Roughly speaking Gnome follows the fruit factory while KDE goes to Redmond for its ideas. In turn the commercial actors keep a close eye on each other as well as on what is going on in the free software world and attempt to implement their own versions of popular features like comprehensive package management. The same happens in the mobile space where both large actors freely imitate each other.
No it wasn't. KDE was built on top of Linux which was a more stable base than the house-of-cards-built-on-quicksand that was Windows 9x from which KDE got most of its aesthetics and initial user interface paradigm which made it preferable over whatever MS was (and is) pushing. While KDE excelled in bells and whistles stability did not use to be all the great. KDE 1 and 2 were a bit clunky but they got the job done, KDE 3 ended up being quite good, KDE 4 got off to a rough and unstable start but has since found its way while losing its synchronised numbering scheme - KDE is now split in several components with different version numbers.
Honesty in advertising goes a long way, especially when you have most of the winning cards in your hands. While Microsoft is busily chipping away at customer loyalty by making its products more obnoxious with every new release free software like KDE gains more and more appeal. There is no need to glorify the past, it is glorious enough as it is - warts and all. I've been there, I've lived through the crashes and frustrations but never felt the slightest need to use anything made in Redmond or Cupertino.
