"If KDE and GNOME are the Hatfield and McCoy of Open
Source graphical desktop environments, then theKompany.com and
Ximian are not exactly kissing cousins. But the philosophical
beliefs of the two businesses are converging, and the community is
settling down to a broader acceptance of commercial software.
Assuming computer users choose their desktops before they choose
their desktop applications, ostensibly theKompany's and Ximian's
target markets are non-intersecting sets. But their business
practices and philosophies on Open Source have been scrutinized,
discussed and compared at length in public.
An unspoken rivalry seems to exist between the two businesses
that develop practical software applications, theKompany.com for
KDE and Ximian for GNOME. Critics of Ximian say it controls GNOME
and has sold out to Microsoft because of involvement with the Mono
project, which is working on an Open Source implementation of the
.Net development framework. Miguel de Icaza, the guy who started
GNOME and is one of the founders of Ximian (fka Helix Code), says
critics need to get involved. "Read the foundation reports as well
as all the announcements that happen there. Ximian is a contributor
to GNOME, just like many other individuals and companies.""
