LinuxPlanet: Lou’s Views: KDE vs. Ximian

“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.”

Complete
Story