Running Linux, Third Edition

A Brief History of the GNOME Project

Before the GNOME project as we know it was created, there were two earlier projects, the “libapp” project and the “old-GNOME” project. libapp was intended to supply programmers with a standardized method of storing, using, and retrieving various bits of information about the system and the user preferences; it was a library that anyone could use. On the other hand, Old-GNOME was aimed at providing Unix with a standard software component model, allowing programs to be used as components within other programs.

When the KDE project (see Section 11.3 in Chapter 11) emerged as a serious attempt to create a usable desktop environment for Unix, a number of people became worried about its licensing. The KDE team had chosen to build their project on top of the Qt GUI tool kit, which at that time was not truly free software. Although Qt has since changed its licensing terms and now qualifies as free software, at that time many people felt its use represented a step backwards for software freedom. This led to the emergence of the GNOME project as an attempt to develop a completely free desktop environment based on the original old-GNOME and libapp ideas.

Another important goal of the GNOME project was to make sure that the work done on any foundation libraries could be used from every programming language in Unix. To successfully create this standard, it was essential that every programmer had access to these technologies, no matter the choice of programming ...