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

[Jeremy Bicha]

On 25 July 2011 07:18, Scott Kitterman <kde at kitterman.com> wrote:
>
>
> Thomas Zander <zander at kde.org> wrote:
>
>>On Monday 25 July 2011 07.49.17 Scott Kitterman wrote:
>>> I haven't seen anything in any mailing list posts that is nearly as
>>> aggressive  as knowningly reusing a name that was in use like
>>> systemsettings.
>>
>>Please don't assume that was an agressive act.
>>
>>I can totally see that someone that goes with the assumption that a
>>piece of
>>software is only usable on one desktop won't have problems if you call
>>a
>>similar piece of software the same on your desktop.
>>
>>In general; please stop assuming ;)  (ask politely first)
>
> It was stated up front that Gnome was aware of the naming conflict when they did it and there was zero advance communication, so I don't think I'm assuming anything.

Scott, yes you are assuming. The fact is that Gnome used the same name
as KDE for their user-visible configuration app. There is no evidence
however that they did so to aggressively and intentionally cause
conflict. They probably just thought it was a good name. You seem to
have a deep mistrust of Gnome that in the absence of evidence you
interpret Gnome's actions as malicious instead of being done in good
faith.

A similar event happened years ago except that KDE took Gnome's name.
Gnome had its System Monitor by 2002, ksysguard was renamed to System
Monitor 4.5 years later. Notably, neither app has its OnlyShowIn key
set so this is actually the very same problem (except that both apps
effectively do the same thing which isn't the case for
systemsettings).
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-system-monitor/commit/?id=a2ef5a0d37719f8610045508c33fec6d8dccf06b
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/ksysguard/gui/ksysguard.desktop?r1=548992&r2=589532&pathrev=961381

There's no evidence to believe that KDE was trying to cause a conflict
then, nor is there any evidence that Gnome is doing that now. Unproven
allegations like these encourage the criticized party to get defensive
and start attacking back, or just not want to listen. Please look for
solutions instead of conspiracies.

Jeremy Bicha