* At that time, most apps where available in their "desktop" versions. So if you used Gnome you tended to use Gnome versions of the app.
(it was a silly world back then)
* I was starting with development at that time, and the Gnome "SDK" was something I found not appealing at all. It could not even be called a platform, but a random collection of libraries. KDE on the other side was very consistent and appealing for developing GUI apps.
(And you may remember the KDE hate about non-standard-C++ and QObject, from the same guys that brought you Vala and GObject later)
* I had back then this opinion of not looking at my contact list by IM system, but by person with multiple transports.
That followed by KDE addressbook integration, etc. I would guess nowadays Pidgin also has this, but that was new back then. Kopete was a testbed for all this ideas.
* At that time, most apps where available in their "desktop" versions. So if you used Gnome you tended to use Gnome versions of the app.
(it was a silly world back then)
* I was starting with development at that time, and the Gnome "SDK" was something I found not appealing at all. It could not even be called a platform, but a random collection of libraries. KDE on the other side was very consistent and appealing for developing GUI apps.
(And you may remember the KDE hate about non-standard-C++ and QObject, from the same guys that brought you Vala and GObject later)
* I had back then this opinion of not looking at my contact list by IM system, but by person with multiple transports.
That followed by KDE addressbook integration, etc. I would guess nowadays Pidgin also has this, but that was new back then. Kopete was a testbed for all this ideas.
* GAIM was not very stable back then