LinuxPlanet: Lou's Views: KDE vs. Ximian Feb 13, 2001, 16 :47 UTC (55 Talkback[s]) (9092 reads) (Other stories by Lou Grinzo)
"As I see it, there are really three sides to this mess: Ximian, KDE, and the KDE- and Qt-related companies, like theKompany.com and Trolltech.
The third group has the most reason to be outraged. If I worked for one of them, particularly Trolltech, a company that has been and continues to
be beat up over a long-dead licensing issue, and had nothing to do with this situation, I'd be just about ready to pop a vein my forehead. Notice
that Trolltech wasn't dragged into this by implication (KDE is written using their Qt framework), but directly: One of the ad words Ximian rented
on Google is "trolltech", which as of 10:20PM Monday night (east coast US) was still triggering the Ximian "Free Linux Desktop" ad and link, but
was ad-free Tuesday morning. I've had considerable contact with Haavard Nord and Aron Kozak of Trolltech, and they're very classy,
level-headed people, which only makes this situation an even clearer case of "when bad things happen to good people", and that much more
distasteful."
"Before we give in to the temptation to stroll too far down the righteous indignation path, let's step back and take the long view of things. Here
we have Linux and its band of brave knights making phenomenal inroads into Fortress Microsoft, deeper and faster than almost anyone
(including yours truly) had predicted. But instead of focusing our collective resources on that goal, a fistfight suddenly breaks out between two of
the most important knights, and for a particularly stupid reason. One can only imagine what King Bill, perched in his golden tower, thinks as he
peers down on this scene, and how easily his Royal PR Machine can turn this to his advantage. (OK, I'll stop straining the ye olde metaphor; you
get the point.)..."
"Finally, it's worth pointing out that this in-fighting is not only wasteful and silly, but it's amateurish. One side buys ad words for another's
trademarks on a search engine? Oh puh-leeze. Wait until Microsoft is fully engaged in fighting Linux (and I guarantee you they've barely started),
and they start unleashing things far more subtle and more effective than this or Steve Balmer's occasional back-handed swipes at Linux. Then
we'll see just how hard hardball can get. But that's OK, we'll be ready to handle it, thanks to the rigorous PR warfare training we've had in
AdGate."
