I would like to start a little debate about the vast amount of ridiculously similar project and if a merge of these projects would be a good idea.

Many projects are very similar! Like Rhythmbox vs. Banshee or Evolution vs. Thunderbird - why not combine the effort and make one amazing product! (I know the projects in the example above have many differences)

I think that projects that have the same purpose can share/combine the same "core" or base, like Ubuntu does it with all it's derivatives. For example for bug-fixing process would benefit form this.

Just think of the success of Compiz-fusion. Compiz Fusion is the result of a merge between the old Compiz community plugin set "Compiz Extras" and the parts of the Beryl project that are independent of the window manager core. The outcome is highly customizable and included in many distributions by default.

Please take a minute to submit your view

//MadsRH