Sorta. I really respect Bero as a developer, but I do not agree with him on this particular issue.
KDE is under the GPL. Under GPL license anybody has the right to take it, make any change they want, as long as they release the source code. If KDE didn't want Red Hat make the default theme something else and "destroy the KDE feel", then they shouldn't publish it as Open Source Software. Also some KDE developers are well known for saying "If you want it, code it yourself." in response to people asking for certain features. Red Hat doesn't have the right to code it themselves? If you really don't like the new Red Hat "Bluecurve" look, then just install a different theme. You didn't lose anything. You could also choose to use Mandrake. There were concerns about Red Hat forcing these modifications into KDE to make it more unified with the "Bluecurve" look, without putting enough effort to avoid introducing new bugs. I don't know if this is a valid argument because KDE3 has always been quite a bit unstable. The latest KDE3 in RH 8.0 seems to be better than KDE3 in Red Hat 7.3 (which was absolutely terrible, KDE3 wasn't ready for production use back then). There's also people in the Gnome camp all upset about the RH 8.0 default Gnome theme. Their arguments are equally invalid in my opinion. Ultimately I think Red Hat did a good thing in beginning to unify the KDE and GNOME desktops in this release. Nobody else was spearheading this effort. Linux needs more unified standards if it will ever become accepted by mainstream business and consumers. There is still a considerable amount of work needed to Gnome and KDE to further unify things. They still use separate folders for their "Desktop". They still use different sound daemons (esd and artsd) which cause problems for applications written for the other. Themes will eventually be unified, meaning you can install one theme and it will work in both KDE and Gnome. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Mings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2002 11:36 PM Subject: Re: [luau] Red Hat 8.0 release Monday > Warren, thanks again for all of the time you put into making Linux work > much better in Hawaii. > > Do you feel that there's any validity to Bero's claim at > http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=103293985032408 that RH 8.0 is > crippling KDE? I haven't been able to find any references to specific > objections or details. > > -Jeff
