Richard Stallman <[email protected]> writes: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > > > I think KDE was not really free at the time. > > I used it around 2000, it was free. > > The issue with KDE, as of 1998, was that Qt was nonfree. > > At some point Qt was made free. I don't know whether that had > happened by 2000. Maybe a few years after. Something like that. Qt was dual licensed (still is) and there was fear that GPL license for Qt will go away. Someone (KDE folks I think) started work on Free version of Qt, and it ended up on agreement between KDE and Trolltech at the time that Qt shell be remain avialable under GPL license.
Gnome was a reaction to KDE to build a desktop on a completely Free toolkit, and was answer to KDE guys choosing Qt as a base for the desktop. I am not sure if I am correct about, something amongst those lines.
