Thanks for the info. One update though. KDE created the title "Patron of KDE" and by coincidence immediately made Mark the first individual "Patron of KDE." There is also a corporate category. I frankly think that they felt that they had better build an alliance with him.
http://dot.kde.org/2006/10/15/mark-shuttleworth-becomes-first-patron-kde On April 9, 2011 07:50:13 pm Chris Knadle wrote: > On Saturday, April 09, 2011 18:37:44 Mark Wallace wrote: > > If I have my history straight, KDE is actually about six months older > > than Gnome. Gnome started because it's founders were horrified that KDE > > was at least partially built on proprietary code. > > KDE is built upon Qt. Originally Qt had a different license (the QPL, I > believe), which free software advocates found objectionable. So... yes. > > > What made things so difficult for 4.0, if I have my history straight, is > > that they moved completely away from proprietary code, either because the > > code that they were using became open source, or they rewrote things in > > open source code. > > No. Qt has been under the GPL for a while, and both KDE 3 and KDE 4 are > under the same license. I believe it was purely a matter of design and > redesign decisions for the next version. Phonon, Plasma widgets, > Compositing, etc -- overall it radically changed how the Desktop gets > used. > > Along with this came big changes in Qt 3 vs Qt 4, and having programmed in > both I can tell you that it isn't easy to translate a Qt 3 app into a Qt 4 > app. Qt 4 incorporates MVC theory [Model, View, Controller] and has native > SVG support. A lot of the new replacement Classes have to be used in very > different ways, so old code actually has to get redesigned in order to be > ported. > > The bottom line is that both the underlying library dependencies and the > design changed. That's a lot to deal with at once. so it's not a big > surprise that the early versions of KDE 4.0 were a bit rough. > > > I think that there still are a lot less applets and things in KDE, > > possibly because the writers of those never cared enough to rewrite. > > > > I also understand that there were some morale problems at KDE. I am > > guessing that they reached out to Mark Shuttleworth, giving him some > > special status within KDE because they needed his help to keep in the > > game. > > From what I've read I gather that both Mark Shuttleworth and KDE have been > working with the freedesktop.org, so they have some mutual interest, and > that Gnome hasn't embraced some the freedesktop.org recommendations. I > wouldn't say that Mark Shuttleworth had "special status" with KDE, though. > I think it's simply that they each have their own design goals, and often > those design goals are well aligned. That's not a bad thing. > > -- Chris > > -- > > Chris Knadle > [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > May 4 - Inkscape > Jun 1 - Zimbra > Jul 6 - Jul 2011 _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium May 4 - Inkscape Jun 1 - Zimbra Jul 6 - Jul 2011
