Re: Hrm. Now I know why this list is dead

[Kurt Granroth <granroth kde org>]

Jonas Luster wrote:
> Cooperation is always a good thing. But looking at KDE "vs." Gnome,
> there's an even worse thing than just some flames from Miguel (whose
> speeches I've enjoyed and loved, Miguel is certainly one of the more
> interesting persons in OSS-movement) - it's the placement of Gnome/KDE 
> that is done by not only Media but Distributions and Persons.
> 
> Looking at almost every german computer magazine, reading comments
> from the SuSE-Team or using SuSE as his distribution, one may get the
> impression, there's only _one_ "Linux Desktop" (they even negate the
> fact that both products run on a variety of platforms): KDE.

:-) :-) :-)

This is great!!  It is *very* obvious that you are not an American.  In the
American press, RedHat == Linux and Gnome == Linux GUI (a recent TIME and a
recent ComputerWorld repeated this).  Until we started the KDE PR team and
stared actively advocating KDE to the American Press, we didn't even exist as
far as they were concerned.

Your observations of the KDE "hype" are accurate only in Europe. :-)

> Me, personally, I don't like KDE much - not because of some particular 
> missing feature or of some existing ones but because it did not "look" 
> okay to me. I'm using Gnome, doing my GUIs in GTK+ and am trying to
> contribute to the community somewhat in doing speeches on Gnome and
> writing articles on it.

That's cool.. really.  As long as developer's stick to advocacy and not FUD,
then both projects can co-exist and all users reap the benefits.

> But - it's hard to break thru' this mist of "Hype" and it's placement
> as the one-true-desktop that surrounds KDE. Looking at the audiences
> of my speeches, I somewhat can understand Miguel - full of hype and
> euphoria for KDE most of them don't even take me serious if I do start 
> to explain Gnome and it's mechanisms to them.

I think I'd love to go to some speeches in Europe.  I sometimes get depressed
when I hear "Gnome Gnome Gnome Gnome Gnome" all the time and it feels like I'm
alone in saying "KDE".

> I'm pretty new to Gnome and GTK, my first version was 0.20, but one
> thing I've ben experiencing with the Gnome/GTK folks is their
> friendliness (yes, timj, I still owe you 50 bucks :), their help and
> their readyness to contribute to the desktop they are using.

This was one of the biggest reasons I started out with KDE.  I was straddling
between Gnome and KDE for a while a little over a year ago.  The Gnome
developers *seemed* very stand-offish and unwilling to help out somebody just
getting started.  The KDE people were great!

I wonder about that now, sometimes.  I've had some dealings with Gnome
developer's since and they have all been very cool.  Why the change?  Maybe
because I am a full-fledge "open source developer" now and thus worthy of
respect and before I was just a clueless newbie?

> Just a look on the KDE Pages - they do remind me of commercial pages a 
> bit - full of hoorays and whistles and a look on the Gnome Pages,
> being somewhat more "friendly and cooperative".

heh.. well, different targets beget different "looks".

> To reverse the question: What in the last months has the KDE TEam done 
> towards cooperation? Have they thought on a way to unify
> session-management, drag'n'drop, everything else? Is there a list on
> the KDE side, called kde-gnome?

So developers on "your side" don't discuss this type of stuff on the lists?

In fact, Matthias Ettrich is co-operating with Raster and Alfredo (sp?) on the
session-managment.  Preston worked with RHAD Labs to develop a common standard
for .kdelnk/.desktop files.  Both KDE and Gnome will use XDND.

Just because you are not personally involved in "common code" efforts, don't
assume that nobody is.  We (KDE developers in general -- not all, of course)
are more and more reaching out to Gnome to standardize things.  I think
definite progress is being made.  It's just unfortunate that a certain High
And Mighty "Leader" does it darndest to alienate everybody...
-- 
Kurt Granroth            | granroth@kde.org
KDE Developer/Evangelist | http://www.pobox.com/~kurt_granroth

        KDE -- Putting a Friendly Face on Linux