OK, I've read this over so now I'm better educated :). You're right in terms of the similarity, they both say they will act as PR and media contacts, however that is where the League stops. The Foundation, according to the web site "the Foundation will coordinate releases of GNOME and determine which projects are part of GNOME."

That is the critical distinction that I think I, and others are making, it doesn't have to do with the corporate sponsorship. That said, hopefully this can also act as a unified conduit for communcation between the two groups to work together.

Hi Shawn, Yes, the GNOME Foundation does release coordination and other functions that, I understand, are handled by KDE Core in the KDE project. But those functions are handled by the Board of Directors, which was elected by the hackers.

The Advisory Board is just like the KDE League (as far as I know).

• Re: Remember this by Aaron J. Seigo on Wednesday 15/Nov/2000, @12:06

  yes, that's right. i nice democratically voted in Board of Directors that has nothing to do with the companies that are part of the foundation. NOT. 4 from Eazel, 2 from Helix, 2 from Red-Hat and one from Sun. leaving 2 that aren't from companies in the foundation and 0 unaligned members. Get real and see through the smoke.

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• Re: Remember this by Anonymous on Wednesday 15/Nov/2000, @14:47

  Oups, how many members of the KDE Core Team aren't employed by companies in the league ?

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• Re: Remember this by CP on Friday 17/Nov/2000, @05:08

  That's another question; at KDE even "employed" programmers have to discuss their ideas with everybody (including interested hackers that do not really participate in the project), while in the GNOME foundation, the Directors can make the decicions as it pleases them (or their employers?). If it happens that nearly every Director has a job at a member-concern, they can (and as nobody can stop them, I'm sure they will) act not only like individual GNOME programmers, but also the way it fits the needs of the companies.

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• Re: Remember this by Anonymous on Thursday 16/Nov/2000, @04:53

  In case you don't know, those are individual persons too. They are humans and enjoy programming.

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• Re: Remember this by ac on Wednesday 15/Nov/2000, @12:08

  Looking at who was elected, there is indeed a lot of corporate involvement in who now steers GNOME! This is very different from before!

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• Re: Remember this by ac on Wednesday 15/Nov/2000, @12:21

  Well, the core developers of both KDE and Gnome tend to be hired by corporations, so it's really pretty inevitable.

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• Re: Remember this by Yakk on Wednesday 15/Nov/2000, @16:57

  rofl You are indeed a funny man. The Board of directors is pretty much exactly who was steering GNOME before. We have ratified this through a democratic process. I'm sure the KDE group have a similar process for electing the KDE Core.

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Hi Shawn, Yes, the GNOME Foundation does release coordination and other functions that, I understand, are handled by KDE Core in the KDE project. But those functions are handled by the Board of Directors, which was elected by the hackers.

The Advisory Board is just like the KDE League (as far as I know).