KDE responds: we're not scared

Puts faith in binaries, not spin

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Software, 15th August 2000 08:15 GMT

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LinuxWorld KDE might lack the PR attack dogs, spin teams or budgets of the rival Gnome project, but maybe it doesn't need them.

"It's more talk than substance," says KDE developer Richard Moore of the new Gnome Foundation, backed by Sun and friends. "But maybe the substance will come later at LinuxWorldExpo," he told The Register.

He broadly welcomed the news that StarOffice would put its file formats in an XML format. (see our other follow-up story today: StarOffice creator on the GNOME pact). "It would make life easier for everyone. We already use XML, so adding another DTD is not a problem." The GUIs and KParts merging are all defined in XML, he says.

A lot of interoperability work between KDE and Gnome, such as for themes support, the .desktop files, drag and drop protocols and the component models has been going on in the background for some time he points out.

He's not sure what pieces of openoffice the KDE team might want to pick out, if any, but he suggested the file filters were the most likely. "We already have KOffice and by the time a useful port is around rather than working prototype, we may have it up."

As for the mindshare of the distros, he points out that the two most popular Linuxes in Europe - Mandrake and SuSE, run KDE as default. And then there's Corel, which assuming it can stay solvent, will release Corel Linux 2.0 shortly. It's based on KDE 1.2, but will include some features of KDE 2.0 back ported. Corel continues to advise, and add nitty-gritty stuff like key bindings and Q&A he says.

And the team seems to relaxed about the threat. Maybe this time next year Gnome will be the default on more distros. And maybe the year after than with KDE 2.1 and 2.2, it'll be KDE.

It's all completely civilised. After half an hour of talking about StarOffice issues, Moore hadn't use the words "stuck pig", "bloatware" or "grim necessity" once.

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