Why not reusing more GNOME components?

[Matthew Brush]

On 14-08-29 12:33 AM, Sébastien Wilmet wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 10:53:36PM +0200, Harold Aling wrote:
>> Gnome loves RAM, and I do too. Gnome has waaaaay too much features for
>> me, which I don't use, don't want and don't like.
>
> I thought GNOME had a reputation to not have a lot of features and
> configuration, compared to KDE…
>
> Lots of software in Xfce can be compared to GNOME, and there is not a
> big difference:
> - the Xfce desktop (not the apps) has as many settings as GNOME, more or
> less.
> - some Xfce apps are almost the same as the GNOME equivalent, or have
>    less features. Compare xfce-terminal with gnome-terminal for example.
> Or compare Leafpad with gedit (with some plugins it is possible to use
> gedit for programming, while Leafpad is just a text area to take some
> notes). Of course, thanks to some (gnome) libraries like VTE or
> GtkSourceView, the Xfce apps developers don't completely reinvent the
> wheel. But it is nevertheless a bit a waste of efforts. Xfce could
> simply take some of the GNOME apps.
>

Why does GNOME continue to waste efforts by duplicating everything in 
KDE? Most KDE apps are better, more powerful, and have more features 
than GNOME apps, so following your logic, GNOME should stop wasting its 
efforts of duplicating a whole separate GUI toolkit, applications and 
desktop environment and just use stuff from KDE.

Likely the answer to that (facetious) question will answer your 
questioning of much of XFCE's existence.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush