Why do Linux communities maintain so many different desktop environments like GNOME, KDE, X Window System?
Peters: We do have different cultures of philosophies, so we think something different is better for our end users. We will probably always be different from each other. But wherever we can cooperate, that just furthers our mission. Sometimes we each have competing applications. For instance, we have Gnumeric as a spreadsheet, and KDE has a different one. LIN: What is the mission behind the GNOME Foundation? Peters: Our goal, maybe more so than developers of proprietary desktops and other Linux desktops, is to make sure that our desktop is accessible to everybody. That may mean if you don’t want to pay for it, it’s free. If you speak some other language, we have it translated into something like 80 languages. If you have a disability, we want to make sure that you can still use it. So we have things like screen readers and online keyboards. The human interface guidelines are to make it as easy for people to use. So we think the guidelines make it easier for developers without making a
