Linux.Conf.Au.2001: Why KDE works

“This talk was given by Sirtaj Singh, whom I had met at the
barbecue on the first night. I hate to break it to Slashdot
posters, but it is actually possible for people in KDE and GNOME to
get on. Sirtaj was a lot of fun to talk to.”

“He started off by introducing himself. He’s been involved with
KDE for a long time but never as a “central” hacker (so he says).
He’s contributed bug-fixes, glue scripts, small apps and the like.
But being on the edge but constantly involved means he’s been able
to watch it for ages.”

“No screenshots here: with luck we’ve all seen the latest and
greatest anyway. This talk is about large software projects, the
highs, the lows, and how you keep a balance and interest going when
you have people doing it for money and people doing it for
love.”

“Some history to start with: Matthias Ettrich had been doing Lyx
and had met Qt then. Sirtaj was looking around for C++ libraries at
the time, found Qt, and two days later saw the first KDE
announcement.”

Complete
Story