>If you browse the dev mail list archives from a while ago, you'll discover that a couple of KDE 
> devs invited themselves into our mail list and started a nasty 
> spitting contest. Got rather heated. Nobody won and one of the KDE 
> devs took to his blog to continue bashing Trinity. He stopped that 
> public campaign when a lot of people posted comments to his blog 
> entry to leave us the hell alone, that the free/libre software 
> philosophy allows and embraces forking. He was reminded that we 
> were not harming anybody. After those public rebuttals he stayed 
> away, but I have not forgotten him or his tirades.

I think I know which blog, which post and which developer you are referring to.
IMO the only thing that post achieved was to damage that developer's reputation.
That developer perhaps forgot that even if he is the author of a nice piece of code, 
KDE and many other Linux related projects are free software. In fact each KDE files contains the following text:

" This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
   modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public
   License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation."

So anyone is free to fork an existing project and do what he wants with it as long as he respect the GNU Licence.


 >------------------------------
 >"Recently I discovered Trinity. I immediately felt at home with
 >this traditional computer desktop environment, which focuses on
 >productivity rather than the latest development in visual effects.
 >In these days of tablets and smart phones, traditional desktop
 >environments still play important roles. The TDE development team
 >is friendly and anyone such as myself may contribute to preserve
 >and enhance this fantastic desktop environment." --- Michele Calgaro, Italy
 >------------------------------

Ok, if no one objects, let's settle on this version.
 
 Michele