Editorial:The KDE/Gnome Flamewar

The battle for the X desktop has never been fiercer. And the major contenders for the easy-to-use integrated desktop of the future is being waged between KDE and Gnome. Kevin Forge has written in with his "Twisted View" on the situtation.

The following is an editorial by Slashdot reader Kevin Forge

I have noticed on Slashdot and on all other open forums ( except for the KDE lists themselves :) that whenever KDE is mentioned a flamewar immediately starts up and burns for several days. I think it's about time we got a few facts straight on the legal issues involved then we can discus the implications for the Linux/GNU community.

1. What is wrong with the KDE License ?
   Nothing. It is GPL and according to the rules of the GPL can be enforced on distributions that ship QT as part of the package ( All distributions that ship KDE ship QT and even debian includes QT as an optional install )
2. What is wrong with the QT License ?
   It demands money from people who use it to write closed source proprietary programs ( ~$1200 ). It dose not allow you to distribute modified versions of QT itself. All modifications, enhancements and bug fixes must be sent to Troll Tech for inclusion in the official product.
3. But isn't it dangerous to base something as important as a desktop environment on a none free product ?
   Yes. Troll May be bought by another company ( who shall remain nameless in it's Redmond home ) bent on destroying KDE. This distraction would work by releasing buggy versions of QT ( beyond the norm :) or stopping development of QT or changing to a more restrictive and expensive license ( Like Motif ). It is worth noting that in each of this situations KDE can simply continue using the last gratis QT Libs ( you cannot change a software license retroactively ) for around 18 months. That is the current best estimate as to when Harmony ( the QT replacement ) will be in a position to take over from QT completely. This calculation is made at the current development rate with little interest from anyone else.
4. What of the FreeQT Foundation ?
   The existence of this body negates most of the above sited dangers. If Troll Tech is bought, QT becomes stagnant or the QT License is changed then it will revert to a BSD license ( which we all know is as free as the LGPL in most ways ).

Now we can get to the mater of the relationship between Gnome and KDE. Nobody wanted a desktop environment. Nobody cared about one. The Linux establishment looked at CDE and just puked. then they were thankful it cost a lot of money and won't be popular to Linux users.

Then along came the KDE crew who did care about a Linux desktop and got the ball rolling. Before the rest of the Linux world saw what was happening KDE is robust and almost stable. I have clocked KDE running for as many as 5 days and data loss has only occurred on the Solaris port ( that bug is fixed ). However being based on a none free proprietary toolkit made it a danger in many eyes. Thus they set off on a mad rush to build a replacement for KDE before it got entrenched in the Linux community.

With this in mind Gnome has landed more financial support than any other single project in Linux history ( Including the Kernel ). It has someone doing daily builds and RPMs, SRPMs and DEB packages. All this to prevent Linux from being dependent upon Troll Tech or QT.

Meanwhile with the 50 ton Gorilla called Gnome rushing on the KDE developers are redoubling their efforts to maintain as clear a technological and stability lead as possible.

The end result is that if Gnome had been started when KDE was and by the same people it would not be where it is today. It would be a sick and weak toy like all the other halfhearted desktop projects that came before ( TKDesk, Lestif and a bunch of others that just dropped flat ). So because of the shortcomings of the QT license we now have a desktop for which people have already uninstaled CDE and another which should by definition be nicer when it get's done. However when Gnome get's to the level of today's KDE, KDE will have moved on to bigger and brighter things so there will be a technological battle between them for at least a few years.

I can't help but draw the analogy of the US BasketBall team in the last Olympics that simply crushed everything in the path. What people miss is that they grew strong playing against each other in the NBA. So too will KDE and Gnome grow strong trying to outdo each other on Linux thus making them a formidable teem for use against other OSs. There is now Gnome-KDE mailing list specifically created for making sure Gnome and KDe comply with the same standards for application interaction and certain L&F similarities.

PS : I ask that any comments on technological issues ( speed, stability, usability etc. ) be made AFTER using a resent snapshot of both KDE and Gnome.