A Grumpy Editor's addendum: evince [LWN.net]

A Grumpy Editor's addendum: evince

Posted Jan 25, 2005 3:02 UTC (Tue) by dkite (guest, #4577)
In reply to: A Grumpy Editor's addendum: evince by jayavarman
Parent article: A Grumpy Editor's addendum: evince

> And why both almost simultanously?

Just keep that thought for the next time someone suggests everyone work
on one desktop for efficiency's sake.

This type of gentle competition happens all the time. The KPDF guys
contributed back to xpdf, and I imagine the Evince people did the same.
So I as a KDE user benefits, and the Gnome user benefits. We both will
end up with excellent applications. And be able to choose between either
desktop without having to sacrifice necessary functionality.

I can't imagine a better software scenario.

Derek

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A Grumpy Editor's addendum: evince

Posted Jan 26, 2005 10:48 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Beyond that, I understand that GNOME and KDE developers actually look at each others' work with a view to improving their own desktops; this isn't copying or cheating, it's competition in Free Software at work.

I have no doubt that if GNOME introduces a killer feature, KDE will implement something similar; if KDE introduces a killer feature, it would be very unexpected if GNOME didn't acquire the same concept implemented differently. The presence of two desktops doesn't mean two desktops moving slower than they would if there was only one desktop, it means two sets of R&D effort being put into the Linux desktop, and both desktops improving faster.