not invented here

first, major props to the koffice developers for a wicked release! i've been using koffice for some years now and really appreciate it. i need to rant.. er... blog someday about why koffice will have a very bright future. but that's not what is on my mind today... NIH is.

i was reading the Open Source news today and saw once again an all too typical scene: kde gets accused, primarily by people who do not use or develop with kde, of being riddled with Not Invented Here, or "NIH", syndrome. NIH is that state of mind where you do not accept anything that you didn't create, no matter how good or sensible the decision to use it would be.

while this claim gets bandied about as a means to jab at kde's good reputation, i simply can not see the truth behind it.

for every technology that kde uses where there is an external alternative, the reason for the choice to use something homegrown can be brought down to one of a few reasons: the option didn't exist when kde started using that functionality (e.g. kde was there first), the options were or are not mature enough for use in kde, the options were somehow encumbered so that they were not usable within kde or that the item is so trivial that NIH never entered into it (it was simply faster to do something new than use something existing; e.g. "trivial").

i look at kpdf using popplar (have i mentioned how inane i find that name, yet? and how i can never remember how to spell it? ;), koffice using OASIS, the huge number of cross-desktop standards kde has adopted and authored, the use of libraries like libxml2, the grass-root adoption of gstreamer by some of our multimedia apps ... and on and on .. and i ask myself, "ok, where is this NIH exactly?"

perhaps i'm all to close to the scene to see it. so, here is my request to all those who feel KDE exhibits NIH:

provide me with concrete examples of this in action. you can reply to this blog entry or send me email (aseigo at kde dot org). i will collate these examples, examine them one by one and then address each of them in a blog entry at a future date.

please, spread this request to all your open source using friends who have expressed this sentiment. pass it on to your kde friends, your gnome friends, your mac friends, your aunts and uncles and cousins and dogs. i really want to flush this one out once and for all. i want to correct misconceptions where they exist, and address real examples of NIH where they exist.