Speaking solely on my own behalf, I want to point out that there is a bigger picture involved here. The way I see it the KDE League is not set up to compete with GNOME; instead the KDE League is set up to promote KDE as a desktop standard. Let's not forget that the Open Sources desktops are still hovering around 5% of the PC desktop market, with an even lower market share on mobile devices. The goal is to tap in on the 95%, not to try to gain more market share of the 5%. Bear in mind that many of the KDE League members are also members of the GNOME Foundation.

I personally hope the two projects can coexist in harmony and provide all users of PCs, workstations and mobile devices excellent Open Source alternatives to the proprietary systems that currently dominate the PC and mobile device markets.

Groups like the KDE League will hopefully go a long way to help Open Source projects compete for the mindshare of all computing users against the marketing muscle that the proprietary software vendors can muster.