but similar in practical terms).
GPLv2 (the version VLC is under) doesn't forbid DRM. GPLv3 (which GNU Go is under) does that.
VLC in the AppStore does not violate anything as long as its users can obtain the source code.
The blog post was written by either a clueless person or someone who purposefully mixes GPLv2 terms with GPLv3 terms to generate backlash against Apple. Either way, in its current form VLC in AppStore in not illegal.
It's funny... I remember reading a post by some VLC programmer that they don't switch VLC from GPLv2 to v3 because they think v3 is too draconian. The so-called "Anti-TiVo clause" is the only aspect of v3 that's fundamentally different from v2. The rest of v3 is just adjusted wording to be compatible with international copyright laws.
VLC is under GPLv2. v2 is compatible with the terms of the Apple App Store and pretty much any other app store out there. GPLv3 is incompatible because it requires the right that receivers of GPLv3'ed code can not only freely modify it but also run it (this clause was written after TiVo used the Linux kernel in its boxes but had some checksum authentication method to ensure that users don't install modified kernels -- Linus Torvalds, btw, dislikes GPLv3 for that very reason)
From TFA: "GNOME Shell is the interface being developed for GNOME 3.0, which was delayed to spring 2011."
Probably then they are switching to Unity due to the schedule?
No. GNOME 3.0 still has the classic 2.x panel/desktop as fall-back option in case GPU drivers don't support Clutter. Canonical could've just used that if they fear Shell's instability/immaturity.
Plasma Desktop (the KDE project underwent a rebranding a year ago -- that's now the name of the DE) looks in its default layout somewhat like Windows but behaves actually very differently. The differences begin with the use of a single click to open files and end with Activities, newspaper views, etc.
Because Microsoft called it Java, and Google doesn't?
Microsoft didn't call anything Java. Their VM was called "Microsoft JVM", their Java dialect "J++", etc. Even though it's completely unrelated technology, MS didn't even use the term "JavaScript" but used "JScript" instead (today they call it ECMAScript like everybody else).
What are you talking about? openSUSE has the official Java (package is called "java-1_6_0-sun") as well as an OpenJDK/IcedTea-based one ("java-1_6_0-openjdk").
The story is not that IBM continues to manufacture chips but that the Cell design is not dead. This contradicts earlier stories to some degree. In all fairness, it contradicts only on the surface as IBM only stated in the older story that Cell as separate design will end and its co-processor-heavy design will merge with future POWER iterations.
There were also rumors that IBM won't manufacture PS3 Cell CPUs any longer, leaving it to contractors.
If you don't like Unity, you could give Kubuntu's Plasma Netbook a try. Since it's all based on d-bus, its global menu bar is compatible with almost all Linux GUI applications, incl. the ones you currently use.
Don't know what you're talking about. For quite some time I had a Kubuntu machine and a openSUSE machine. Distribution upgrades always caused something to break in *buntu. But when I did a live upgrade of openSUSE 11.2 to 11.3, everything went smooth.
Strangely live distro upgrades are an officially supported mechanism in *buntu while the same is officially branded as unsupported, experimental feature in openSUSE but the openSUSE one works better.
Ubuntu won't switch to KDE. The KDE variant of Ubuntu is called Kubuntu. Maybe Canonical will switch the financial focus to Kubuntu in the future, but I doubt it. Kubuntu's reputation within the KDE community is just too bad. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/19616885@N00/sets/72157608562200171/ why.
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Why don't we finish some unfinished projects (Quanta)
Since you wrote "we" I assume that you could help finish it but didn't do it yet. As for the "why": Ask yourself why you didn't do it.
KDE is a volunteer effort. No one there owes you anything.
GNUstep has a lot of potential.
Isn't that the status of GNUstep since 15 years?
Whatever they do regarding this issue, I just want to implore the KDE devs to please focus on stability and performance improvements for the next few point releases, rather than adding any more new features.
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2010/10/optimization-in-kwin-4-6/
Stop spreading lies. Nokia takes lots of KDE to MeeGo and helps KDE a lot. KDE also uses GLib in many places.
MeeGo IVI is not based on Clutter. It uses Qt. See http://meego.gitorious.com/meego-ivi-ux/ivihome/blobs/master/launcher.cpp
MeeGo Netbook uses Clutter because it's just the continuation of the older Moblin GUI which was based on Clutter and Intel found it pointless to rewrite it.
Nokia is probably the biggest (at least one of the biggest) corporate sponsor of KDE -- for example Aaron Seigo in employed by Nokia just to work on KDE. Nokia brought KOffice to Maemo/MeeGo, sponsoring a smartphone GUI, improve file format converters, etc.
MeeGo Handset will also use KCal for example.
Nobody at KDE is getting desperate. The "merger" is just an idea by a single guy and nothing KDE as a whole is actively pursuing. Considering how many of KDE are against that idea, I don't see how it could become reality.
KDE is one of the healthiest FOSS projects of all. According to Wikipedia KDE is the 2nd largest FOSS project after the Linux kernel.
KDE has no reason to be desperate. Even if MeeGo was only using Qt and no KDE code at all, GNOME still got the boot while a KDE-related technology (Qt) got in. Some back-end services remain but everything related to GUIs was deprecated. Even MeeGo Netbook uses "Mx" as its toolkit, not GTK (though some applications still use GTK). And now GNOME is in the middle of the Shell vs. Unity battle with the weird result that now even Canonical is a bigger contributor to KDE than GNOME even though their "GNOME distribution" is the premier one.
No, KDE is healthy and not at all desperate.
(PS: My post may seem anti-GNOME but it's not meant that way. GNOME is a large community that will survive current events and probably become even stronger after their platform was renovated with their 3.0 release.)
it feels like a RSS of a couple mailing lists (wine releases, linux kernel releases etc.) at times.
So? It's exactly what I like about Phoronix. Considering that I only follow a few mailing lists and those alone result in roughly 100 mails per day, I'm happy Phoronix filters mailing lists for me and I don't need to get 1000 mails per day.
"KDE" considers nothing. A few people from within the KDE community play mind games but nothing is an official consideration by the whole KDE community.
My KDE SC and Qt are installed in /usr.
If you ignore Phoronix's stupid benchmarks and trolls in the forums, the site is quite good. Where else do you get info regarding exotic stuff like Wayland?
I take Phoronix (and ArsTechnica's Open Ended) any day over badly researched sites with moronic troll admins like OSNews.
I'm sure it would be convenient for the KDE folks
If you read the mailing list threads, you'll see that many KDE people don't find that proposal convenient at all because it has the consequences of massive restructuring, different release cycles that don't match SC's, Nokia's currently lacking code submission process, etc.
Maybe and just maybe some select KDE components may end up in Qt but that can legally only happen if Nokia moves away from the currently mandatory "right to relicense" (not the same as copyright assignment but similar in practical terms).
Or rather, certain interpretations of GPLv2 say that it allows these restrictions.
Show me the exact paragraph why v2 shouldn't allow that. I can't find any line that says that code has to be executable on a specific device
GPLv2 (the version VLC is under) doesn't forbid DRM. GPLv3 (which GNU Go is under) does that.
VLC in the AppStore does not violate anything as long as its users can obtain the source code.
The blog post was written by either a clueless person or someone who purposefully mixes GPLv2 terms with GPLv3 terms to generate backlash against Apple.
Either way, in its current form VLC in AppStore in not illegal.
It's funny... I remember reading a post by some VLC programmer that they don't switch VLC from GPLv2 to v3 because they think v3 is too draconian. The so-called "Anti-TiVo clause" is the only aspect of v3 that's fundamentally different from v2. The rest of v3 is just adjusted wording to be compatible with international copyright laws.
VLC is under GPLv2. v2 is compatible with the terms of the Apple App Store and pretty much any other app store out there.
GPLv3 is incompatible because it requires the right that receivers of GPLv3'ed code can not only freely modify it but also run it (this clause was written after TiVo used the Linux kernel in its boxes but had some checksum authentication method to ensure that users don't install modified kernels -- Linus Torvalds, btw, dislikes GPLv3 for that very reason)
From TFA:
"GNOME Shell is the interface being developed for GNOME 3.0, which was delayed to spring 2011."
Probably then they are switching to Unity due to the schedule?
No. GNOME 3.0 still has the classic 2.x panel/desktop as fall-back option in case GPU drivers don't support Clutter. Canonical could've just used that if they fear Shell's instability/immaturity.
Maybe (just maybe) Canonical switches because they own the complete copyrights to Unity and according to http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/10/17/shuttleworth-admits-it.html that's a business model Canonical aims for.
Plasma Desktop (the KDE project underwent a rebranding a year ago -- that's now the name of the DE) looks in its default layout somewhat like Windows but behaves actually very differently. The differences begin with the use of a single click to open files and end with Activities, newspaper views, etc.
Weird how you can claim that GNOME has fewer bugs even though you haven't "used (KDE Plasma) much since 4.0 came out".
Why would anyone install several minor revisions of the same thing? Is it so pleasant to have JavaVMs with security holes installed?
Microsoft didn't call anything Java. Their VM was called "Microsoft JVM", their Java dialect "J++", etc.
Even though it's completely unrelated technology, MS didn't even use the term "JavaScript" but used "JScript" instead (today they call it ECMAScript like everybody else).
What are you talking about? openSUSE has the official Java (package is called "java-1_6_0-sun") as well as an OpenJDK/IcedTea-based one ("java-1_6_0-openjdk").
The story is not that IBM continues to manufacture chips but that the Cell design is not dead. This contradicts earlier stories to some degree.
In all fairness, it contradicts only on the surface as IBM only stated in the older story that Cell as separate design will end and its co-processor-heavy design will merge with future POWER iterations.
There were also rumors that IBM won't manufacture PS3 Cell CPUs any longer, leaving it to contractors.
If you don't like Unity, you could give Kubuntu's Plasma Netbook a try. Since it's all based on d-bus, its global menu bar is compatible with almost all Linux GUI applications, incl. the ones you currently use.
Don't know what you're talking about.
For quite some time I had a Kubuntu machine and a openSUSE machine. Distribution upgrades always caused something to break in *buntu.
But when I did a live upgrade of openSUSE 11.2 to 11.3, everything went smooth.
Strangely live distro upgrades are an officially supported mechanism in *buntu while the same is officially branded as unsupported, experimental feature in openSUSE but the openSUSE one works better.
Why should they use Qt with Clutter? Qt already has similar technology built in.
The Free Software Fondation Europe shares offices with KDE, not any GNOME-related group.
Ubuntu won't switch to KDE. The KDE variant of Ubuntu is called Kubuntu.
Maybe Canonical will switch the financial focus to Kubuntu in the future, but I doubt it. Kubuntu's reputation within the KDE community is just too bad. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/19616885@N00/sets/72157608562200171/ why.
Is there any big change in GNOME 3.0 except Shell?