Re: KDE in hamm is a mess
On 22 Jul 1998, Steve Dunham wrote:
> I'm waiting to see what happens when people start porting KDE programs
> to Gnome.
that shouldn't be a problem - at least not a license problem. most (all??)
kde stuff is gpl-ed. gnome and gtk are gpl-ed. porting kde apps to gnome
and/or gtk is permitted, as is distributing the result.
interestingly, the reverse is not true - porting gnome apps to kde is
not permitted under the gpl. more precisely, porting gnome apps to Qt
and distributing the result is not permitted.
i pointed this out to some kde people some time ago. they didn't seem
to understand the problem. in fact, they had no interest whatsoever in
the problem. i guess they believe that license problems are like the
bugblatter beast in HHGTTG - if they blind themselves to it, it can't
see them.
my guess is that they'll wake up to the problem one of these days, get
pissed off at the fact that the gnome project may legally use their
stuff but they can't legally use gnome's stuff and respond by creating
some unpleasant anti-gnome restrictions. this will just hasten the
inevitable.
IMO, their indifference to licensing issues has doomed their project
to irrelevance in the long run. fortunately anything good that they
produce under the GPL can and probably will be salvaged, and a lot of
KDE developers will probably just move over to gnome or some other
freely licensed project....but KDE itself won't survive if they don't do
something about their dependance on Qt.
they won't do something about it, of course. they are vehemently opposed
to doing anything at all about it. they wont even commit to using a free
alternative - like harmony - if one is ever developed. They see Qt as
being one of the crucial things that made KDE possible....and there is
truth in that viewpoint. What they refuse to see is that Qt is the
thing which will ultimately doom KDE to failure.
shit happens.
craig
--
craig sanders
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