[fdn-ann] Upside: KDE League Looks Much like Gnome Foundation

["Barbara Heffner" <bheffner chenpr com>]

Upside article on the recent announcement.


> http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/print-it?id=3a1445951&t=/texis/mvm/open_season
> Upside
> Open Season: KDE League looks much like Gnome Foundation
> by Sam Williams
> November 17, 2000
>
> If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Gnome developers must be 
> feeling pretty flattered right now.
>
> On Wednesday a collection of software developers and businesses associated 
> with KDE, the graphic user interface program designed to improve the user 
> friendliness of the GNU/Linux operating system, banded together at the Las 
> Vegas Comdex show to announce the creation of the KDE League.
>
> Although the press conference had absolutely nothing to do with the Gnome 
> project, a separate Linux user interface effort whose developers and users 
> have maintained a spirited rivalry with the KDE camp for two years 
> running, the timing was unfortunate. After all, it was only three months 
> ago that Gnome developers and business partners were joining together at 
> the San Jose Linux World to announce a similar cross-industry effort 
> dubbed the Gnome Foundation. The fact that a number of companies, such as 
> IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HWP) and Compaq (CPQ), had representatives at 
> both press conferences added to the feeling of déjà vu.
>
> Despite the similarities, organizers of Wednesday's event did their best 
> to distance the two efforts.
>
> Making the best of it
>
> "This is not a reaction to the Gnome Foundation," said Andreas Pour, 
> president of KDE.com and one of the chief organizers of the KDE League. 
> "In fact, it's something that's been in the works (for) over a year."
>
> The KDE League does differ from the Gnome Foundation in a number of ways. 
> Unlike the Gnome Foundation, which according to early drafts of its 
> mission statement will "coordinate releases and determine which projects 
> are part of Gnome," the KDE League promises to have minimal involvement in 
> the design and developmental politics inside the KDE project.
>
> The primary purpose of the League, according to KDE League President Chris 
> Schlaeger, is to unify existing publicity and marketing efforts related to 
> KDE, not influence the future direction of interface development.
>
> "Anybody who wants to contribute to KDE can do so by taking part in the 
> well-established model for contributing to KDE," says Schlaeger. "The KDE 
> League does nothing to change that process in any form."
>
> Matthias Dalheimer, a leading KDE developer, said via email that the KDE 
> project, while still trying to maintain its independence from the 
> businesses participating in the KDE League, welcomes the support.
>
> "We have been criticized in the past for (having) bad PR, not being able 
> to communicate our achievements, etc.," wrote Dalheimer. "Sometimes, our 
> press releases were two weeks late ... Sometimes we did not have one at 
> all. The KDE League is supposed to remedy this. It raises both funds and 
> competence in marketing because of the involvement of a number of 
> companies that know how to market software."
>
> Compatibility issues
>
> Nevertheless, Wednesday's conference had one element that seemed to imply 
> a significant shift in the future work of Dalheimer and other KDE 
> developers. IBM, a charter KDE League member, announced that its own 
> developers have been working to port voice recognition software to the KDE 
> interface.
>
> The company said in a statement that its developers had been working in 
> conjunction with MandrakeSoft, a Linux distribution company, and 
> Trolltech, a Norwegian company that has overseen much of the development 
> on the Qt library, a major KDE component, to make IBM's ViaVoice software 
> compatible with KDE. IBM has officially supported a Linux version of 
> ViaVoice since April 1999, but Wednesday marks the first time the 
> technology has been available for KDE.
>
> For the moment, says Trolltech President Erik Eng, ViaVoice will focus on 
> desktop versions of the GNU/Linux operating system. Given the limited real 
> estate available on most mobile devices, however, the voice recognition 
> technology seems to be a natural problem solver for mobile device 
> designers. Indeed, Trolltech announced at Comdex the official release of 
> Qt embedded, an embedded version of the Qt library that should speed KDE 
> development for handheld and other mobile computing devices.
>
> "I would not be surprised to see ViaVoice and KDE on embedded devices in 
> 2001," says Eng. "The technology is there. It's just a question of putting 
> it together."
>
> ViaVoice recognition certainly gives the older KDE project a chance to 
> play lead dog again in its race with Linux rival Gnome. According to an 
> IBM spokesperson, the company is still in talks with the Gnome Foundation 
> about porting ViaVoice to that interface.
>
> KDE.com's Pour said he looks forward to a more concrete announcement about 
> voice recognition software for embedded versions of KDE at the New York 
> Linuxworld in January. In the meantime, he preferred to downplay the 
> Gnome-KDE rivalry that has provided so much fodder for the open source 
> media over the past two years.
>
> "Four percent of the desktop market today already uses Linux," says Pour, 
> citing recent statistics from International Data Corp. "Our goal is not to 
> compete over that 4 percent. Our goal is to attack the 96 percent that 
> still use proprietary software, not to mention the almost 100 percent of 
> the mobile device market that still relies on proprietary software."

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