Novell will (continue to) support KDE after all

[billt-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org]

> 
> The 99.99% of the public that neither knows nor cares about the
> difference between C, C++, C# and whatever else is relevant, has a
> legitimate beef. To the non-technical end user, it's a legitimate wonder
> of how much effort has needlessly gone into duplicating effort.
> 
The last time I had to change my gas filter in the car I went to Canadian Tire and asked to buy a gas filter. I was led to the 'gas filter isle' where I counted 143 different types of gas filters and none of which were for my car. I had to special order mine. So if if non-technical end users can put up with 143 different designs for a coffee filtered sealed in a can they can put up with any duplicating effort.

> How much better might the open source desktop be if all the programming,
> human design and documentation skills of the community been funnelled
> into one program rather than split between two (or more) desktop systems?
I claim it would be worse. Design decisions would get locked in by code and little reason would exist to redesign or rebuild. Furthermore code bloat would become a problem, and bad coding decisions would stay forever. As most people are rewarded because they 'added features' instead of cleaning up code the resulting product would become worse and worse over time with no incentive to change it.

> 
> This is not like the diversity of Linux distributions, because the
> differences in them is usually more than internal design or personal
> taste. Many distros serve different and specialized purposes. OTOH, KDE
> and GNOME serve very much the identical purpose.
Actually most linux distributions have minor superficial differences. There is a few that have specialized such as hard hat linux targeting embedded systems, but for the most part distros targeting the desktop have minor superficial changes.

But as noted in another post, those minor changes may have big result. One person noted that KDE on Slakware was screaming compared to KDE on Suse. That is entirely due to the tweaks in the configuration not the design.

> 
> This long ago stopped being a contest of innovation, since neither GNOME
> nor KDE really is doing anything groundbreaking (from the users'
> perspective). Elegance of internal design is a fine issue for insiders,
> but there are many people who can't tell Riesling from Shiraz and there
> are many who can't (and don't want to be bothered to) pick a winner
> between KDE and GNOME.
 In fact there is very little that has been groundbreaking from the users perspective since Apple brought out the Macintosh. All the innovation has been about how things are done internally. To use the your metaphor, the results of the fermentation are secondary to the process of growing the grapes and producing the wine. there are a few that will care about the type and vintage, but most look at the price.  
> 
> >They are implemented in different languages, with very different
> >designs, and even attempting to "fold them together" is certain to be
> >fruitless.
> >  
> >
> Moreover, most of the ideas that one does first get re-implemented in
> the other.
> Korganizer, Evolution
> Kopete, Gaim
> etc. etc. Almost every KDE function has a GNOME equivalent and vice
> versa, and in many cases neither is fully cooked or anywhere as easy to
> use as either the Mac or Windows counterparts. We're playing catch-up,
> while having our progress seriously impeded by religious arguments over
> languages and other issues that in the grand scheme of things are just
> geek minutiae. This isn't so much technical Darwinism as it is (in this
> case) a needless fragmentation.
> 
What you are forgetting is that this is open source. the geek miutiae is what the people doing these projects care about. User are at least secondary if not fifth or sixth. In this culture having Linus or Richard indorse your piece of crap is more important to you than a million users heaping praise.
 
> I interpret (and support) Ted's plea as wanting the FOSS desktop to be a
> collaboration of diverse input rather than a bunch of gratuitous and
> generally redundant wheel re-inventions.
> 
I supprt the same idea in the automotive industry but I'm not holding my breath,

> FOSS proponents dismiss such POVs at their risk.

I doubt that anyone is risking anything other than their own spare time. And finally if any one's person personal project failed for lack of acceptance by the community or the market life will go on and no one will really be detrimented by the effort. If the choice is work on something you like or work on nothing, I will support the people that work on the things they like. I may disagree on their technical choices, I may not use the software they create, but I respect that they did try.

Bill

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