Formal complaint concerning the use of the name "System Settings" by GNOME

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Sunday 24 July 2011 Ben Cooksley wrote:
> Dropping GNOME out of this, as it seems quite clear they aren't
> interested in co-operating at all. Which is fairly typical for them,
> they're insular and only care for themselves.

I don't want to let a statement like this stand as it is. There are a lot of 
people in the GNOME community who do want to cooperate. There certainly are 
also people who don't. That's the same in our community. Not everybody cares 
about cross-desktop collaboration, and this creates issues, as we have seen.

Still, we should treat each other with respect. I understand that it makes you 
angry, if things break because of decisions outside your control, which you 
consider to be wrong. But being angry doesn't solve problems, especially not 
when communication about a common solution is required.

There are a lot of technical things we can do to address this specific 
problem, taking settings from the platform, making configuration available in 
context, making KDE applications and frameworks more modular and less 
interdependent. Not everything can be done easily, but we should look for the 
right solutions and persue them.

Additionally we need to talk about how to do integration across desktops. We 
should not be content with having insular desktops, neither on the GNOME side, 
nor on our side, nor anywhere else. This only limits us, how we are perceived, 
and what users think what they can do with KDE software. We aren't the 
monolithic desktop, which only runs KDE software, and which is required by all 
KDE applications. That's exactly the misconception we are trying to get rid 
of.

So let's have a constructive conversation with GNOME and others how to share 
settings, how to integrate applications running on different workspaces 
independent of the toolkit they are implemented with. The desktop summit 
provides a great opportunity for that.

But again, please act with respect for your own and other communities. Being 
aggressive doesn't help in finding good solutions for users, and it's really 
not the atmosphere, I'd like to see in KDE.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>