why kdelibs?

[Tom Albers]

----- Original Message -----
> On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Cornelius Schumacher <
> schumacher at kde.org > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday 28 October 2010 John Layt wrote:
> >
> > Big questions. Anyone with big answers? :-)
> 
> Here is a big answer:
> 
> Let's merge Qt and the KDE development platform. Let's put all KDE
> libraries,
> support libraries, platform modules into Qt, remove the redundancies
> in Qt,
> and polish it into one nice consistent set of APIs, providing both,
> the
> wonderful KDE integration, consistency and convenience, as well as the
> simplicity and portability of the Qt platform.
> 
> I know what you think ("madness", "no", "KDE 5", "impossible",
> "governance",
> "binary compatibility", "Nokia", "impossible", ...), but if you put
> that aside
> for a while and think big, wouldn't that be a wonderful answer to all
> the
> struggles we have with kdelibs?
> 
> We all love Qt, without it KDE wouldn't exist. We also love the KDE
> development platform, it provides all that what Qt doesn't have or
> didn't have
> at some point in time. But is there still a real reason to keep them
> separate?
> Wouldn't it be much more elegant, if you wouldn't have to decide, if
> to use
> some KDE classes or write a "qt-only" application, if you would get
> all the
> wonders of KDE from Qt in one consistent way?
> 
> 
> Sorry for butting in, but I just have to ask: Do you basically mean
> that the
> "KDE Development Platform" cease to be "KDE" and become part of Qt?
> Let's say this were possible, would KDE (or marketing-compliant, KDE
> SC) then
> become simply apps using Qt, probably with tighter platform
> integration on,
> for example, Linux?
> 
> I mean, the thread started out as "why kdelibs?". With the answer you
> offered,
> the question in my mind now becomes "why KDE at all?" Or "what would
> KDE's
> selling/differentiating factor be?
> 
> I hope I don't come off as trolling or offensive. I'm just genuinely
> curious about
> the effects of such a future with regards to KDE's independent
> identity.

You are not. You read my mind.
-- 
Tom Albers