why dont open source projects merge?

[Grama]

just wondering if anyone here has a good logical explanation to this.... i see some great programs from the open source community, ones that i am interested in are starting to compete with suites such as adobe cs and ps. however, all these programs come sperately and with its own user interface and dependecies. i just dont see why great projects like gimp and inkscape and KompoZer come together and offer a great program suite for free that was packaged. i mean, like if openoffice.org had been writer by itself and calc and wutever bby itself it would not do nearly as well. i just think that if we were to take all these programs maybe more people would see how good these alternatives are. any explanation?

Grama

[unchiujar]

"Do one thing and do it well"

[tommytabib]

Aren't a lot of open source projects doing just that, merging?

I heard that beryl and compiz are coming together. I also heard KDE and GNOME might be merging, but that could just be rumors and wishful thinking.

So to me it seems a lot are merging, and if there not they must have a good reason.

[fingal]

Some will merge, some will remain separate. Don't forget that Open Office was produced by one very focused organisation. Gimp and Inkscape etc. are more dispersed community based offerings.

As someone said recently (I think I read it in a *nix magazine), 'Separate projects make us strong because if one fails, the others can pick up where they left off.' Or something like that . I think the chap writing that had distros in mind though.

Not that I think it's 'wrong' for projects to merge; but it might not be in the nature of open source to mix things in the way you suggest. I suspect there's a bit of friendly rivalry between Gnome and KDE ...

[benjamin20]

there are a lot of things that need to be merged, having two separate major gui api's is a real pain. its either gt or gtk, if you choose one, you alienate the other.

inkscape and gimp are different though. gimp is more for photo editing while inkscape is more for graphics animation.

[bigtomrodney]

I heard that beryl and compiz are coming together. I also heard KDE and GNOME might be merging, but that could just be rumors and wishful thinking.

Yeah I would say that is probably one of the least likely merges to happen...

[techieMoe]

inkscape and gimp are different though. gimp is more for photo editing while inkscape is more for graphics animation.

Also, they're completely different types of graphics apps. GIMP (if I remember correctly) is a raster-based app whereas Inkscape is vector-based.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_graphics_editor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics

[Grama]

yes but that is the point i am making.... because inkscape and gimp are diferent types of programs (like photoshop and illustrator) it would kind of make sense to unify things and create a semi-simillar user interface.... i think the reason most people buy (or otherwise obtain) and use the adobe suite is becuz it is a one of a kind setup.... i mean how else can u get all those kind of programs in one package? i can see where "do one thing and do it well" makes sense.... i dont know it just makes sense to me that if we could create a user friendly universal interface for such programs maybe more people would realise how great this software is.... perhaps thats not possible anyways just a thought for discussion

btw if gnome and kde merge i will cry.... but illimination of dependant libraries like gtk would be to the benefit of all imo

[fingal]

... then I suppose there's potential for projects (once merged) to 'fork', following a huge row. I'm not sure how often that happens, but it seems quite common in the open source universe.