KLyDE: Lightweight KDE Desktop In the Making 129
jrepin writes "During Hack Week 9 at SUSE, longtime KDE hacker Will Stephenson started working on a project codenamed KLyDE. This project's aim is to bring KDE Plasma to the lightweight desktop market. It applies KDE's strengths of modularity and configurability to the challenge of making a lightweight desktop." Better said, Stephenson was able to devote lots of time to it; he's been working on the project for a few years now.
Re:This effort could be spent better! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not how it works.
You're making an assumption that a developer will devote the same amount of time and enthusiasm to any project, and therefore any "Me-too" development is a loss to an established project.
That's more or less how it works in commercial development - you have a developer working 8 hours a day on whatever project you give him. It's not how it works in FOSS, which is actually a selfish development model: you work on whatever you want, as much as you want.
It's better to have someone sit down & bang out a yet another variant of X than to have them not turn out anything at all. The new version of X might be enough of an improvement to attract other developers and get you a new killer product. Not doing anything will result in nothing.
He wants to build a lightweight KDE, so he goes off and writes some code and with any luck creates a working KLyDE WM. If he tried to do this within KDE itself, he'd hit a load of politics and entrenched views and spend all his time arguing. He'd get nothing done. Nobody wins.
What you see as duplication and waste is a vital and useful part of FOSS development. Your recommended alternative would result in stagnation as people stop working on what interests them to fight against each other to drive existing projects towards their vision.
That's what the harm would be.