why kdelibs?

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Saturday 30 October 2010 Juan Carlos Torres wrote:
> 
> 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?

KDE would still create great applications based on Qt, just as we do now, but 
without the additional layering of the KDE libraries on top of Qt.

> 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?

KDE is much more than the libraries, actually if KDE would be about libraries 
already now nobody would be interested anymore. KDE is community, and a 
community creating great software for end-users. We have tons of applications 
people love to use, and a community who loves to create them. How many 
libraries they use, and how the stack is layered doesn't really matter, does 
it? For technical details, yes, but there actually maintaining our platform as 
integral part of Qt seems advantageous to having a separate layer, which is 
hard to sell, sometimes hard to use, and very hard to maintain.

The KDE community would still do the same as now, the differentiating factor 
would still be creating great software for end-users. If Qt would have 
provided everything we needed we wouldn't have created kdelibs. Assuming the 
obstacles we have seen and still see in actively being part of Qt can be 
removed, we wouldn't have a strong need for our own special platform, would 
we?

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>