[CS-FSLUG] Re: [Foss-cafe] NI: OfB.biz: I GNU It!

[Nathan T.]

I agree wholeheartedly with Aaron on this one, I missed that
particular point in your article Tim but it's long been my belief that
companies were using GTK over Qt because they wanted to harm Qt as a
way of punishing it for its approach to commercial software.

With GTK companies can write commercial software for free, even if the
toolkit isn't as good as Qt by a longshot, but because Qt is such good
toolkit and others use it to write very good software like KDE and its
applications, Real and Sun's application won't look consistent with
KDE/Qt apps.

This is important because KDE is still the most used desktop
environment on Linux by a longshot, but if GTK apps don't look nice in
it, and trust me with the button ordering change I'm more than willing
to give GTK the boot, then no one will use those GTK apps. What is
left is for companies to sabotage KDE and Qt so people will switch to
one of the GTK based desktop environments and window managers. I'm
also convinced that the button ordering switch in GTK was an attempt
to sabotage KDE and Qt, because KDE didn't have apps like the Gimp and
Gaim at the time. Think about it, way back when KDE and Gnome were
working towards playing nicer together under the guidance of the
FreeDesktop.org people, Gnome and GTK all of a sudden decide to pull
this switch because it's not something that wouldn't have directly
gone against the FD.o steps to being the two together but would have,
and untimately did, widen the gap between KDE and Gnome.

Sure I sound crazy, but it all ads up for me, the evidence has been
around for years, just read what people like Mosfet (well known
[former] KDE developer, had several employers including RH iirc) and
Bero (the guy behind Ark Linux, former RH employee) have to say. Red
Hat, GTK/Gnome, Real, Sun, etc. have been sabotaging KDE and Qt on
purpose for years because the only way they can win is to fight dirty.
Ultimately it comes down to Qt being far far better than GTK, but GTK
being free to use, and GTK applications not looking nice under the
most popular desktop environment in Linux. In order to make
applications for free that will look relatively nice under the most
popular desktop environment in Linux these companies see their only
real option as trying to shove everyone over to Gnome willingly or
not.